Obituary of Margaret Grace Reader

Margaret Jacob Reader February 5, 1912 - February 21, 2012 Watsonville, CA With her century of life, a long story of local history stretches back. She rode the early trolley cars of Santa Cruz. Her family, in the 1920s, were the last vendors bringing a horse and wagon to the Free Market on Front Street, where they sold fancy tuberous begonias raised at their home nursery in the Seabright area. Born Margaret Grace Jacob at Robbinsdale, Minnesota, as a young child she came with her parents Andrew and Bessie to Santa Cruz, settling on the semi-rural dirt lane of Gault Street near the present site of the branch library. There the family established a modest existence with its truck garden and nursery. After an initial two years at nearby Branciforte School, Margaret walked each day across town to Holy Cross, eventually graduating from high school in 1930 as the class valedictorian. On December 31, 1933, Margaret married Dale R. Reader, beginning a close bond that would last until his death 66 years later. In what might be a Santa Cruz County record, three of Dale's brothers would in turn marry three of Margaret's sisters, for a total of four Reader-Jacob pairings, which produced a big collection of lookalike double cousins. Margaret and husband Dale withstood the Great Depression of the 1930s, once even having to slaughter a pig to eliminate all assets and qualify for a temporary federal WPA job. Ultimately, through hard work and harder saving, the two invested their way out of poverty into actual prosperity. In this regard they represented a classic American success tale. Margaret's middle name of Grace fit her well, for gracious she was. While in the generous spirit of obituaries it is sometimes read that the deceased "never had a bad word" spoken against them, in her case this claim requires not the slightest exaggeration. She herself spoke no ill of others. Complaint and accusation were not part of her nature, and right to the end of her many years she never grew old in temperament or demeanor. She is proof that a quiet person, one invisible to the wide world, can deserve our respect and admiration more than those personalities we see elevated on the public stage. Margaret Reader became the last survivor of the original Jacob family, five siblings having predeceased her: Adelaide, Alice, Bessie, Lilly, and Richard. Besides numerous nieces and nephews she leaves five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren through the marriages of her three sons, who reside locally: Lewis and Nancy Reader, Dennis and Karen Reader, Curtis and Rene Reader. Services will be private.