SEEGER, Margaret Coolidge "Maggie" Of Arlington and Cambridge, Massachusetts, born June 10, 1928 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, passed away peacefully on June 21, 2018 in Raleigh, North Carolina, age 90. Maggie led an active and independent life, charting her own course in ways that were far outside the mainstream for her times. As a young woman she taught herself to play guitar and sing cowboy songs, rejecting her family's long traditions in classical music (she was the last surviving grandchild of American classical music patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge). In 1948 while attending Stanford, she married a fellow student, Sully Marsden, a PhD candidate in Chemistry who had worked on the atom bomb project in Oak Ridge TN. They moved to India with their infant son Lee in 1950, where Sully was instrumental in establishing India's first National Chemical Laboratory, in Pune, near Mumbai. Maggie embraced the people and culture. While there, she contracted polio and was briefly unable to walk. Under the care of Dr. Banoo Coyaji, she recovered completely except for a slight limp which re-appeared in her 70's. Dr. Coyaji was an activist in family planning and population control and director of King Edward Memorial Hospital in Pune. She and Maggie remained friends long after Maggie left India. The family had grown to include Joe and Mary when they left in 1953. In the US, the family lived in State College, PA, where Annie was born, then moved to California in 1957. Maggie was divorced in 1958 and became responsible for raising the four children. As part of her children's "education", she included drives across the country, trips to Mexico where she bought good guitars cheaply for friends (she learned to bargain in India) and smuggled illegal fireworks through customs with the children by hiding them (the fireworks, not the children) in door panels of the family VW bus. Unlike classical music, Mexican fireworks were a family tradition Maggie embraced. She later returned to Stanford and completed her degree and at age 46 she attended the Fanny Allen School of Nursing in Winooski, VT, subsequently working as a visiting nurse. During her life, Maggie participated in 56 Sierra Club and other organized (and dozens of disorganized) hiking, sailing, bicycle, kayak and canoe trips; usually as leader, assistant leader or commissary. She also traveled with family and friends to Tibet, China and Europe. Her avid commitments to life served as an inspiration and example to those who knew her. Maggie loved reading, writing (especially poetry), music (guitar, banjo, piano, viola and singing), skiing, snow shoeing, gardening and animals, particularly horses and cats. She is survived by sons Lee and Joe Marsden, daughters Mary Hilton and Annie Robbins, seven grandchildren and three great grandchildren. Preceded in death by brothers John C. Coolidge, MD and Fredrick S. Coolidge, an architect, and sister Elizabeth Winship, who for years wrote for the Boston Globe and later syndicated Ask Beth column, Maggie's second husband, Dewey Seeger, who she married in California and moved with to Lyndonville, Vermont, and parents Albert Sprague Coolidge, a Harvard physics professor, and Margaret Coit Coolidge. Special thanks to the staff at Elmcroft of Northridge in Raleigh, NC for their wonderful care during Maggie's last 18 months, the staff and friends at Newbury Court in Concord, MA before that, as well to her wonderful friends and neighbors in Arlington, MA. Donations in Maggie's name to the Sierra Club or Planned Parenthood are welcome and appreciated. The family plans a memorial service at a time to be determined. A service of Bright Funeral Home & Cremation Center, 405 S. Main Street, Wake Forest, NC 27587. www.brightfunerals.com Communications e-mailed to LeeMarsdenLaw@Gmail.com will be shared with the family.
Published by Boston Globe from Jul. 6 to Jul. 8, 2018.