Margaret “Margie” and her husband John Jaquette were raising their sons in Manoa Valley, Hawaii in the 1950s when they helped lead the purchase of the Friends Meetinghouse on Oahu Avenue. Both were active members of Honolulu Friends Meeting for decades. Margie passed away at the age of 104 on January 24, 2023, in Honolulu. They were longtime residents of Arcadia Retirement Residence, where Margie was an organizer of the Meeting’s monthly gatherings at the facility.
Margaret Laura Leaf was born on August 6, 1918, in Camden, New Jersey, the daughter of Frank George Leaf and Laura Christophersen Leaf. She grew up in the Philadelphia area, graduated from Lower Merion High School and attended Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. She married John Joseph Jaquette in September 1940. John served in the Navy in World War II, stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in 1944 and 1945. In January 1946 the family moved to Honolulu, Hawaii, with Margie and two young sons flying to Honolulu from San Francisco in a Pan Am flying boat.
In her younger years Margie was an accomplished tennis and field hockey player. She reached the U.S. Women’s National Field Hockey second team preparing for the 1940 Olympics (which were not held because of World War II). In more recent years Margie was an active golfer and duplicate bridge player. She won several club championships at Oahu Country Club in Honolulu, Hawaii and the Island Country Club in Deer Isle, Maine. Margie became a Life Master in duplicate bridge, along with her husband John.
In Honolulu, Margie had been president of the Manoa School PTA, board member and finance chair of the Honolulu YWCA and chair of Religious Education at Church of the Crossroads. During the 1950s and 1960s both Margie and John were active members of the Honolulu Friends Meeting. In addition to helping the purchase of the Manoa Meetinghouse, Margie was a preschool teacher, First Day School teacher, Cub Scout Den Mother and a docent at the Hawaii Nature Center, for which she was named Honolulu Senior Volunteer of the Year 1993. In 2012 Margie began the drive to make the Meetinghouse accessible to those in wheelchairs, like herself.
With her husband John and sons, Margie loved spending most summers from 1971 through 2006 at the family summer home on Little Deer Isle, Maine, where they enjoyed sailing, golf, and hiking. She and John had spent their honeymoon at the Jaquette family cabin in 1940.
“Margie had a brilliant, well-informed mind, a distinctive laugh and a quick sense of humor,” said her friend Toni Withington. “To me she was a model of being a decisive woman in an era where women were expected to be quiet.”
Margie’s husband John passed away in 2010. Her sons have been frequent visitors to the Honolulu Meeting. She is survived by sons David (Anette) of Rancho Palos Verdes, California; Stratton of Los Altos, California, and Peter (Andrea) of Carlsbad, California, as well as 7 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren. A service will be held March 16 at the Arcadia Solarium. Her ashes will be interred with John’s at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii.