Marguerite Warner Bartlett died at her home in Eastham on Jan. 24, 2025 with her children at her bedside. The cause was cancer. She was 90.
She was a dedicated volunteer for the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod and winner of its 1999 Community Service Award.
The daughter of the Rev. John and Edna Belle (Polly) Pickells, Maggie was born on March 7, 1934 in Hood River, Ore. Her father was called to serve at a church in Steubenville, Ohio, and then to another in Webster, where the Pickells and Bartlett families became friends. Their children grew up together in Webster and at the Pickells family home near Nauset Light in Eastham.
Maggie’s mother died of cancer when her children were young. When John was called to a church in East Greenwich, R.I., the family moved and thrived in the community there.
Maggie attended East Greenwich High School, where she was an outstanding athlete and a member of the Open to All Club. She stayed in touch with many high school friends through the following decades.
She attended William Smith College in Geneva, N.Y. but left to marry her childhood friend and lifelong love, George Bartlett, in 1955. The marriage lasted 66 years until George’s death in 2021.
Soon after their marriage, George joined the Air Force. Maggie joined him in San Antonio, Texas, where he did his pilot training before being posted to Japan. Maggie taught English to Japanese children.
She loved to tell this story: before returning to the States, she and George were shopping for chowder bowls for his mother, Carol. Maggie wanted to splurge on a set of dishes for their own table; George, ever parsimonious, reluctantly agreed.
When they went to pay, a child behind the counter who had been one of her students whispered something in the store clerk’s ear. The clerk, who must have been the child’s mother, smiled and made a gift of the whole lot to them. Those dishes are still on their kitchen shelves.
Shortly after their return to the States, George took a job at the Pomfret School in Connecticut. Boarding schools would be the family’s livelihood for the next 32 years. After Pomfret, George went to the South Kent School, where he stayed for the better part of three decades, eventually becoming headmaster.
Maggie served as a surrogate mother to many young boarding school students, responding to their emotional needs as they navigated the demands of school and life away from home. She was an integral part of the nearby Kent community, as well, teaching nursery school and supporting every festivity staged by the town. She was also certified in the New Milford Visiting Nurse Association Hospice Corps.
Through all their Connecticut years, the family spent school vacations and summers at their house in Eastham, and after her retirement in 1989 they settled there. Maggie soon volunteered with the AIDS Support Group, caring for young men and women, many of whom had been abandoned by family and friends because of the feared and misunderstood disease.
Having lost her mother and two of her three siblings early in their lives and then her father, Maggie’s work with AIDS patients extended into care with Hospice of Cape Cod. One of her skills was reiki, with which she also brought comfort to breast cancer patients. As a faithful Friend of Bill, she served as an AA sponsor as well.
Maggie dedicated herself to her family, too. At her house off Ocean View Drive in Eastham, she created wonder nooks — simple, inviting play spaces, indoors and out, where time for the scores of visiting grandchildren and their cousins each summer would be suspended and love would grow in great supply. Holidays at the house were magical with her seasonal decorations, enhanced by the smells and tastes of her cooking.
A friend remembers Maggie as someone who “embodied all the qualities I most admire: warmth, kindness, compassion, generosity, tolerance, imagination, good humor, and strength. She was that rare individual who accepted people as she found them.”
Maggie is survived by her children, Polly Bryson of Orleans, Peter and Colleen Bartlett of Eastham, Caroline Bartlett of Boston, and Ben and Betsy Bartlett of Newport, R.I.; and her grandchildren, Woody, Marguerite (Maizie), John and George, Ana, Phoebe and Emma.
She was predeceased by her brother, John; sisters, Betsy and Sally; and her husband, George.
A celebration of Maggie’s life will be held at a date to be announced. Her children ask that friends honor her by being kind to their neighbors.
In lieu of flowers, donations in Maggie’s memory may be made to the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod, Box 1522, Provincetown 02657.
