Margaret Clapp - Obituary

ARGARET SUSAN EMERY was born on January 4, 1927 in Englewood, New Jersey to Charles E. Emery and Dorothy Gardner Jaynes (Emery). She had one older sister, Dorothy Jaynes Emery. “Peggy Sue,” or “P.S.”, as she was known to most everyone for much of her life, spent most of her childhood in Towson, Maryland and lettered in a number of sports at Towson High School—badminton and basketball being two of them. When the United States entered the war in 1941, her family moved to Quantico where her father, Charles E. Emery re-entered active duty as a Lt. Col. in the Marine Corps as commander of a service battalion. This is where she met Ronald Lee Glendinning, who had graduated from the Naval Academy in 1945 and entered the Marine Corps as a First Lieutenant. They were married at the Naval Academy Chapel in Annapolis in 1946 and—after the birth of Puddy (1948) and Charlie (1949) at Camp Pendleton, California—the family found themselves back across the country in military housing in Jacksonville, North Carolina, where Ronnie trained in combat at Camp Lejeune and soon shipped off to Korea. (SIDEBAR: This is as good a time as any to remind people—as P.S. always did—that it’s pronounced “luh ZHERN”, not “luh JOON.” Please . . . make her happy . . . say it right. The end of one war and the beginning of another, was a time of transition. Peggy Sue’s parents bought a small house in downtown Annapolis that served as a kind of “home base” for the rather rigorous planting and transplanting that the military finds necessary for enlisted families. Her father, Charles Emery, had recently founded Emery Advertising in Baltimore and was always glad when the growing family showed up on his doorstep. One such time was for Charlie’s baptism in 1950 just before Ronnie left for Korea. During the time he was away, the family was officially in Jacksonville, but were always glad NOT to be there, preferring, rather, to be in Annapolis with “Gangie” and “Dordo.” When Ronnie returned from Korea, the Marine Corps moved the family to Portland, Maine where Ronnie’s duties found him at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine. Why the family chose to live in Portland (which is 50 miles north) is a complete mystery. One could imagine a desperate scenario: What if someone needed to go to the hospital in Kittery, let’s say for a pregnancy? And what if on the way—while one’s poor wife was in the throes of active labor—one had a flat tire? And what if, while changing that tire, one had to tell one’s wife she had to hitchhike (since who in their right mind would pass by a visibly pregnant woman in pain on the side of the road while her husband banged away with a wrench on a stubborn lugnut?) The answer: no one. P.S. stuck out her thumb and the very next car picked her up and got her to the hospital in the nick of time to welcome Rob (1952) into the world. During this time in Portland (which really only lasted a little more than a year) it is hard to believe that the family actually lived in three houses: One on Maine Avenue for a short while as they looked for a more “permanent” house on State Street. Then, a third, that Ronnie built (in his spare time) just before the Corps shipped the family back out to Camp Pendleton. The house was in Barstow, California—a cinder block bunker in the middle of the Mojave desert. They had traded the five-foot snow drifts of Maine for blistering sand storms and melting tar dripping off the roof. It was here in Barstow that the family realized that much of their life in the Marine Corps was living out of boxes. This may have been the moment of epiphany when Ronnie and P.S. had “the discussion” about whether or not it’s an excellent idea to try to raise a growing family while remaining an active-duty Marine. Whomever was on which side in that discussion, is lost to the ages. The outcome was that Ronnie decided to leave active duty and take a job as an electrical engineer at Westinghouse in Baltimore. The fact that may have tipped the scales, however, was that P.S. was pregnant with Dolphy (1954). In any case, to celebrate, they decided to camp from Barstow to Annapolis in a leaky and heavily-oiled green umbrella tent. With the family getting ever larger, and the small house in Annapolis remaining the same size, they needed a bigger house, so in the Spring of 1955, two grandparents, a mother, a father, four children, a dog and an upright Steinway piano moved into a house in Wardour, an area just north of Annapolis on the Severn River. When P.S.’s father, Charles Emery, died in 1957, her mother went to live with her sister, Margaret Reed, in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Ronnie and P.S. and four children moved to West Annapolis where Katherine was born (1960). In 1962, Ronnie went to work for NASA at Cape Canaveral and the family followed a year later, moving into a house in Rockledge, Florida on the Indian River. Almost weekly, they watched the rockets take off—first in brilliant silence, but then finishing in a distant low rumble. Sadly it was here that the “differences” between Ronnie and P.S. proved “irreconcilable” and they separated, the family moving back to West Annapolis after just one year. In 1975, P.S. met and married Philip Fanshawe Clapp and they built a house in Edgewater where they lived for most of the “growing up time” of her 11 grandchildren who decided her new name would be “Mimi.” When Phil died in 1997 she moved into a condo in Edgewater and loved the commotion of holidays as her 11 grandchildren added 17 great-grandchildren to the commotion. Mimi loved camping, dabbled as a painter, a potter, a poet, a cook. She gardened like a boss, was a seamstress, a knitter and raised wonderful children. She was a strong believer in Jesus Christ and prayed diligently for her children. She loved holidays and suffered (with joy) to make them magic for everyone. She never did things by half-measures. She was a member of the D.A.R. and The Mayflower Society. She sat with family members (under the guidance and astounding brilliance of the Internet) and traced her lineage through the Livingstons all the way back to Robert the Bruce. Refusing to stop there, she found that her ancestors went all the way back to the Battle of Hastings in 1066, where the Livingstons (then known as “deLeving,” revealing their Hungarian origin) accompanied Queen Margaret in her journey north to the Netherlands. But a storm had other plans and swept the ship to Scotland. Mimi’s love for Scotland was long-standing. She bought Charlie his first bagpipe, Rob his first drum, and sewed kilts for Puddy, Dolphy and Katherine. The inspiration behind the Annapolis Pipe Band happened when she stood up at a PTA meeting and suggested it. She also brought in Sandy Jones, Pipe Major of the Air Force Pipe Band, to ensure the band didn’t embarrass itself when it decided their first-ever competition would be the World Championships at Cowal in Dunoon, Scotland. On that trip in 1969, the entourage numbered eight on an overnight flight to Prestwick. Not having slept a wink on the plane, they landed in the morning, Mimi rented a van and drove the entire group (on the wrong side of the road) across Scotland to Callander. They arrived at their hotel at 8:00 pm. (Note to anyone: Never do this.) It was, with a sweet sadness, in the early morning of April 21, 2021, at age 94, Mimi slipped the surly bonds of earth in her own bed. The fact that she could BE in her own bed was due in large part to her caregivers, Darren Baze, Lisa Park and Marta Azorsa. Their care of Mimi over the past several years was a true Godsend! God bless you, Mimi! You have blessed so many beyond measure! All arrangements for Margaret are private. In lieu of flowers please send a donation to "Martha's Table" by clicking the link HERE Online condolences and tributes may be made by using the link on this page.