Born May 7, 1922 the fourth of seven children, Margaret was raised in a tight-knit family environment amidst love and music.
Growing up in the Highland Park neighborhood near Sugarhouse, she attended public schools Forest Elementary, Irving Jr and East High School. Following high school, mother attended and graduated from the University of Utah where she participated in the Spurs pep club and served as senior class vice president. However, it was her affiliation with Chi Omega Sorority that forged the many lifelong relationships that continued until the passing of each. While a member, she wrote and rearranged many of the sorority’s songs as they participated in and won the annual Songfest year after year.
Following graduation, Margaret married her high school sweetheart, Elwin “Moose” Vogler, who, while fulfilling his military obligation as a pilot in the Air Force, perished when his plane went down in the Caribbean on a routine training mission, never to be found. Married only seven months, mom sadly returned home from Colorado Springs to Salt Lake City to start her life over again.
She was invited to travel to New York City with several friends looking for adventurous work opportunities. While there she attended Columbia University where she obtained her Master’s degree in Music Education. Shortly after, her mother requested she return home, she had someone she wanted her to meet. This “pre-arranged” meeting with a fisherman on the bank of the Smith-Morehouse River at the family cabin, resulted in the marriage to Robert “Bob” Stayner Richards, who himself was a Highland Park native and prominent Salt Lake attorney. They were blessed with two children, Rosalyn and Robert.
With the passing of her second husband, Bob, from the polio epidemic less than a year after their son was born she had to regroup, and, realizing the need to raise two children went to work in the Salt Lake City School District first as a teacher and chorale director, working her way up to the Music Supervisor of the district. Margaret was constantly busy organizing and directing the annual All City Music Festivals held in the Salt Lake Tabernacle.
The music in her blood was a bit different from her Tabernacle Choir conducting father’s. Her extraordinary musical talent was directed toward jazz and arranging numbers for various bands, quartets and choirs throughout the state. She was eventually recruited by Bill Link to arrange and play in his band, The Bill Link Combo and eventually the Dave Dunford Quartet. For over 25 years they played “dance jobs” most weekend nights throughout the state, but mostly at the Salt Lake Country Club and Fort Douglas. The combo was often found playing for our high school dances.
A member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints, Margaret’s service was always music related. Stake and Ward Music Director, Choir Director, Music Conductor and Accompanist, although as a true pianist, she would not play the organ in church. Her church service also included a music mission, serving as a hostess and pianist in the Joseph Smith and Church Office buildings and Church Conference Center, often playing the piano she learned on while growing up which was donated to the church after her father’s passing.
Mother enjoyed her retirement travelling with family, friends and participating in Author’s Club which kept her passion for reading alive as she gracefully aged. In 1992 she received the Distinguished Emeritus Alumni award, the highest honor awarded by the University of Utah for her contributions to her profession and community.
Margaret loved the news, old movies, especially musicals and her diet sodas: Tab in the 50’s and 60’s, Diet Pepsi in the 70’s and 80’s, and Diet Coke ever since. It was the last thing she tasted. She will be missed sitting either out on her patio or on the deck of the Cornwall Cabin, Diet Coke in hand and taking in passer’s by.
Margaret is preceded in death by her husbands, parents, sister Marion Cornwall Hackett, brothers Joseph, Allen and Shirl Cornwall. She is survived by her children, Rosalyn R. Drage (Darryl), Dr Robert Stayner Richards (Rebecca Jane) and grandchildren Andrew (Jessica) Drage and Matthew Drage, Taylor Young Richards, Jordan Stayner (Katie) Richards, Warner Cornwall (Sarah) Richards, Eliza Jane Monson (Jeff) and William Robert (Karen) Richards and 10 great-grandchildren. She is also survived by sisters Bonnie C. Henderson, Carol C. Madsen, and sister-in-law, Nancy R. Poulton.
The family would like to express their appreciation for the wonderful care givers who compassionately cared for our mother and grandmother as if she were theirs.
Funeral services to be held Wednesday June 13, 2018 at noon in the Salt Lake Foothill 7th Ward LDS Chapel, 2215 Roosevelt Ave. 84108. Visitation Tuesday 6:30-8 pm at Wasatch Lawn Mortuary, 3401 South Highland Drive, 84106 and 10:30 am prior to service.
