Stafford, Margaret
STAFFORD, Margaret
Margaret Lord Stafford, 91, passed away in Plattsburgh, New York, on October 9, 2022, after a short illness. She spent her 92nd summer with her family at Sunnywood, her lakeside home in Chazy, New York, and enjoyed many family events, including a family reunion earlier in the summer.
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Margie spent her early years in Philadelphia and Garden City, New York. After attending Vassar College, where she played on the varsity tennis team, she received a master's degree in Child Development from Yale University and met her future husband, Robert Kent (Bob) Stafford. After a short courtship, they married in her grandparents' yard in Garden City on September 8, 1956. They remained married until Bob's death in 1973.
Bob worked for General Electric's transportation division, and GE moved them from Erie, Pennsylvania to Chicago, then back to Erie, and finally, in 1966, to the Atlanta area. After arriving in Atlanta, Margie decided that she had had enough of Erie's dreary weather, and she lived in their Dunwoody house for the remainder of her life.
Margie taught kindergarten for many years at the Dunwoody Baptist Church's preschool, volunteered with the local PTA, taught tennis classes at the local club, and played in tennis tournaments with Bob. After Bob's death in 1973 left her widowed with four school-age children, Margie switched careers to coach tennis teams and run a tennis pro shop. When she realized that coaching tennis in the Georgia summers was not for her, Margie reinvented herself again and became a licensed financial planner. She worked at IDS (now Ameriprise), where she combined her training in psychology with her experience as a young widow to help many clients navigate the sudden transition to financial self-reliance. She became a trusted confidant and friend to many of her clients.
She was an avid gardener and loved to "liberate" plants from roadside spots and transplant them in her yard. She enjoyed sitting on her bench in the front yard in Dunwoody, chatting up the passing dog-walkers, and sharing special books with the neighborhood children from her front-yard lending library.
She spent her summers at her lakeside cabin in Chazy, where she cultivated ferns and other plants that populate the northern woods. She filled her woods with driftwood artwork, and carved on her front porch. She was an anchor of the family community, surrounded by cousins and children and then grandchildren, and in her later years she could be found every afternoon in her porch swing, enjoying an afternoon read and nap.
She was a prolific writer, writing poetry and "prose watercolors", especially about her childhood at her beloved Sunnywood. Toward the end of her life she compiled these stories with help from her family, especially her nieces Anne Dubois and Jane McCabe, and son Rob.
Margie is survived by son Tim Stafford (Pam) of Nashville, Tennessee, daughter Kathy Aspy (Dale) of Marietta, Georgia, son-in-law Allan Fisher of Chazy, New York, and son Rob Stafford (Diane) of Mountain View, California; grandchildren Philip, KC, Robert III (Julia), Edward, and Hope Stafford, Samantha Fisher Li (Chris), Christopher Fisher, and Sara Aspy; and great-grandchildren Henry and Eliza June Li. Her husband Robert Stafford and daughter Deborah Lord Fisher predeceased her. A memorial celebration for Margie will be held next summer in Chazy.
