Marguerite Y. Williams

Marguerite York Williams (aka "Pete" when she was a child) was born on November 25, 1913 in Raleigh, NC. Her daddy Hubert worked as a street car driver and janitor. Her mom cared for Marguerite and her sisters, Kathleen (Katie) and Dorothy (Dottie). Growing up poor and white in the segregated South, she nonetheless developed progressive (and even feminist!) values; she worked her way through NC State, toiling in tobacco factories and taking a year off to earn enough money to complete her degree. She taught high school biology and coached the girl's basketball team to a division championship (she remained a lifelong hoops fan, enamored especially of the LA Lakers and her "adopted son" Kobe Bryant). She earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at NC State, where she was quite popular with various suitors, but finally succumbed to the charms of a handsome, slender, smart, funny, overachieving lad from a Hillsboro dirt farm. Robin Murphy Williams, Jr. and Marguerite (she dignified and womanized her name, called herself Marguerite, and shunned Willie or Pete) were wed in a small chapel on July 29, 1939. While Robin was earning his doctorate at Harvard, Marguerite worked as a field agent for the WPA, driving her Ford Model T through the Kentucky hill country from cabin to cabin, interviewing low-income women and then writing and publishing (with one of her mentors) a paper about fertility rates in rural counties. While Robin was on the front lines in Europe, conducting field interviews with infantrymen and officers for the War Department, Marguerite worked at the Red Cross in Washington, D.C. while raising her infant son, Robin III, born on November 11, 1942 (his papa was also born on November 11,1914). After the war and a stint at the University of Kentucky, the Williams decided to take a shot at living in the North. First they settled in Brooktondale and then moved to 412/414 Oak Ave, close to Collegetown and the campus. The myths surrounding their first Ithaca winter vary, but in this writer's version, it was Marguerite, who having endured her first bitter, snowy, coal furnace-dusty, dark Ithaca winter, asked Robin if they were going to remain at Cornell much longer. Well, they did. Marguerite gave birth to Nancy (1946) and Susan (1952). Oak Ave was the Williams' home base and primary residence for the next 50 years, while they embarked on countless travels and sabbaticals to all 50 states and many corners of the globe. Marguerite adored travel; she had a passionate desire to experience as many cultures and places as possible.Robin and Marguerite's lives in Ithaca featured raising their three wild, energetic, infinitely inquisitive and daring children during the Red-baiting, paranoid 50's and the volatile 60's. Marguerite was the primary manager, head overseer, and real estate investor in a series of houses and homes, highlighted by the famous "Farm" Baker Hill Road (purchased in '63). Marguerite was a passionate and loving partner to her complicated, driven, brilliant, sociologist husband and remained his best friend, strongest ally, first reader/editor, most barbed critic, and slyest ironist. She dealt with her talented and magnetic children, setting a high moral bar for them and collaborating with Robin in prompting them to take a principled, assertive, and clear-eyed stance on socioecconomic and sociopolitical issues. Marguerite was also a worthy and insistent partner in verbal jousts with Robin, her children. and friends. She had an inventive, understated Southern style of humor and would make deft, ironic points merely by arching her eyebrows, upturning her mouth, and deliberately offering a concise, flavorful word or phrase that would precisely hit the mark. When this apparently proper, formerly southern woman-a fallen Christian who was raised to believe that cursing was sinful and not very ladylike- said "s**t" or something even more evocative, you knew she meant business and was genuinely angry or disgusted. For example, in her late 70s, while Marguerite was planting still more pachysandra in her masterpiece "backyard"-actually a steep descent to the gorge waters below-she tumbled all the way down the long bank. Hearing her curses, screams, and sobs, her son Robin found her there and rescued her.Marguerite loved the arts, theater, books, learning, cooking and eating good food, and music of all kinds: she taught her children to appreciate Leadbelly and all southern blues music, jazz, classical, and more...but when we brought Dylan and the Beatles records home and played them on her beloved hifi, she thought the world was ending, at least at first. Of course she was sometimes sad, depressed, mad, manic, and dramatic (she'd reject anyone's remarks that she was behaving "just like a woman."). Even while she could be her family's most tenacious critic, she fiercely tried to defend us and keep us alive and intact. She gifted us with her almost infinite love of life, her enormous joy, and her always childlike wonder about our world.During their heydays at Cornell and in Ithaca, Robin and Marguerite loved to entertain and socialize with their many Cornell colleagues and friends. The Williams cocktail parties in the 50s and 60s might sometimes resemble a cross between "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" and an academia version of "Mad Men." The Williams, Lamberts, Taietz, Bronfenbrenners, Holmbergs, Hirschmans (to name only a very few of a large tribe) would sometimes bring us children to the Rathskeller at the Statler or to Joe's for the best pizza in the world, then later to the Antlers and many other fine (& not so fine) Ithaca eateries. Academic backbiting, ideological debates, bad puns, and raucous laughter were signatures of all those events. But perhaps the best spot for both generations was the still-legendary "Farm" and its pond on Baker Hill Road. Many, so many of us, had good picnics and parties there.Then Robin III (aka Bob) died too young in 1984, and some of us wondered if Marguerite and Robin could survive their loss and grief. They did. They found ways to survive despite the pain. And they travelled more and took Susan on some of those travels.Beginning circa 1989, the never-to-retire Professor and his Wife/intrepid partner and best friend launched yearly cross-country drives through daunting ice storms and blizzards to visit Nancy and the grandchildren (Julia, Tara, Tyler, and Robin), whom Marguerite adored with every fiber of her being. After visiting them in Santa Fe, Marguerite and Robin journeyed to their adopted second home at UC Irvine, where they lived part-time until 2003, when they finally sold Oak Ave and became full-time Californians. Robin and Marguerite continued to love and care for each other, while Robin kept on writing, publishing, and teaching until days before his death in 2006.Marguerite continued to live in their Irvine apartment until 2013, thanks in large part to the care and love provided by her primary caregivers, Carmen and Jocelyn.Two years ago, Marguerite moved to Portland, Oregon, to be near Nancy, Tara, Tyler & Beth and her great-grandchildren (Corbin, Adabelle, and River). She delighted in visiting and playing with them: the 100+ years young woman communicated effortlessly and effectively with the toddlers.Until her death on August 27, 2015, Marguerite cherished her days, singing and laughing, in comfort and tranquility with family, friends, and the kind staff at her home at Oatfield Estates in Milwaukie, Oregon. Nancy was with Marguerite when she died peacefully and with dignity, as she wanted. Marguerite said, "I believe my work here is done." She was predeceased by almost all of her generation, including her sisters Kathleen and Dorothy; her husband, Robin; her son Robin M. Williams III; and her beloved sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law (most especially and most recently her sister-in-law Helen Coble). She is survived by daughters Nancy O'Connor (Santa Fe, NM & Portland, Or.) and Susan Y. Williams and partner Stephen Duarte (Eastham, MA.); her grandchildren Julia, Tara, Tyler (and wife Beth), and Robin O'Connor, who live in too many places and move too often to list; and her beloved great-grandchildren Connor, Adabelle, and River O'Connor of Portland, Oregon; nieces and nephews including Marie Runkle, Jay Coble, Ann Williams, Edwin and Michael Ryder, Bryant Stallings, and many great-nieces and nephews.A memorial service was held September 2, 2015 at Oatfield Estates in Portland with Nancy, the O'Connor family, Oatfield staff and hospice caregivers in attendance. On September 3, 2015, Ithaca friends of the Williams family and Susie gathered for a private burial at East Lawn Cemetery, followed by an Irish-English-French-Welsh-Scottish wake in Ithaca, NY. Crown Memorial Center in Portland and Bangs Funeral Home in Ithaca assisted with arrangements. In lieu of flowers, please make a contribution to Doctors without Borders in Marguerite's name.We end with this: When Robin was at Harvard and Marguerite was somewhere in the South (trying to start a home and family with a new husband who would be elsewhere too often in their early days), they exchanged frequent letters. Here is the ending to one letter that he wrote to her from Harvard (circa 1939): ""All the above has really very little to do with what I really want to say- I love you. That's the one thing that really matters to me now and the one thing that holds life together and gives it some significance. Goodnight, darling."