Margo Looney Watkins, 1960
I had two major interactions with Margo, 55 years apart. Senior year she was with Diane Rusch, Fred Elder, David Kroenlein, myself, and others in physics class. Mr. Gilmore (“Mr. Science” to us all, thanks to Jim Davidson) regularly had experiments fail as he did them, odd misspoken explanations, and so on. Margo, behind and across from me, would offer a quick jab at his expense or roll her eyes if we happened to connect. Once we were challenged to measure horsepower with a lab partner, each timing the other running up and down stairs outside the third-floor physics lab. Always ready for a quick joke at my expense, Fred Elder was taking bets on how much faster Diane would run than I. Gliding by to head for her next class, Margo picked up what was going on. She beamed her dynamite smile as she made eye contact with me on the landing below, girding for my trial. She got the joke, empathized, but didn’t get dragged into it.
Much more involved and over emails and table conversations were our interactions around the 55th reunion. Margo had worked in the Red Cross in Vietnam after East, then married Stan Watkins, a support tech for Bell Helicopter. She lived five years or so each in Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia as she noted in a reunion Zoom call. Although I’d visited Israel many times over the years plus Jordan, Doha, Abu Dhabi, Egypt, etc. as a tourist, I knew nothing of her experience in these Middle East nations, so we compared impressions. She joked about the very sexy clothing of many Arab women within the confines of their gated homes versus outside, fully veiled. She knew no Farsi in Iran.
Their Egyptian landlord’s wife had no English but liked to use Margo’s spices. The woman came down one morning from her upstairs unit to Stan and Margo’s entrance, wanting to get spices. Stan had colleagues meeting in their living room. The woman charged past the men into the kitchen, practicing her English by saying, ”Hello Mr. Stan!” Margo said the woman was dressed in a very sheer negligee that showed everything. She got the spices and departed, happily saying, “Goodbye Mr. Stan.” Margo said she warned Stan he didn’t need to be going to the landlord’s unit about some issue in their unit so frequently, especially since the daughters were also hanging around, winking at me as she told the story.
Margo said the Arab pilots Stan trained would crash planes in training, taking hands off the controls on the grounds that Allah would fly it. Or that it was time to rest. Or, Margo grinned, telling me she did not trust them at all to fly her, not even on commercial planes.
I do not know much about her activities when she returned to Wichita after living in Philadelphia. For decades, she was on the board of Envision, which worked to help people with visual limitations for decades.
At dinner and via emails, we talked over racism at East and in her life. Based on her own life, she was unsure that she could agree with Shirley Chisholm’s remark that she got far more hassles as female than she did as Black. She noted that in Vietnam, she knew Vietnamese women who had a child by a Black GI were treated worse than those with a child from a White GI, the pigment bias so widely shared in the world.
Margo expressed some anger at the obliviousness of many of us, her East High classmates, to racism at school and in the community. She understood my point that clueless, self-absorbed adolescents don’t see much, plus with 90% of the population White Christians, life was simple for the majority. As economists have noted, it’s often hard to get a person to see the merits of an argument when his income depends on not seeing it. She agreed. She knew of Sid Moore’s forbidding the sale at school of post-Prom party tickets, since he knew that Wichita Country Club would not admit Black East partiers. But, as she pointed out, the party went on and tickets were still sold underground.
I told her at the 30th reunion, Lee Ayres remarked a football player who transferred in senior year thanked Lee for welcoming him to the team. Lee said he didn’t recall it, but agreed one just welcomed people to a team. I noted Lee’s remark, that if the transferee remembered Lee, probably many others did NOT welcome him. “Exactly!” Margo exclaimed.
I’d hoped to continue talking this year, but Margo was unable to attend this fall’s reunion. I appreciated her candor AND her wit!
Gene, thank you for reminding all of us who Margo was, because I recalled her name but not her personally. I do recall the bright light that Margo brought to wherever she was. I was not aware of racism being acted out individually at East High but I was keenly aware of exclusion throughout our student body based not only on color but on income and family status in the community. Now, however, I can see that those maintaining our Virtual Reunion are truly welcoming everyone regardless of our unique history or circumstances. I believe that the Virtual Reunion is helping to overcome any legacy of exclusivity based on racism or any other cause during our time at East High. Thanks to all the organizers. May Margo rest in peace.