Margaret J. Donker

Margaret J. Donker was born at home near Beloit , Kansas , on August 1, 1928. She died at her Ottawa home on July 5, 2010. All her life, “home” was her focus. Peg’s talents and efforts were to nurture her family (husband, Norman, and children, Nancy and David), and to create beauty to surround them, inside her manicured house and outside in her unbelievably gorgeous flower gardens. (She raised more than one hundred fifty varieties of iris, alone.) Then, to please her loved ones and her own soul, she sewed---dozens and dozens of creations, especially beautiful, all hand-stitched quilts and fanciful tablecloths. She made quilts for all seasons: cottages surrounded by snow and pines, a mailbox with a family name in front of each; autumn flights of geese over ponds and trees, the border consisting of various flying bird designs, most squares with more than a hundred pieces; Dresden plates and Spanish fans and wedding rings and spring iris. The net tablecloths are spectacular and unique, some featuring her own patterns. They are covered with sequined designs of spring flowers and flower carts or fall cornucopias spilling out flowers and fruits, Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas motifs. Peg was also a very good photographer, taking well composed pictures of her family’s many trips to the Rockies or Blue Ridge mountains as well as other more mysterious and haunting photos of cloud formations or ice on plants and screens or frost on sidewalks. A private and unassuming woman, Peg kept order and beauty around her and her family, a world of natural splendor and of imagination, a world of color. Peg and husband, Norman , were a good team. They liked hosting their extended families on holidays, at reunions, on any special occasion. Norman, who enjoyed fishing, often supplied the main course at fish fries which Peg embellished with family favorites, especially homemade peppermint ice cream and chocolate syrup thick as fudge. They liked having brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews accompany them on trips in their camper, sometimes to the lake, sometimes cross-country. Peg enjoyed their “dollhouse” home on wheels, keeping it as perfectly as her house, fixing marvelous food for everyone: “elephant ears,” chili-cornbread, shoe-peg corn relish, wiener-burgers, and, always, the wondrous pink ice cream with its deep brown topping. Home, family, beauty of imagination, beauty of nature, these were Peg’s life. She could be funny and witty, but her experience made her fundamentally serious, and she worked, with a steel will, to counter difficulty with resolution and productivity. She never stopped trying. That was clear in her final illness, a cruel thief-in-the-night illness which took its time robbing her. She was stubborn, fierce, determined, and courageous in this struggle, and she died peacefully, in her own time, in her own bed, in the presence of family who adored her. May she rest in peace. Peg was predeceased by her son, David Loren, her husband, Norman, and her parents, Loren J. and Lora D. Reiter. She is survived by her daughter, Nancy Donker, Ottawa; her granddaughter, “Grandma’s Pippin,” Dava Sherman (Brent), Fredonia, Ks., and great grandchildren, Dava’s Nora and Andrew Pratt. She is also survived by brother Max Reiter (Nadine), Beloit , Ks, sisters Dot Wicks, Lincoln, Ks., Beverly Lorenz, Ottawa , and Lora Kay Reiter, Ottawa . Many of husband Norman’s family, whom Peg dearly loved, mourn her passing as do generations of nieces and nephews. Peg chose cremation and a private inurnment later at the Penwell-Gable Cemetery in Hutchinson . Memorials may be made to Midland Care Hospice or Prairie Paws.