Margaret Sullivan
A chapter-by-chapter biography — milestones, achievements, and the moments that shaped Margaret. Family and friends can build it together.
Margaret Ann Reilly was born in the spring of 1947, the third of five children, on a dairy farm outside Knoxville. She rose before light to help with the milking, walked to a two-room schoolhouse, and was the first in her family to leave for college. She used to say the farm taught her everything that mattered: that the work comes before the weather, and that you feed people when you don't know what else to do.
For thirty-four years, Peggy taught third grade at Claxton Elementary in Asheville. She believed eight was the best age — old enough to reason with, young enough to still be astonished. Generations of children learned cursive, long division, and the Sullivan conviction that "we'll figure it out." She kept a coffee can of sharpened pencils on her desk and, in her own hand, a list of every student's name going back to 1972.
