Margaretha J. Herr

Margaretha J Herr, born in Amsterdam, Holland on October 28, 1916, daughter of Jacob de Waard and Maria Cox de Waard died peacefully July 7, 2016 at home in Coupland, three and half months short of 100 years old. After the World War I ended her family was allowed to return to Antwerp, Belgium to be near her mother’s parents and the Port of Antwerp where her father traded grain. At age of 11 she lost her mother due to cancer. She attended Catholic boarding schools with her younger sister, Jenny, and enjoyed sharing stories about the nuns. During World War II she had planned to leave Europe and possibly go to Canada after the war. Then she met Norman P Herr, an USA army officer, and they married in early 1946 shortly after the war. Fortunately Norman had studied French in school because that was the language they had in common. While carrying her first child, and speaking only Dutch and French she traveled alone to USA on a boat and arrived to meet her husband’s family which included two step sons, Norman Lee and Duane K, who had recently lost their mother to illness. She started her family and homemaking outside Washington, D.C. while her husband served in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. The family moved to Heidelberg Germany in January 1951, already with her four young children. There she had her fifth child and nearly died of hemorrhage. In June 1952 her husband suffered a heart attack and went back to the US to work in the Pentagon. The family, now including six children, moved to Gulf coast of Florida in 1962 after her husband’s retirement from the Army. She enjoyed taking walks on the beach in the evening and watching the sunsets from the dock in the back yard. A quick fourteen years later, her husband died and the last child was in college, she reinvented herself as a college student at age 58. She continued until she earned two BA highest honors and MA from University of South Florida and afterwards taught at USF and Hillsborough Community College. At eighty she decided to move and built a new home she enjoyed where she lived independently for thirteen years when she moved to Coupland Texas at age 93. She loved watching the cows from her chair, the flowers in the yard, and the company of her pets and son and special friends from her knitting class and her son’s wonderful friends who were always so warm loving and respectful.
She was survived by all of her six children, Jack F Herr of Palm Harbor Florida, Marguerite Davis of Tallahassee Florida, Roger P Herr of San Antonio, Helen Herr of Winderemere Florida, Charles M Herr of Cheney Washington, Lawrence N Herr of Coupland Texas, 11 grandchildren, 7 great grandchildren.