Margaret Mary (Margie) Zimlich

On December 18, 2009, Margaret (Margie) Zimlich died peacefully at the age of 94 at the Providence Mount St. Vincet Nursing Center in Seattle, Washington, where she had received care since suffering a debilitating stroke in Feburary 2007.

Margaret Mary Koehler was born on August 17, 1915, on a dry-land farm near Scotland, Texas, the fifth of eight children of William J. and Mary Therese Koehler.  She had four brothers, Hubert, Jim, Raymond, and Robert Koehler, and three sisters, Florene, Alice,and Dorothy. Margie picked cotton and prayed every day for rain.  (Years later in Seattle, she said, "My friends always complain about the rain.  I just say "thank God it's finally raining!")  The Koehler family supplemented their meager farming income via the family band, in which Margie played the piano.

Margie attended St. Boniface School in Scotland, Texas, through the eighth grade. At the age of 15 she was sent to nearby Wichita Falls, Texas, to work as a nanny to help support her family.  At the age of 17 she followed her brothers to Dalhart, Texas, where she found work as a bookkeeper in a wholesale grocery outlet, in time to live through the dust bowl disaster in its epicenter, the Texas panhandle.  Margie met and fell in love with a Dalhart boy named Julius Francis Zimlich, whose mother Elenora was famous for throwing great parties for her 10 beautiful, talented, musical, fun-loving offspring and their friends.  Those were some parties: Margie fell for Julius Zimlich; Margie's brother Jim Koehler married Julius's sister Mildred; and a friend and neighbor from Scotland, TX, Jake Poirot, married Julius's sister Alama. 

In early 1942, on the journey of a lifetime, Margie rode trains from Texas to California to join her fiance' U.S. Marine Corps Master Sergeant Julius Zimlich.  They were married at St. Joseph Church in San Diego on March 13, 1942.  In November, 1942 Julius shipped out to the Pacific war. Margie moved back to Wichita Falls, Texas, where their son James Norman was born in January, 1943.  Just three months later, on April 8, 1943, Julius and most of his Marine air squadron were killed in a storm during a bombing mission in the Solomon Islands area. 

Margie never remarried.  She moved back to Dalhart in 1944, raised Norman as a single parent, and worked there until 1977 as a bank teller, insurance agent, and bookkeeper for Culbertson & Sons and the Coon Estate.  For 30 years she wsa the primary organist at St. Anthony's Catholic Church in Dalhart, and played for many hundreds of high Masses, weddings and funerals.  In July of 1977 Margie moved to Seattle to be near her son and family, and made many new friends in Washington, including those in her Madrona neighborhood, retirement homes at Panorama House (Seattle) and the Creekside Retirement community (Burlington,WA), and Providene Mount St. Vincent (Seattle).  In retirement she kept her kitchen and sewing machine busy inspiring granddaughters to cook and sew, and her typewriter busy producing a family cookbook, a family history, and her personal life story.  The high points of her final years centered on visits by Norm and Christy, her grandchildren Greg, Julianne and Amanda, her nieces Mary Kirsch and Kay Hoehler and their families, and by many visitors, and on the constant loving care of Providence staff.

Margie is survived by her son Norm Zimlich and his wife Christy of Deer Harbor, WA; by her grandchildren Gregory Zimlich of Seattle, WA, Julianne Zimlich of Oakland, CA, and Amanda Zimlich of Philadelphia, PA; by her sister Dorothy Aaron of Atlanta, GA; and by her sisters-in-law Mildred Koehler of Albuquerque, NM, Catherin Koehler of Amarillo, TX, Margaret Corta of Las Vegas, NV, and Carol Koehler of St. George, UT.  She has always been affectionately called "Aunt Margie" by her 48 nieces and nephews and their numerous offspring now populating the globe. All will miss her greatly.