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Margaret Holmes Cook, J25 interview

Biography
Margaret Holmes Cook, J25

Margaret Sayles Holmes Cook, J25, was born and raised in Adams, Massachusetts, where her father was a physician and her mother a teacher. Hers was a "church-minded" upbringing, with close involvement through her mother in the local Universalist church. (Her father was active in the building of the community's Episcopal Church.)

After graduation from Tufts, she began a teaching career in Arlington, Vermont, and returned to Massachusetts to teach high-school English in Chelsea and Lexington. In 1933, she married engineer John Cook, which resulted in her being fired from her teaching post. "It was the Great Depression, and in the '30s a woman couldn't teach in the public school if she was married," she recalls of that painful experience. She went on, however, to enjoy traveling with her husband, who worked for Shell Oil Company, while donating extensive time to community service and raising a family.

Years later, she would return to Lexington where, on a lark, she began proofreading for a local printer. She continued to use her eagle-eyed talent until age 93, "when I could no longer see well enough to tell the difference between a comma and a semi-colon." Today she lives in an Arlington, Massachusetts, apartment where there is always a library book in progress. She keeps in touch with Tufts, faithfully attending every "Over 55" luncheon (for those classes celebrating 55th reunions and above) during Alumni Weekend each year.

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