(Return to the main contest page.)

Below are the five obits for Obit writer "D."

 

Obit #1: Bert Halewyn (Note to judges: This obit also is entered in Category 4. Please enter your score for this obit on your ballot at C4-A.)

 

Bert Halewyn loved soccer. There were other important things in his life -- his family and his church, for instance -- but anyone who knew Bert pictured him with a soccer ball.

Bert started playing soccer as a child, barefoot and without shinguards, in Indonesia. He later played on important teams in Indonesia and The Netherlands. He played recreational soccer in Portland.

He was best known, though, for his championship girls teams at Beaverton High School, where he coached for 20 years. His teams were legendary. They won state championships in 1986, 1987 and 1988, and had runner-up finishes for the four preceding years.

The girls loved him. Even at a time when girls sports weren't taken seriously, he was exacting and worked them to pieces. But he was known for fairness and his vigorous bearhugs.

Bert was born in Sukabumi, Indonesia, and raised in Bogor, a city in West Java. His Dutch father and Indonesian mother had four boys, all athletic. His father died when he was about 7.

Bert was a long-distance runner (he came in second in a national 5,000-meter race) and played on the Bogorse Boys soccer team After high school, he attended a trade school to learn electrical engineering and worked on a rubber plantation.

In 1955, his family immigrated to The Netherlands. He served in the Dutch Army, played soccer and courted Peggy Matheron, a girl he had known since childhood. Her school was next-door to his; Peggy and Bert argued the rest of their lives over who would call whom to the fence. They were married in 1959. Their daughter, Enid, was born in 1961.

Bert missed Indonesia and never really liked Amsterdam. He decided to seek opportunities for his family in the U.S. When Bert was given the choice of Boston or Portland, he said he "wanted to go where the cowboys live." They arrived in May 1962.

Bert's friends met the train and took him directly to a soccer field.

Bert got a warehouse job with Stanley Drug, and the family settled in the Lloyd District. A son, Ralph, was born in 1964 and daughter, Lesley, in 1966.

A few years later, Bert took a second full-time job at Tektronix, and the family moved to Beaverton. Peggy followed him to Tektronix as a secretary. After a few years, Peggy put her foot down, saying he needed to spend more time with his family. He quit Stanley Drug. About that time, in the early 1970s, he and friends organized the Westside Metros Soccer Club.

When Enid was a sophomore at Beaverton High, she decided to play soccer and tried out for the team. The coach was a biology teacher who had never seen a soccer game. Bert asked her if she needed an assistant. Relieved and grateful, she said yes. A year later, he was hired as coach.

Until then, most coaches came from teaching staff. Soccer was relatively new to the Portland area and was often played as a primitive kick-and-chase game. Bert showed his girls (and other teams) that it was a game of finesse and strategy. He taught them to play the whole field and to build an attack from the back through the defense, with more touches on the ball.

The girls adored him, his strong accent and his gentle demeanor. He was quiet and calm at games, but his whole family was at every one, and Peggy was known to create mayhem. Bert often had to settle her down before she got in trouble with referees.

The girls loved it when, after practice, he came out on the field. With his fancy footwork and fast moves, they could never get the ball from him.

He took his teams on trips all over the West Coast, and Bert left it to chaperones to deal with fire alarms and boys popping up. Bert chose to sleep well.

After years of trying, he took a team to the Haarlem Cup in 1995. In 1990, he was named Region 7 girls soccer coach of the year and a finalist for national high school coach of the year. Region 7 encompasses Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Alaska.

Peggy suffered from ovarian cancer for 13 years and died in 1997.

Bert retired from Tektronix as a new-products analyst in 1980 and resigned from Beaverton High in 1997. He was never one to sit still, however.

He moved to Gresham to be near Enid and helped raise her daughter, Lauren Webster. The two were close. He helped Lauren buy her beloved tricolored paint horse, Joy. He also cleaned Joy's stalls, hauled her hay and took care of her when Lauren went off to college. Lauren called him Opa and took him along on shopping trips for dresses and makeup.

Bert drove a school bus for special-education students for about 10 years and loved every minute of it. At Christmastime, he worked in the home improvement department of the Sears store at Washington Square.

In the late 1980s, Bert bought a personal watercraft and spent two or three afternoons a week on it at Willamette Park. He went to Mass every Sunday at St. Cecilia Catholic Church. He played bridge every Wednesday, was notoriously addicted to the Game Show Network and had a penchant for Mr. T. "Pity the fool," he liked to repeat.

He could be stubborn and impatient. He liked to drive fast and get things done as soon as he decided to do them. He had a heart attack on the soccer field in 1980, and had quadruple by-pass surgery in 1989.

He died as resolutely as he lived, of coronary artery disease and pneumonia, on Jan. 26, 2010.

His service was a joyous reunion of former players, friends from all over the world and many walks of life. They remembered him as a man who lived his life as he played his game -- with integrity and finesse.

********************

Obit #2: Harold Dick (Note to judges: This obit also is entered in Category 4. Please enter your score for this obit on your ballot at C4-F.)

 

Harold Dick fought car abuse. He felt strongly that cars had to be maintained and cared for; if you didn't treat your car right, he was through with you.

Being rejected by Harold Dick was a blow. He was regarded by many as the best mechanic in town, the man to go to for fine cars, the MGs or Porsches, especially the rare or exotic models. But he was just as exacting about other cars, the basic transportation vehicles and the kids' first cars.

Before he'd accept a customer, there was the Harold Dick lecture. He'd look the car over, tell you what it needed, then tell you what he expected of you. The car had to be serviced and have the oil changed every 3,000 many miles, for example, and must never, never be fed a certain brand of gas.

Before you even got to that point, there was a basic screening process. If he didn't like the car owner -- if he or she was part of what Harold called the "gold-chain crowd" or was arrogant or self important -- forget it; he didn't need your business.

Harold had all the business he could handle. His customers ran the gamut of society, from former governors to judges to a symphony conductor, a lot of little old ladies, a "couple of hippies from White Salmon" and (always) the young car enthusiasts. He had some three-generation customers.

It was all from word of mouth. Harold never had to advertise. In fact, after a Yellow Pages salesman told him in the 1960s that he'd never stay in business without an ad, Harold canceled his listing entirely and the business thrived for more than 40 years without it.

His business cards didn't have the phone number or address either, but his wife, Gerri, finally prevailed to have the phone included. For years, the cards bore the motto, "We don't work on foreign or domestic cars."

He had customers who drove from Seattle to have cars serviced, and once Harold drove north himself to pick up a good customer's broken-down vehicle. A few years ago, the customer and good friend recounted, a friend of his was seated in Raffles Bar in Singapore and happened to mention his crazy friend who drove from Seattle to a mechanic in Portland. The person next to him turned and asked, "Is it Harold's?"

Harold was a perfectionist when it came to cars. He was legendary for pulling a rag out of his back pocket and wiping off the headlight of cars as he walked past. His prices were honest and he had a reputation for unimpeachable integrity.

He took in the cars and personally diagnosed every one. One of his six mechanics might have done the actual work, but Harold test drove each car before he let the customer take it home. Sometimes, the owner had to wait as Harold drove it around, making sure there was nothing amiss. When the car was finally returned, Harold had another lecture about exactly how the car had to be cared for.

Harold died in his shop Dec. 12, 2009, apparently of a heart attack. He had gone in early, alone, to get a customer's car ready.

He was born in Dallas, moved to Portland as a child and to Tigard his sophomore year in high school. He played baseball there and took a music appreciation class that fostered a life-long love for jazz.

The day after graduation in 1955, his father presented him with a bill for room and board and expenses. Harold went to work and never stopped. He worked for Wallace Buick, then for Jack's Shell Station near Jantzen Knitting Mills. After a couple of years, he enrolled in Portland State College. 

In those years, he played as zealously as he worked. Often, he and friends finished their last class on Friday, drove all night to Laguna Seca races in California, watched races all day, slept in Monterrey Park (or, later, motels), and drove all night back home to classes or work by 8 a.m. Monday. When they could, they went into San Francisco to catch Dave Brubeck at the Black Hawk  or Bill Cosby at the hungry i.

During the Vietnam War, he served in the Oregon Army National Guard, first as a cook and then as a helicopter mechanic.

He met Gerri Jones on a blind date in 1966. He drove up in his black MGB, but she was unimpressed by his car; she was more impressed by his manners. They went to the I D  Tavern on Division Street and played foosball and drank a couple of beers, and afterward he kissed her on the cheek. They were married in Fremont  United Methodist Church in 1967. He adopted her two sons, Kip  and Steve, and they later had a son, Brice,  in 1969.

He raced for many years throughout the Northwest and was considered a good driver. He raced a red MGA he dubbed the Silver Bullet, towed by a 1967 Volkswagen bus, and later an orange 1975 Volkswagen Rabbit and a Porsche 356 roadster. They were wild and crazy days. He once won a race in Spokane driving a 544 Volvo that his brother, John, broke in on the way. Harold raced with the back seat and radio still in the car and the air filters on the engine, and beat out a favored Mini Cooper. He was always ready to do something on the spur of the moment and regaled friends for years with his tales of his hare-brained adventures.

He rented two bays at Jack's after it moved to Southeast Seventh Avenue and Alder Street. Soon his reputation grew and he opened Harold's Auto Service on Southeast Belmont Street, where he did business for 20 years. Requiring more space, he moved to Southeast Seventh and Grant Street in 1984.
 
His leisure also centered on cars. He was a member in many car clubs, was president of the Northwest Automotive Trades Association, and spent vacations on tours and rallies. He went to England twice, once for tours of the Morgan and Rolls Royce factories -- while Gerri and friends did the more conventional Stratford-on-Avon and cathedral tours --and once for the Goodwood  Revival festival.

For years, he wore a pin that proclaimed, "I fight poverty -- I work." Still, he had a good social conscience; he delivered Meals-on-Wheels every Wednesday and often other days in the Mt. Tabor neighborhood for at least 10 years. He worked tirelessly for Mt. Hood Kiwanis Camp, and every year the shop was stocked with palettes of grapefruit he sold for the camp.

He served on advisory boards for work experience programs at Benson High School and Clackamas Community College, and judged work at the schools. His interest was not only in cars, but in the people who drove them. Customers and friends are feeling a great loss. One customer picked up his car last week and kept hanging around, standing there. He finally said, "Gee, this is the first time I've ever had to leave without a 45-minute lecture."

********************

Obit #3: Harold Kurtz (Note to judges: This obit also is entered in Category 4. Please enter your score for this obit on your ballot at C4-D.)

 

As a farm boy in Adrian, a hamlet in eastern Oregon, Harold Kurtz dreamed of seeing Salem. The capital was an exotic, faraway goal for the Depression-era youngster who grew up dirt-poor along the Idaho border in a "basement home" that was essentially a large hole in the ground.

Harold would see the world, visit its great capitals, talk to its leaders and make a difference. But he never lost sight of his humble beginnings.

He received a 4-H scholarship to Oregon State College but enlisted in World War II but after one semester. Two older brothers were in Europe in the Army Air Corps, another was in the Army, and a younger brother would serve in the Navy in the South Pacific.

Harold was trained as a pilot. The Air Corps wanted him to be a flight instructor, but he was eager for action and purposely failed the test. To punish him, the Air Corps kept him in the States and made him a calisthenics leader until he agreed to be a glider pilot.

During this time, Harold read "Magnificent Obsession" by Lloyd C. Douglas. He felt he had been given a mission, and his life took a spiritual turn.

He shipped out to England on Thanksgiving Day 1944. He flew C-47s, transporting troops and supplies.

Harold was one of more than 1,300 glider pilots who flew behind enemy lines in the crossing of the Rhine in March 1945. It was considered a suicide mission; most of the pilots were easily picked off by German snipers. But the night before, Harold remembered a Bible verse, Philippians 1:21: "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." The verse gave him courage, and he resolved that if he lived, he would dedicate himself to making the world better.

Glider pilots had to work their way out any way they could. Harold stole a bicycle propped against a farmhouse and found his way back. He spent the rest of the war piloting C-47s. He brought out prisoners of war and once entered a concentration camp.

He was in Paris on V-E Day. He and a friend took a plane up to see the celebrations from the air. He returned to the United States, flying his plane from London to Marrakech to Brazil to North Carolina. He was a changed man.

He enrolled in Monmouth College in Illinois and majored in chemistry. He fell in love with student Pauline Huxley, and they married on Dec. 26, 1947.

He and Polly lived in poor-student style, tooling around on an Indian Chief motorcycle. A librarian told Polly she'd never have babies, and they were barred from riding it to dances. They proved the librarian wrong and had seven children, starting with Caroline in 1950.

After graduating, Harold went to Pittsburgh-Zenia Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania. He was called to First United Presbyterian Church on Southeast 39th Avenue in Portland, where he was a pastor for about three years.

In 1954, he met the head of the church's Ethiopian mission. Harold was intrigued and accepted a position, volunteering for a remote station near Maji. The station, between two waterfalls thought to be inhabited by devils, had the only clinic and school within a 250-mile radius. There was no plumbing or electricity, and the family's mud-plaster home had a thatched roof.

Harold and Polly's son, Kenneth, was born soon after they arrived in Ethiopia and died of sudden infant death syndrome. The family looked out and saw neighbors brewing coffee and cooking barley; they had come to help them mourn. Harold had difficulty learning Amharic in classes but picked it up quickly while talking around campfires or on mule treks.

His farm boy and pilot experience made him a natural handyman. He put in a flour mill off one waterfall and a hydraulic ram off the other to pump water to the mission.

He felt like a failure, however, during a 1965 furlough to the School of World Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. Mentors told him he was repeating the mistake missionaries had made for centuries -- transporting his culture to Ethiopia rather than letting people adapt Christianity into their own customs. He returned to Ethiopia inspired to try again.
 
He was made field director for Ethiopia, based in Addis Ababa, and traveled the country for the next 10 years, landing his Cessna 180 on tiny airstrips carved out of the mountainous terrain. Harold left Ethiopia in 1977 after Haile Selassie was deposed and a Marxist regime took over.

He became pastor of Kenton United Presbyterian Church in Portland. As president of the Portland Organizing Project, he worked on inner-city issues, speaking before the City Council and organizing efforts to improve the neighborhood.

He helped found the Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship, which evangelizes to culturally isolated groups such as the Kurds in Turkey and Berlin, the Roma in Europe, refugees, and foreign businesspeople in the United States. Harold was soon traveling the world to speak and organize.

He retired from the Kenton church in 1989 and spent the next 20 years on the go -- to China, Siberia, South America, Africa and all over the U.S. He returned to Ethiopia many times and saw many former students become successful and the church membership grow from 400,000 to 5 million.

A dynamic speaker, he was much in demand. He never lost his eastern Oregon accent and was once told in England, "You talk like cowboys talk." He often dramatically threw his arms out and proclaimed, "The Gospel is out of control!"

He was in extraordinarily good health until last May, when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He died at home on Dec. 18 at age 85.

He was not without inner conflicts. He regretted not having more time to be a family man, apologizing to his children many times over the years.

People often fawned over him after he spoke, and his travels made him sophisticated and worldly. So he spent time at the neighborhood Winchell's Donuts, talking to people who had no idea who he was. Part of him was still the little boy dreaming of seeing Salem.

********************

Obit #4: Jim Wakefield (Note to judges: This obit also is entered in Category 6. Please enter your score for this obit on your ballot at C6-D.)

 

Jim Wakefield was the kind of man everyone liked and trusted.

Trust is important in a weather forecaster. While most people looked to Jim for planning picnics and wardrobes, others hung their lives and fortunes on his expertise to get them across a wartime Pacific Ocean or through storms to save their crops.

Jim was a meteorologist and head of the Portland office of the National Weather Service. He loved the job and loved that Oregon weather was difficult to predict with its combination of east winds, warm ocean air and mountains.

After he retired, though, he found being a volunteer gratifying and fulfilling. Someone, wondering why Jim worked harder in retirement than most do in their careers, once asked Jim what was wrong with him. A companion thought: "It's not what's wrong with Jim; it's what's right with him."

Jim was born in Wabash, Ind., in 1916. Wall Street crashed on his 13th birthday, but he later remembered his youth as idyllic. His father owned a grocery, and though he lost heavily in the stock market, he was able to keep the store going. He set an example about having concern for people. He carried tabs for many families, and when things got really rough, he just put the books away.

Jim and his siblings had a paper route, and Jim worked in a haberdashery on weekends during high school.

After graduating, there was no money for college, so Jim went to work delivering ice by horse and wagon, and took physics and math classes at the high school.

He finally was able to enroll in Hanover College in southern Indiana. He tended the furnace of a women's dormitory in exchange for tuition and a bed in the basement. He majored in math and physics and graduated second in his class. He also took flight lessons and received his pilot's license.

Jim met Ruth Badger when he borrowed a sociology book from her. They were married in 1942.

As World War II unfolded, he tried to enlist as a pilot but was rejected because of poor hearing in one ear. The Army Air Corps urged him to volunteer as a glider pilot, but he knew it was a suicide assignment and refused. Instead, he accepted a government offer to train as a meteorologist.

He was sent to weather schools at the University of Chicago and then assigned to Washington, D.C., and Pasadena, Calif., before transferring to Boeing Field in Seattle in 1944. One of his duties was to brief pilots headed across the Pacific, a heavy responsibility. He briefed Jimmy Doolittle before his famous flight in which he led the first U.S. attack on a Japanese island.

Jim and Ruth settled in Seattle's McMicken Heights neighborhood and became active in their community. Their daughter, Mary, was born in 1943; daughter, Susan, in 1946; son, James Jr., in 1951; and son, Joe, in 1953.

After the war, Jim worked his way up in the U.S. Weather Bureau (later the National Weather Service) in Seattle until he was second in charge. He received a master's degree from the University of Chicago in the 1950s. In 1966, Portland was looking for a new lead meteorologist. Jim applied and was hired.

The family moved to Parkrose and joined Parkrose United Methodist Church, where Jim was an usher and served on many committees. In 1968, the breast cancer that Ruth defeated in 1957 returned. She died in 1969.

Pearl Albert was a secretary for the church. Like many, she had noticed the respect and consideration Jim showed Ruth. After working together on several projects, a romance developed. They were married in 1970.

In the late 1970s, the church minister conceived of David's Harp, a program for mentally ill adults. Jim latched onto the idea. He served on the steering committee and helped raise money. On Valentine's Day 1978, David's Harp became a reality.

Jim retired from the Weather Service in 1981, after 40 years. He started forecasting when it was all done by hand -- going out and looking at the clouds, taking barometer readings, measuring wind velocity -- and saw it become a highly technological science. He was respected and liked by his staff and all the agencies he worked with, such as the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Forest Service.

Jim plunged all his talents into working for David's Harp. He gave talks and raised money, helped plan events, played board games with the clients, drove them on outings and even carved the holiday turkeys. He loved to go grocery shopping and could predict within a few pennies how much it would cost. He usually picked up an extra bag for David's Harp.

He also was a stalwart volunteer for SnoCap Community Charities, spending every Wednesday for more than 20 years packing food boxes.

At home, Jim was a gardener, surrounding his house with fruit trees and berry bushes. He tended his garden, as he did his family and community. He had two loving marriages, the esteem of all who knew him, and the satisfaction of a successful, hardworking career and retirement.

He died of complications of strokes Dec. 13, 2009, at age 93.

A prolific letter- and note-writer, Jim always put a weather update in the upper righthand corner of any missive -- "56 degrees and cloudy" or "30 degrees and snowing."

His family is following suit: on his gravestone in Lincoln Memorial Park, beneath the name and dates, it will read "93 and sunny."

********************

Obit #5: Margaret St. James (Note to judges: This obit also is entered in Category 4. Please enter your score for this obit on your ballot at C4-H.)

 

For decades, under myriad last names, Maggie was the life of any party. She was beautiful, spoiled, wild, willful, outrageous, glamorous and heedless.

Maggie, swathed in Edward Hamilton furs and Zell Bros. jewels, was a fixture in Portland nightclubs. She drove pink Lincoln Continentals, lived in mansions in Irvington and Portland Heights, and married men with more looks than integrity.

Her mother, notorious Portland abortionist Ruth Barnett, paid for it all.

Then, when Maggie was in her late 50s, her mother cut her off. Maggie spent the rest of her life working her tail off -- sometimes subsisting on welfare -- and renounced cigarettes, alcohol and men.

Margaret Cohen was born in Seattle to Ruth and Harry Cohen, a salesman for Can't Bust'm Overalls. (She was told in midlife, however, that her father wasn't Harry but his more sophisticated brother, Arthur.) Ruth and Harry divorced, and Ruth and Maggie moved to Portland when Maggie was a child.

Ruth became a naturopath as a front. Maggie went to her mother's offices in the Broadway Building every day after school, and Ruth would slap a dollar in her palm and tell her to go see a movie. Maggie nicknamed herself "Buck-a-Day Annie."

Ruth estimated that she performed more than 40,000 abortions starting in 1918; though the practice was illegal, as a "high-class" provider, she was ignored for decades. Maggie herself had several abortions as a teenager, performed by her mother. (Later, Ruth was arrested several times and served time in prison.)

Fees were in cash, and Ruth and Maggie squandered millions of dollars. Money was stashed in hatboxes under beds and in closets. Though clients ignored Ruth when she saw them in the aisles of Strohecker's Grocery or Meier & Frank, Ruth was accepted among the night people -- including prostitutes, pimps and gamblers, and the policemen and politicians who frequented the same clubs. Ruth soon introduced Maggie to night life, buying Maggie's first fake ID so they could go out together.

But as Ruth's income grew, so did Maggie's acquisitiveness and wild behavior. Her mother sent her to board at St. Mary's Academy, thinking the nuns would straighten her out. But Maggie was asked to leave. There's no record of her finishing high school.

Maggie began marrying young, and Ruth bought each husband a suit, car and house. Usually, Ruth also bankrolled a short-lived business. Maggie had 10 verifiable marriages, but some children count more. Ruth would drop in at the start of the month to pick up bills and pay the cook, housekeeper, nurse and gardener.

Maggie's daughter, Ruth Knight, was born in 1945. Ruth adored her namesake; after Maggie showed little interest in motherhood, Ruth took her granddaughter in.

Maggie had David Hacker in 1946; Nina Hacker in 1948; and, while battling polio, Danny Motter in 1951. They had a beloved housekeeper, Florence "Flossie" Sellers, who stayed with the family for 19 years.

Husbands came and went. Ruth Knight rejoined Maggie's household when she was about 12. She and the other children were taught never to answer questions about the family. Still, Doug Baker, a gossip columnist for the Oregon Journal, found the family rich fodder.

Ruth financed many businesses for Maggie, including the Roman Weight Control Clinic on Northwest 21st Avenue, which featured injections of hormones from the urine of pregnant women. Maggie lost interest, and the city closed it.

Maggie married Turk Glover in 1958 when he was 26 and she 41, and they owned restaurant-lounges in downtown Portland. The three younger children changed their last names to Glover to keep things simple at school.

Then Turk was shot to death by a fired bandleader as he and Maggie counted money. The next day, Maggie told her children of his death and the death by cancer the same day of a favorite ex-husband, Don Motter.

Maggie left for Anchorage with son Danny, leaving the other children with Florence and Ruth. She returned after a year or so with another husband, Gene, and his bodyguard. Gene became a paraplegic after he was shot, and Maggie eventually divorced him.

Maggie's last husband was Wally Charleston. When Ruth refused Wally and Maggie money, Wally knocked her down and grabbed her purse. Maggie was disinherited and never saw her mother again.

Maggie went to work in a series of menial jobs separated by bursts of enterprise. She drifted among Hawaii, Portland, California and Florida. She owned a sandwich shop in Portland and two restaurants and a clothing store in Hawaii. In Carmel, Calif., she was a kitchen supervisor for the Carmel Country Spa and wrote a cookbook, "The Cook Wore Tennis Shoes."

She raised another four children. In 1966 and 1967, she took in babies Shannon and Jason, whose mothers were friends. Maggie's daughter, Ruth Knight, married Wally Charleston's brother, Everett. They had three children, including Jamie in 1975. When Ruth asked for help with baby Jamie, Maggie took him and never gave him back. Later, she took in a school friend of Jamie's, another Danny.

She drifted from home to home and job to job, including washing dishes at a Portland nursing home. She often asked her older children for help, and sometimes went on welfare.

In 1971, she changed her last name to St. James after the actress Susan Saint James.

As her health failed, her son, Danny Glover, took her in and cared for her and Jamie, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia. When Danny couldn't deal with her any longer, Maggie's daughter, Nina, brought her to Vancouver in 2003. She was placed in a loving foster care home, Semina's Adult Quality Care, and Nina looked after her until she died Nov. 15, 2009, at age 94.

Maggie was a difficult, complicated woman. Two of her children learned that the men they thought were their fathers were not, just as Maggie had. Yet some accepted and loved her as she was.

"She was strong, loving and assertive," says her favorite child, Danny Glover, a born-again Christian and abortion opponent. "She was very positive and wouldn't let anything get her down. She would always rise to the occasion."