To Uncle Ken, Maria, Ken, Paul and families, my sympathy for the loss of your wife and mother.  For me, she was my dear Auntie Margie and my American Ally.   She supported me with her love, empathy and a great, readily available laugh!

I have been very saddened to hear that 'Aunty Marg' has passed away. 

Growing up in Australia, visits from Margaret and Ken were memorable affairs and I always looked forward to them. Even as a youngster, I knew that she had a spark and character that was irrepressible. Her stories of stuff of legend - a true trailblazer. Her brother, my grandfather, always spoke of her lovingly, with affection and with a twinkle in his eye. 

When I got to stay with Margaret and Ken in Las Vegas in 2003, I got to fully appreciate just how special she was and how lucky I am to to be able to call them family. 

May her memory and spirit live on and continue to inspire others to live life to its fullest. She will be missed, but her life will always be celebrated.

James

We have all heard the phrase “Proud to be an American”.  Well Mom was very proud when she became a nationalized U.S. Citizen, but she was most proud to be an Australian.  She loved her home country of Australia and liked telling stories of her life as a champion runner and athlete in her youth.  She thought her mother was remarkable as she lived to be almost 100 years old, and this walking almost daily to her local Catholic church for mass.  As Mom told it, it was uphill both ways.  Mom always bragged what a great looking man her father was, moustache and all.  It is my belief that her best friends in life were her sisters Jess and Theresa.

Mom immigrated to the United States from Australia after World War II, with Mom and Dad living in various places, California and Oregon included, finally settling for the longest in central Montana.  Living in Montana with weather that my father described as “nine months of winter with three months of poor sledding”, Mom had ample indoor time to reflect on the warmer and more temperate climates of Australia.  I recall sitting with Mom and reading through encyclopedias and other magazines on Australia and the animals that inhabited the country, from stick snakes to Kangaroos. Whether as a wife and mother in Montana or over the last few years when she was having physical difficulties, if you wanted to brighten her day or liven the conversation all you had to do was ask her how things were going in Australia.

Mom was also an excellent teacher who taught in parochial schools in both Montana and California.  She loved working with the nuns and the priests who she taught and socialized with, especially at Christmas time and the occasional softball game at the lake during the summer.  She was a classroom disciplinarian, and as a student of hers, my head was often the instructional template for corporal punishment.  The occasional book to the noggin followed by “please quiet down” seemed to get the message across to the other students in the classroom.

Mom did have a tendency to bring Australia to Montana.  She loved her Easter bonnets, which she had to have new each year, and she loved Spring flowers.  I can remember picking wild berries on the roadside after church and mom making her favorite pies or preserving the fruit in mason jars.  Mom could turn to what the layman might consider to be a cold spring day into a warm excursion into the countryside. 

It’s obvious that mom loved dad and her family here.  Sitting at home with temperatures outside at 30 degrees below zero or worse while reading stories of balmy Australia I could only think that she was either crazy or there must be a deep and enduring love for dad and her children.  The fact that mom and dad were together for the better part of seventy years is a testament to that love and devotion.  That and the fact that over that seventy year span she could always laugh at the punch lines of dad’s jokes no matter how many times she had heard them before.

We traveled extensively as a family at a time when luxury travel was the back seat of a Ford driving over an icy mountain pass.  While Mom refused to look out the side window as we would wind our way through the snowy mountains for fear of the sheer drop off view, never once did I ever hear her complain about the drive or the accommodations.

Mom and dad always traveled internationally together and always had a good card game going, principally gin or gin thirteen.  In her years of living in Las Vegas her competitive nature surfaced in her bridge tournaments with the Ladies from the Mesquite Club & Retired Officer’s Wives Association of who she made lasting friendships.  Mom was very competitive and most always won. Slot machines shook in their boots whenever she approached. As I recall she used to take it to my brother Paul pretty good on the ping-pong table.

In closing, I know mom is in a better place and I am sure she is having tea with her favorite lady of all, the Blessed Mary.  She lived a full life and brought happiness to all who knew her.  She loved her family and had a deep love for her grandchildren and her great grandchildren.  If she were here or could leave one parting comment I am sure it would go like this “I have been lucky and blessed to know and love you all.  My life has been blessed and fulfilling “such as it was, what there was of it”.

OBITUARY

Margaret Clare Black

October 23, 1918 – May 8, 2011

Palm Eastern Mortuary & Cemetery

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