Margaret Ann Hargreaves Stolpmann died peacefully on April 11 under the compassionate care of Lahey Hospital in Burlington, MA after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease. She spent her last days sharing memories and gratitude with her children and their families.
Margaret often said, “You have to play the cards you’re dealt.” She earned that wisdom, having drawn several tough cards from her genes and her early life. In 1949, when Margaret was two years old, her mother Betty died by suicide following a depression. Her father, George, was working overseas with USAID. For the next two years, she and her older brother Ron moved among their father’s relatives in California. This early time of instability shaped Margaret’s life, leaving her with a lasting sense of loss and an incredible inner strength.
George married his second wife, Sara Romero, in 1951 and brought the children to his next assignment in Haiti. When Sara’s mother Elisa, known to the family as Mamaita, came to visit, she looked at Margaret and said, “This child needs love.” Mamaita took Margaret to live with her in Honduras for a year.
Margaret grew up abroad, in Haiti where her brothers Henry (who died young of polio) and Mark were born, and then in the Philippines, where her sister Sonia and brother Leo were born. She attended high school in Brazil. Throughout her life she was interested in the wider world.
On the day of her graduation from Swarthmore College in 1969, Margaret married Tim Keith-Lucas, a fellow psychology major. The couple moved to North Carolina, where Margaret earned a degree in social work from UNC Chapel Hill. She found a mentor and father figure in Tim’s father Alan Keith-Lucas, a respected author and educator in the field of social work.
In early adulthood, Margaret and her brother Ron both began to struggle with mental illness. Ron died by suicide in 1973.
In 1973, Margaret and Tim moved to Sewanee, Tennessee, where Tim took a job as a professor. They welcomed two children, Darwin in 1974 and Diane Dorothea (Thea) in 1976. Margaret and Tim divorced in 1978, and she was finally diagnosed and treated for bipolar disorder. She moved to Chattanooga and took up her mission as a social worker focused on adoption, foster care, and teen mothers.
Margaret and Tim shared custody, with the children in Chattanooga for weekends and summers. She married Fred Stolpmann in 1981 and helped to raise the younger two of his four sons. Her house was full of toys, pets, and every imaginable flavor of children’s cereal. She liked to go square dancing and to plan outings to places like the local amusement park or the Lookout Mountain waterslide. She made beautiful crafts; two of her masterpieces were an embroidered Easter dress for Thea and a birthday cake shaped like a walrus for Darwin.
Margaret made sure her children ate vegetables, went to Sunday School, and got a thorough age-appropriate sex education. She was also an important anchor for her youngest stepson, Brice, a relationship that lasted after the end of her marriage to his father in 1987.
For the next twenty years, Margaret was a faithful member of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Hixson, Tennessee, where she befriended and provided rides to the Rev. Kuulei Green, an assistant priest who was legally blind. She also found close friends among her fellow advocates for mental health around Chattanooga.
Margaret was proud to see her children grow up healthy, find meaningful work, and build strong marriages – Thea with Jake Montwieler in 1999, and Darwin with Heather Rowland in 2004. In 2007, she moved into Saint Barnabas, an Episcopal retirement community, where she became a leader among the residents and a lay minister for the weekly chapel services.
In 2012, Margaret moved to Waltham, Massachusetts, to be near her children and their families. She treasured her time as Granny to Renée, Dimitri, and Caleb. She loved Scrabble and was proud that she learned how to play poker. She was the longest-running resident of her assisted living community, Waltham Crossings, with dear friends among her neighbors and the staff.
During Margaret’s last years, she developed Parkinson’s. She adapted to using a walker by choosing a purple one and making that her signature color. She and her brother Mark, who also had the disease, supported one another until his death in 2022. She also found companionship in a music therapy group at Winchester Community Music School.
Margaret loved turtles because they might get somewhere slowly, but they never give up. Despite all the challenges she faced, she stubbornly insisted on living a full life.
A Memorial Service is being planned and will be announced at a later date.