Margaret "Peggy" Jean DeMoss

“Peggy”, as our mom was known, was born in 1932 in Saint Louis, Missouri. She was the first of two daughters. Her mother worked as a retail clerk at Famous Barr (a large department store in Saint Louis) and her father sold life insurance and then became a house painter. She and her sister attended catholic school in Saint Louis.

Just before Peggy’s final year of high school her family left Saint Louis and moved to North Kansas City, Missouri where her father went to work for the Cook Paint company. She traveled with a friend to visit the friend’s boyfriend who was serving in the navy. There she met a sailor and her future husband.

They married in 1956 and moved into her parents’ basement in North Kansas City before living in Delaware, Topeka and Gladstone, before settling in a new home in Liberty, Missouri, where they raised 4 sons. The family attended a small Catholic Church in Liberty and the boys attended an elementary school run by the church and then the public high school. The family moved to Raytown in the early 80’s to be closer to their business.

Peggy served as the Den Mother of the Cub Scout den her boys were in and helped with a weekly walking paper route with two of her sons, just for the exercise. She worked as the executive secretary for the McPike Company in Kansas City. She went on to handle the bookkeeping for her husband’s television business and then as the office manager in the security alarm company that they owned for 27 years, doing the payroll and accounting. She would often get up at 4 in the morning to work on the books.

Although she loved being a mother, she especially liked being a grandmother. Like her mother, she would prepare all year for Christmas by listening for clues about what her boys and her grandchildren wanted for Christmas and shopped for bargains throughout the year.

Peggy also loved holidays and big family get-togethers, which she would plan. She was an amazing cook and would stock up on groceries and then work for hours to be sure there was plenty of food for her four sons and their growing families.

She and her husband traveled to Florida, Alaska, California, Colorado, Las Vegas, New York and West Virginia where her husband was from. She loved big dogs and suffered though the cats that her husband and sons always seemed to invite into their homes.

Like her grandmother, her mother and her sister, she developed dementia in her final years, before passing away in her sleep on June 25, 2022.

A rosary will be held from 10-10:30am, visitation 10:30-11am and Mass beginning at 11am, on Friday, July 8 at St. John Francis Regis Parish, 8941 James A. Reed Road, Kanas City, MO 64138. A graveside service will be at 12:30pm on Monday, July 11 at the Mt. Lebanon Cemetery in St. Ann, MO.