Margaret Kolbjornsen
Margret H. Kolbjornsen, widow of the Reverend John M. Kolbjornsen, died February 3, 2018 at the age of 94. She was born in Hannover, Germany in 1923, and came to New York City with her family in 1926. She attended Staten Island schools and earned a BS in Mathematics from Douglass College in 1946. She loved the outdoors and began working with the Girl Scouts of America.
Margret had first met John Kolbjornsen during a neighborhood snowball fight when they were children. In 1948 they married and moved to Copenhagen, where he served in the American Embassy, and where their first child was born. In 1952 they returned to the US, as John attended Harvard Divinity School, and they welcomed a second daughter. Two sons were born in the next few years.
After John’s ordination to the Unitarian ministry they served churches in Sharon, Massachusetts; Williamsville, New York; Norwell, Massachusetts; Sioux City, Iowa; and Springfield, Vermont. Margret contributed her beautiful singing voice to the choirs of every church her husband served, and also sang with the Buffalo Schola Cantorum, the Scituate Choral Society, the Morningside Singers in Sioux City, the Seacoast Singers in Durham, and the Monadnock Chorus from which she retired two days before her 93rd birthday.
In 1971 Margret earned an MEd and began teaching 6th grade math and science in Durham, NH, where she remained until her retirement and relocation to Peterborough. Her summer vacations were spent visiting her German cousins and traveling in Europe. In several trips she sailed the Danube from its source to the Black Sea. Star Island, a UU Conference Center off Portsmouth, was part of her summers as well; she attended the Natural History Conference, beginning in 1974, and volunteered in the Island Gift Shop. She was an accomplished gardener, and kept her hands busy knitting “comfort dolls” that physicians took on medical missions to third-world countries.
A Memorial Service was held March 24, at the Peterborough Unitarian Universalist Church. At her request, memorial donations in her name may be made to the Church and to Summerhill Assisted Living.