Peggy Lane Tutor

Peggy L. Tutor, 80, of Mt. Laurel, NJ, passed away on December 22, 2024. She had a heart the size of California and loved her family fiercely. She was taken from this world before we were ready to let her go, and we miss her dearly.

Peggy was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi on November 25, 1944, to Rollon and Katie Tutor, the eldest member of the “Tutor girls,” followed closely by sisters Phyllis, Ann, Kathryne, and Ellen. From early on, Peggy was both a natural academic and nurturer, loving school and reading as much as bonding with her sisters and helping them along their own journeys. Her father instilled in her an importance of education, and she saw first-hand the opportunities education afforded and felt driven to share that impact with those around her, particularly children in special education and the visually impaired.

Unsurprisingly, she majored in Special Education when she attended University of Southern Mississippi in 1961 and became a teacher–a career and identity she would carry with her all of her life. She also found her other lifelong love at Southern, Bill Robertson, who had a singular knack for driving her crazy in all the wonderful and frustrating ways he was capable of.

The pair married soon after graduation, but after confronting what felt like irreconcilable differences, divorced, and Peggy took a job teaching on an American Army base in Japan. By the time Bill got his act together to follow her across the globe, her school year had ended and she moved back to the U.S. to earn her Master’s degree in Library Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, while Bill stayed in Japan and toured the country for another six months. This experience cemented world travel in their hearts, and forged a deep connection to Japan that would inform much of their artistic and design aesthetic later in life.

After her graduate program, Peggy was teaching in Memphis, Tennessee, where Bill found her and settled into what he hoped would be a long-term, low commitment relationship, while Peggy yearned for a big change. She accepted a teaching job for the visually impaired in California and told Bill if he wanted her, he would have to come get her. And come get her he did, following her to Los Angeles in 1974. They married again in 1979, a union which produced their two beloved children, Alyssa and Nicholas, and they devoted themselves to maintaining their partnership and growing together the rest of their lives. They arranged many summer and Christmas vacations to bring their children to visit her parents, sisters and their families as well as Bill’s mother Elizabeth Robertson and brother Jimmy Robertson. Peggy and Bill attended Calvary Presbyterian Church in South Pasadena for 40 years, and Peggy joined Bill in the choir after their children left home.

Peggy loved being a mother, and wrapped raising her own children into her continuing pursuit of knowledge and her call to teach. In 1987, she began her Doctoral Program at UCLA focusing on development of visually impaired infants, aged 0-3, and earned her PhD and celebrated with all of her family in 1996. Her studies directly mirrored her work with the Los Angeles Unified School District and the PIVIT program (Parents and Infants Visually Impaired Together). Peggy was at her most fulfilled working with the PIVIT community, going into homes around Los Angeles county, playing with visually and multiply handicapped infants and working with their families to prepare them for a pre-school setting. This passion for creating educational opportunities for those around her extended not only to the students, but also the teaching assistants in her program, assisting them with applications and assignments as they gained their own teaching degrees. She was also a tireless cheerleader for the education of her children, nieces, and nephews, creating intricately stuffed graduation boxes to celebrate their academic achievements so far and push them forward in that journey. She believed in everyone’s ability to continue learning and her impact created ripples far beyond her.

Peggy retired in 2010, the same year her grandsons Jacob and Brandon were born, and loved sharing everything she loved about LA with the boys when they would come to visit. She and Bill were avid world travellers and would spend months in Europe and Japan, sleeping in youth hostels, journaling and drawing, and most importantly enjoying wonderful food and wine. Peggy volunteered her time as a docent with the Gamble House in Pasadena and also working with families at the Pasadena Ronald McDonald House and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Most important to her, though, was spending time with her loved ones.

Peggy was preceded in death by her husband Bill and is survived by her daughter Alyssa Robertson-Gleaner, son-in-law Edward Gleaner, grandsons Jacob and Brandon Gleaner, and her son Nicholas Robertson, his partner Jonathan Gonzalez Ortiz, and her good buddy and granddog, Paloma.

Please join us in celebrating the life of Peggy at the visitation on Monday, December 30th at 1:30pm at Galloway Memorial United Methodist Church in Jackson, Mississippi followed by the funeral service at 3:00. Peggy’s entombment ceremony will follow immediately at Parkway Memorial Cemetery, where she will be laid to rest with her husband. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles in Peggy’s name