Margaret “Pegg” Louise Blanksma Hannan Briggs was born June 28, 1920. She passed away April 18, 2008.

Pegg was born in Grand Rapids, Mich. She was separated at age 2 from her parents, older brother and younger sister by divorce and hard times. She was taken in by her grandmother, and then by family friends before she later reunited with her mother in Portland, Ore. after a solo train trip across the country by the

9-year-old.

They moved around a lot, and the year Pegg graduated from junior high, her mom attended an American Legion dance and met a man who would become her husband in July 1934. Pegg took her stepfather’s name “Hannan” when they moved to Bothell, where Pegg attended Bothell Junior High and then started high school. She loved ballroom dancing and never missed a high school dance.

She graduated in 1938 and was later hired in the bookkeeping department at Boeing in Renton, after Pearl Harbor. She started in the store supply and had the run of the plant, which she enjoyed.

One day Pegg and a girlfriend saw Bob Briggs filling up his car at a gas station; they knew his kid brother who was a year behind them in high school. The two girls flirted with the volunteer fireman who was four years older; Pegg reached into the car and took the (then popular trinket) dice off his keychain. Bob couldn’t resist her kleptomania charm and called her for a date.

They married in 1941 at her home, in a parlor with lots of flowers.

The couple had Bette, their first child, and three more would follow before the family moved to a 10-acre farm in Juanita.

After their 30-year marriage ended in 1969, Pegg moved to Whidbey Island the following February. She had been coming to Whidbey for vacations since 1960 and had gotten a cabin from a friend at Bush Point. There were only a few houses there at the time and no houses at all south of the lighthouse.

Pegg went to work at Louise’s Beauty Salon next to Norma’s Dress Shop.

Pegg’s community service included getting the playground in the park built, involvement in the PTA, as a Cub Scout and Girl Scout leader, and with the Friends of the Freeland Library and the Freeland Community Association. She also served as a secretary for Soroptimists — she was also chairwoman of the recruitment and retention committee — and she was presented a Women Helping Women Award in 1992.

Pegg was met in heaven by her daughter Jo, best girlfriend Bettie Bell and closest friend and partner Rex Wikenkamp.

She will always be remembered by her surviving children, Bette Sopkowiak of Spokane, Bob Briggs of Whidbey Island, and Richard Briggs of Nevada; as well as 11 grandkids, Bobbi, Billi, Brenda, Bonnie, Brian, Michelle, Sheri, Richie, Malcolm, Charlott and Robert; three stepgrandchildren, Tanya, Teresa and Marc; 23 great-grandchildren and eight great-stepgrandchildren.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Friends of Freeland Library.