Believe-It-Or-Not  Facts

About Margaret Kearfott Carriel

 

 

Text Box: Did You Know … • That even though she lived at a dozen addresses in four states, and visited dozens of countries on five continents … she was baptized, married, and buried at a church not two hundred yards from her birthplace? • That she was born at home and died at home? • That she attended both Hollins College and William & Mary in the 1930s, but received her B.A. in anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh in 1958? • That she was known to her childhood friends as “Blip” all her life? • That she was for many months a governess employed by the Herbert Lehman family when she first moved to New York City? • That she was aboard a cruise liner en route from New York City to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, when Pearl Harbor was bombed and war was declared? That she went ahead with her vacation anyway? • That at the end of World War II, she was employed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard as a turret lathe operator? She was a “Rosie the Riveter” type who helped build battleships and an aircraft carrier. (We still have a bronze shaving that we use as a Christmas tree decoration!) • That she and her bridegroom often flew together in Dad’s single-engine plane, “Pegasus,” from Virginia to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Dad was completing his dissertation? • That she typed his organic chemistry dissertation and (a decade later) her father-in-law’s privately-published family genealogy? • That she took notes using Gregg Shorthand during her entire life? • That when her mother-in-law died in 1950, her father-in-law presently was remarried to her own aunt, Rebecca Kearfott Sparrow, thus creating a very complicated family relationship between her and her husband—they became “step-first-cousins!” • That she drafted libretti for operas based on the lives of Edgar Allen Poe and Revolutionary War hero Daniel Morgan? • That after separating from her husband after thirty years of marriage, at the age of 59, she moved into a private apartment in north Manhattan and got herself work? • That she wrote a musical on an environmental theme called “Leapers,” which was produced in Martinsville? • That she wrote and directed a major Christmas pageant for Christ Episcopal Church of Martinsville, called “Little Day Star,” in 1983-84? • That she personally and single-handedly laid down all the bricks in the front yard of 111 Mulberry Court? • That she owned at least a dozen cats during her adult life—four simultaneously, at one point? • That her sailing adventures with her husband and her son involved several overnight passages, during which she stood watch? • That she went on private cruising sailboat vacations in: The Bahamas, Haiti, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, Mexico, Venezuela, England, France, Greece, and Turkey (and all over the East coast of the United States)? • That she prepared a “living will” twenty years before she died and invariably reminded her physician of it at every meeting? • That she undertook her 400-mile pilgrimage in Spain at the age of 78; suspended it in the middle when she learned of the death of her husband; but returned to the very same spot the following spring and completed the pilgrimage? • That in 1999, at the age of 82, she accompanied her friend Dorothy Olim on a south Asian jaunt, including a prepared three-week tour of Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhutan organized by Geographic Expeditions of San Francisco and forthrightly described by them as “rigorous touring!” • That in the summer after her 90th birthday, she twice attended Martinsville minor league baseball games, first with Jay, then with Ben. Ben had to convince her to spring for the $7 chairs behind home plate; she’d sat in the bleachers with Jay, because they only cost four bucks. • That her beloved friend-through-life, Mary Booker Pannill, godmother to Ben and Paul Carriel, was brought in a bassinet to baby Margaret’s first birthday party … and attended her funeral ninety-one years later?  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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