Margaret (Peg) Vigars Wilke died peacefully at her home in Claremont, California on Saturday, October 17. A resident of Pilgrim Place community in Claremont since 1989, she enjoyed a music concert on campus the day before her passing. Matriar
ch of a large family, artist, therapist and early fighter for civil rights, economic justice and women’s rights, she was wife and helpmate of the late Reverend Harold Wilke, himself a disability rights pioneer and activist involved in the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act. Peg was 93.
Born in Algona, Iowa, on July 12, 1916, Margaret Vigars was the only child of Selma Lind and William Vigars. She was a precocious child who started first grade a year before her classmates. Among the joys of her childhood were summers spent with her parents at Wheelers Grove, on Lake Okoboji in Arnolds Park, Iowa. There she gained a love of lakes and swimming, affinities that stayed with her throughout life. Also at Lake Okoboji, she and her teenage friends listened on warm summer nights to big bands playing across the water.
She loved to tell about adventures with her father, Bill, including stories about their early-morning trips to watch the annual arrival by train of the circus elephants and roustabouts.
Margaret Vigars attended Iowa State Teachers College (now University of Northern Iowa). There, she excelled academically and developed her interests and skills in drama and art. During one vacation visit back home, she dropped in on her high school math teacher, who at that moment was pointing out a difficult problem Margaret had solved the previous year. He had saved her solution on the blackboard.
After graduating from College, Peg attended Chicago Theological Seminary where she earned a masters degree in social work. While there she met her future husband Harold Wilke, and after a cross country courtship while she directed settlement houses serving immigrants and economic refugees in Chicago and Erie, Pa, they were married August 24, 1941 at the Seminary Chapel. They then moved to Columbia, Mo. where Peg worked with Red Cross and Harold was a chaplain at the University of Missouri.
When the U.S.entered World War II, Peg & Harold moved east. Peg staffed the Red Cross office in Boston, working with families of soldiers shipping overseas as well as victims tragic Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire. In the years that followed, Peg and Harold moved to Philadelphia, Topeka, KS, Chicago, Cleveland, and White Plains, NY before retiring to Pilgrim Place in Claremont, CA.
While Harold pursued his career as a minister and national leader in the United Church of Christ and as an international advocate for people with disabilities, she worked as a social worker and therapist along with raising their five sons.
Her work took her from settlement houses and a children’s home in Cleveland, to a psychotherapy practice in New York City and White Plains. For a time in the late 1960’s she and her family lived in Europe, where she and Harold, who had been born without arms, worked with families of the disabled children who were Thalidomide victims.
Throughout her life, Peg Wilke was surrounded by works of art, her own and others that she collected. She was a good painter and gifted sculptor, whose award-winning works have been displayed from Illinois and Iowa to New York and California. Her home and heart gave refuge and welcome to people from all walks of life, all ages and from all over the world, for short, long and sometimes crowded stays. A favorite place for gathering family for more than 30 years was the family’s “camp†in Bryant Pond, Maine.
Margaret (Peg) Wilke is survived by her sons William Wilke of Watertown, MA, Christopher (Kit) Wilke and his wife Bonnie Butler Wilke of Long Beach, CA, Mark Wilke and his wife Sharon Robertson Wilke of Arlington, MA, Nancy Nadler Wilke (wife of the late John Wilke) of Bethesda,MD, and David Wilke and his wife Bailey Beeken of Brooklyn, NY. She is also survived by eight grandchildren: Devon, Michaela, Robin, Jackson, Erik, Ryan, Bo, and Quinn and two great-grandchildren. She was predeceased by her husband Harold Wilke, who died in 2003, and their son, John Wilke, who died in May 2009.
A memorial service for Margaret (Peg) Wilke will take place at 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, November 3 in Decker Hall at 665 Avery Road, Pilgrim Place, Claremont, CA. The family asks that in lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to Pilgrim Place
( http://www.pilgrimplace.org/online_donations.php )
CONTACT: Reverend Kit Wilke 562-619-0301
