Please join family and friends in a service to celebrate her long and well-lived life at 11:00 a.m. Monday, October 23, 2017, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 6050 N. Meridian Street, Indianapolis, with a 1-hour calling at the Church immediately before the service at 10:00 am.

Margaret Olson – Peg or Peggy to her many friends – was born in Toronto, Canada, March 26, 1925, and passed peacefully at St Vincent’s Hospice, Indianapolis, on October 18, 2017.

Peg is survived by her children, Sharon (Larry) Freeman, Van (Ruth) Olson, Lee Gordon and Leslie (Chuck) McGuire, grandchildren Debbie (Tom) Harper, Christie (Brian) Kessler, Michael Olson, Paul Olson, Catherine Olson, Aaron Gordon, Matthew McGuire, Zachary McGuire and Nicholas McGuire, great-grandchildren Tom (Shelley) Harper, Summer Harper, Danielle Olson, Ryan Olson, Clara and Conner McGuire, and great-great-grandchildren Brice and Xavier Harper.  Peg was predeceased by her beloved husband Norman Olson in 1998 and daughter Lynn Olson in 2012.

Peg was well known among family and friends for her storytelling – best told and enjoyed over a couple of glasses of wine.  She lived a long and often challenging life but the tales of her life, family and the characters involved (and boy there have been some characters) were typically filled with humor and reflected her love and acceptance for all involved.  Her tales also often reflected the underlying grit and strong will of this woman who was legally blind, living near 50th and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and took the trains and subways around New York City without assistance, including her navigating the NYC subways to attend and graduate from New York University in 1947.

At the age of 90, Peg wrote a memoir covering her life, family and times from 1925 through 1946, where many of her stories are now preserved as a gift to all of us who knew her.  Although Peg’s absence will leave a void in our gatherings of family and friends going forward, we are sure to fill some of it with our own tales of Peg and her stories.  She will be dearly missed by those who knew and loved her.

Excerpts from 2 poems on mothers we dedicate to Peg:  From May Sarton’s “August Third” on her mother as a role model: “If you taught me one thing – It was never to fail life.” And, from Wendell Berry’s “To My Mother” on forgiveness: “And this, then, is the vision of that Heaven of which we have heard, where those who love each other have forgiven each other, where, for that, the leaves are green, the light a music in the air, and all is unentangled, and all is undismayed.”

Please join family and friends in a service to celebrate her long and well-lived life at 11:00 a.m. Monday, October 23, 2017, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 6050 N. Meridian Street, Indianapolis, with a 1-hour calling at the Church immediately before the service.

Arrangements entrusted to Indiana Funeral Care.