Margarete Charlotte Richter

Margarete had grace, charm, wit and intelligence. She was ninety seven years old at passing and lived with Michael Katcher for the last fifty seven of those inspiring years. Born in the city of Breslau, the state of Silesia, Germany, she spent her early youth loving gymnastics. She spent her late teens as a chemist researcher during World War II at the Max Planck Institute, and as a sometime anti-Nazi spy along with some fellow researchers.

As the Russians entered the city she and her mother were given special permission to relocate by train to a small town in the Black Forest of West Germany to continue the research. She and her mother were quartered with a farm family and when the French arrived with tanks she was chosen by the town to ride by bicycle to confront the French with a white flag and find out French intentions.

After the war Margarete worked for the American Army speaking both German and English where she developed friendships one of whom offered to sponsor her emigration to the US. Arriving in San Diego in the fifties she got a sewing job for immediate cash and then with a firm that developed epoxy glue formulations. There she developed a curing procedure to bond steel-strength graphite fiber with epoxy glue, now used for filament winding golf shafts, the skins of the Boeing 787 and the Northrop Grumman B-2 bomber. She also developed insulation for space capsules and once fretted that she nearly cooked an astronaut as John Glenn got a little warm on re-entry from his earth orbit flight.

To Michael, Margarete was a source of wit, love, a model of courage, and a surprise birthday party every year featuring an Elvis impersonator, and other entertainers over the years. She loved dogs, friends and me. I grieve deeply at her passing and will miss her. The funeral will be a very small affair at the cemetery but I promise when Covid is over a celebration of her life.