Margaret Mary Hitchcock

Margaret was born in Thetford Mines, Quebec, Canada on March 13, 1932, to Joseph Paul Donovan, a lifelong employee of Quebec Central Railways, and Rose Anne Dumais, born in Lewiston, Maine, US. As a child and young adult, listening to the golden age of radio and reading her older brothers “Life” magazines in a small eastern township during WWII, she dreamt of going to faraway places and yearned the opportunity to see the world.

She graduated from Andrew Stuart Johnson High School in 1952.

In 1951, she met United States Army Private Ronald Joseph Hamel from Claremont, New Hampshire, during one of his visits to his Canadian relatives; they wed in early May of 1952, going on to have two children, Kim and Cathy.

During her high school years (1947-1952), she worked as an IBM key punch operator for Asbestos Corporation Limited. Little did she know at the time, these early years of key punch knowledge would catapult her US work opportunities including those at Western Fire Insurance Company in Lubbock, Texas, Stanley Tools Inc. in New Britain, Connecticut, Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard in Honolulu, Hawaii, and Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Her dreams of living the “American Dream” came to a screeching halt in 1965. Fortunately, however, within two months of returning to her birthplace of Quebec, as a landed immigrant in 1966 with her children, her supervisory and bilingual skillset's were quickly sought after and she became employed by Canada’s Federal Government and Canada’s Navy Department in Quebec City until she retired in 1997.

In 1967, Margaret, at the suggestion of her godmother “Aunt Susie”, sought advice from the United States Consulate regarding personal matters of importance of the sort with which consuls are designed to help. Neither she nor “Bill”, the consular of the US Embassy assigned to Quebec City by President Lyndon B. Johnson, imagined that they would be married to each other in 2003, some thirty-five years later, and second of all be living at Longhorn Village in LBJ’s town of Austin, Texas from 2007 to 2021.

Margaret was predeceased by her second husband, the love of her life Wilbur “Bill” Hitchcock (2020), as well as the father of her children, Ronald Joseph Hamel (2010), her brothers Winfred (Therese), James (Dominican Father), John “Jackie” (Genevieve), Robert (Dorothy), Joseph Paul and Lawrence, and post-deceased by her sister Agnes (August 2025). She is survived by her son Kim Paul Hamel (Susan), her daughter Cathy Marie Hamel (Gerald), her grandchildren Kathleen Hamel, Alexe Bernier, and Lee Bernier, as well as several nieces and nephews.

The family requests that donations be made to the Alzheimer’s Society in lieu of flowers. There will be a memorial/celebration of life on January 19th, 2026, at 12:00 PM CST at Cook-Walden Funeral Home located at 6100 North Lamar, Austin, Texas, and a graveside service at 13:00 PM CST at Cook-Walden Capital Parks Cemetery located at 14501 North Ih-35, Pflugerville, Texas