Margaret Anne Chae

Margaret Anne Ferguson was born in Fort Worth, Texas, to a loving yet strict Southern Baptist family. Margie was whip smart and excelled at the violin, and she studied violin performance at TCU and UT Austin, then anthropology as a grad student at UT. In the 1960s, she met a brilliant Korean immigrant studying for his doctorate. They fell in love, and she moved to Korea with him in the early 1970s where I was born. (I did not appreciate the courage and independence this must have required until I saw in 2008 the reactions in many quarters to Ann Dunham’s partnership with a certain Kenyan in the 1960s.) After their divorce, she lived her last 15+ years with a lovely woman, again showing her fierce independence in finding happiness. Margie was a public school orchestra teacher who dedicated her professional life to inner-city, urban schools in Dallas and Fort Worth. Margie leaves behind several beautiful qualities that we will try to emulate and instill in our children: a fierce independent spirit, an intense love of classical music (especially Italian opera and its divas), an insatiable intellectual curiosity (she would run the battery completely out on her iPad in a single sitting while reading about her favorite topics on the internet), a passion for other cultures and ways of life (see her Korean-American ex-husband and Jewish best friend in 1950s Fort Worth), and a burning love of life’s beauty and its precious moments. She is preceded in death by: grandparents, mother Bonnie Ferguson. Margie is survived by: son Donald Chae, grandsons Julian Chae and Nicolas Chae. Donations in lieu of flowers can be made to KERA public media: http://www.kera.org/donate/