Margaret Ingrid Zinser

Margaret Ingrid (Peterson) Zinser, 86, died January 13, 2011. She was born June 30, 1924 in Kewanee, Illinois to Elmer and Emma (Wilke) Peterson. She married Lester “Bill” Zinser in 1945, who survives her. They had four children, Lynn (deceased), Dawn (Alan Church), Kari (Basil Hosmer) and Kurt (Toby) and three grandchildren, Mitchell and Alyssa Zinser and Samuel Hosmer.

She played steel guitar with her family in local vaudeville, loving most of all to play slide. She always remembered her neighborhood in Kewanee during the Depression telling stories of how they came together to help each other out and to laugh out loud. She relished telling how her father made beer in the basement during prohibition. She particularly enjoyed going with the family to their cabin in Prairie-du-Chien, WI to fish and to go tubing on the Mississippi.

She met her husband through her best friend, who was dating his brother. They soon enough became sisters-in-law when Margaret joined Bill in Courtland Army Air Base, Courtland, AL (where he was stationed) to marry him. She wasn’t a great fan of Alabama or military life, so was relieved when the war was over and Bill went to school at the University of Illinois. Her oldest daughter was born during Bill’s release from active duty and going back to school. After his graduation, they moved back to Kewanee, where her second child was born.

As Bill changed jobs and followed his dream, she moved her family from Kewanee to Bel Air, MD where Bill worked for the Martin Company, then to Kalamazoo, MI, where her third and fourth children were born. She used to say she served her time as a faculty wife throwing great parties and playing mixed Bridge, while Bill taught flying at Western Michigan University. When Bill got his dream job at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, she packed up the house in Michigan and moved everyone to Broomfield, CO, where they stayed until Bill retired.

After Bill’s retirement, they moved to Grand Junction, CO, via Battlement Mesa for a short stay, then to Ajo, AZ (which they both loved), to Bakersfield, CA, and finally back to Thornton, CO to be near their grandchildren. Wherever they went, she had a wide circle of friends. And, if all of that moving wasn’t enough – there were family vacations and camping trips extraordinaire made extra special by her sense of fun. She invented songs to make the miles pass, lead games, and stood stalwart against the fierce winds of Bonnie Reservoir as the family tent blew away.

Margaret is remembered as a great story teller – she had the timing and delivery of a comic, turning the ordinary into rich tapestries of humor. She loved to write poems and had an uncanny knack for rhyming. She loved to create pictures in oil or acrylics and passed her love of art on to her daughters Lynn and Kari, both artists. She was known to take off cross country with her kids in the car on adventures, making the destination a bit more quickly than anticipated due to her lead foot. She always wanted to travel and lived in Barbados for two summers, richly remembered by Kari and Kurt. She traveled to France and Italy with her husband for two grand vacations, with the piper on the seawall at La Rochelle becoming one of her great, rich stories. She had a Hollywood smile that loved a camera.

And, she had a fierce will to live.

Memorial Service, Friday, January 21, 2011, 3:00PM, Elmshaven Care Center, 12080 Bellaire Way, Thornton, CO 80241. Interment will occur this summer in the family plot in Cambridge, Illinois. Memorial contributions suggestd to the Alzheimer's Association, 455 Sherman Street, Suite 500, Denver, CO 80203 .