Adrianne Marquardt - Obituary

arguerite E. Ostrander of Willow Grove, VT, known throughout the valley as "Miss Peg," died at home on the morning of February 6, 2023, at the age of 91. Born September 22, 1931 in Rutland, VT to the late Henry and Alma Beaudoin, Marguerite was the eldest of six and the first in her family to attend college. She graduated from Castleton State Teachers College in 1953 and began her career that fall in a two-room schoolhouse in North Willow, where she taught grades one through four, banked the woodstove each morning, and drove the school's only station wagon. She married Robert Ostrander, a dairy farmer, in 1955, and for the next thirty-eight years balanced a classroom in town with a farmhouse of her own. Marguerite taught in the Willow Grove school district for forty-one years, the last nineteen as a third-grade teacher, retiring in 1994 with an estimated 1,200 former students, a number she liked to say she could name if given enough time. She was named Vermont Teacher of the Year in 1981 and received the Willow Grove Historical Society's Keystone Award in 2004 for her work compiling oral histories of the valley's last working farms — a project she conducted with a cassette recorder and a thermos of coffee, one kitchen table at a time. Marguerite served as organist at First Congregational Church for over fifty years, ran the town's summer reading program, and never in her life missed a school board meeting. She was a formidable baker, a merciless cribbage player, and a woman who wrote thank-you notes within a day. She kept a birdfeeder outside every window of her house. In addition to her parents, Marguerite was preceded in death by her husband Robert, her sister Yvonne Beaudoin Hartley, and her brothers Paul and Gerald Beaudoin. She is survived by her daughters, Anne (David) Corliss of Burlington and Ruth Ostrander of Willow Grove; her son, Henry (Lisa) Ostrander of Manchester, NH; her sisters, Claire Beaudoin Nash of Rutland and Louise Beaudoin of Albany, NY; six grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.