Margaret Catherine Day

Margaret Catherine Day, 85, of Surprise, Arizona passed away on Thursday, October 15, 2020. Peggy, (as she preferred to be called), was born in Little Falls, New York on May 4, 1935 to Robert and Helen Grogan, and continued to live there until her marriage on June 11, 1960. She was the third child in a family of nine children, two sisters and six brothers. Peggy and her husband celebrated their 60th anniversary this year; she lived in Arizona most of that time, with brief stays in California and Texas to follow her husband’s work. She was a housewife raising two sons until 1977 when she and her husband started their own electronic security manufacturing business at the Scottsdale Airpark, close to where they lived at the time. Peggy had a great touch for doing complex electronic assembly and often went on service calls with her husband to do installation and repair work. She developed several assembly techniques without any formal training that she was able to teach to other assemblers that were under her guidance and she was the mainstay of getting all the company’s products built and shipped on time. During the 1990's while still doing electronic manufacturing, she decided to write a book, Mama’s Diamonds, about her early years growing up in a large Irish-Catholic family. The book was published in 2008 and will remain a testament to her ability as a storyteller. She did all of this while continuing to keep her sons on the paths needed to become the self-reliant men that they are today and enable them to start families of their own. Peggy was a three-times grandmother, and learned just prior to her passing that she was to become a great-grandmother as well.

Peggy and her husband moved to Wickenburg in 1999 where they retired a few years later and then moved to Surprise in 2004 where she lived until her passing. She will be remembered at a mass on October 29th at 10 AM in St. Clements of Rome Catholic Church in Sun City, Arizona. Peggy is survived by her husband Donald, sons Patrick and Timothy, sisters Mary and Sharon, three brothers, James, Donald and John Grogan and three grandchildren, Caitlyn, Jillian and Robert.