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Margot Trumpler Howe ’41

December 4, 2016 in Ashland, Oregon, of osteoporosis.

Born in San Jose, California, to Robert and Augusta Trumpler, Margot grew up on top of Mount Hamilton, where her father was an astronomer at Lick Observatory. At Reed, she majored in psychology and wrote a thesis on A Method and Treatment of Neurosis with Prof. Monte Griffith [psych 1926–54]. The year after she graduated from Reed, she married Ralph Keeney ’42, who had also majored in psychology at Reed. Ralph was a cadet in the Army Air Corps. He died in an airplane crash in 1943. In October of that year, Margot gave birth to their son, Roger. While raising Roger, Margot continued her studies in psychology at UC Berkeley, where she met Prof. Horace Albert (Bert) Howe [physics 1952–55] in 1947. The couple had two more children, Gregg and Neil. The family moved to West Los Angeles, where Bert pursued graduate studies in nuclear physics. In 1952, the family moved to Portland, where Bert taught at Reed and worked at Tektronix. In 1955, he gained a faculty appointment at UCLA and the family returned to Los Angeles.

In 1961, Bert and Margot divorced. By this time, she was pursuing studies in occupational therapy at San Jose State University, where she received her master’s in 1968. In 1970, she moved to Boston; she received an EdD from Boston University, followed by a faculty appointment at Tufts University, where she received tenure as a professor of occupational therapy in 1984. She married Morris Soodak, a biochemistry professor at Brandeis University, who died in 1979.

In 1989, Margot moved to Mount Shasta, California, to be closer to her son, Roger. In Mount Shasta, she met Albert Germann, a retired professor of criminology. The couple traveled extensively, and moved to Ashland, Oregon, where they were married in 2002. Al died in 2009. Margo continued to be active in the Unitarian Universalist Church for many years. She is survived by her three sons.

Appeared in Reed magazine: June 2017

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