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Margaret Joyce Bailey Pancoast ’41

A picture of Margaret Bailey Pancoast

Margaret Joyce Bailey Pancoast ’41, June 11, 2012, in Silver Spring, Maryland. Margaret grew up in Rainier and Salem, Oregon, and completed a BA from Reed in sociology. She served as president of the Reed Women’s Athletic Association and played extramural volleyball, basketball, and badminton. Upon graduation, she won a fellowship in sociology from Western Reserve in Cleveland, earning an MS in social work in 1943. She later wrote about the early years of her life in great detail, and her daughter, Louise Smith, who provided the details for this memorial, has donated Margaret’s memoirs to Reed. Margaret met Ross Pancoast in Ohio during World War II. They married in 1944 and moved to Washington, D.C., when he was assigned to the Pentagon. Margaret volunteered in schools in Montgomery County, Maryland, for the Girl Scouts, and for the National Women’s Party. She worked as a media assistant in Montgomery County school libraries, then substituted as a special education assistant in elementary school until her complete retirement at the age of 81. She enjoyed working with children and found special education particularly rewarding. She and Ross traveled extensively. She also enjoyed gardening, square dancing, line dancing, and handiwork. Says Louise, “Although my mother spent most of her life after college on the East Coast, she remained proud to be from Oregon and to be a Reed graduate. She always remembered her years at Reed and the friends she made there with great fondness and kept in touch with some of her Reed friends throughout their lives.” In addition to Louise, survivors include Margaret’s son, Jim, and granddaughter, Nicola.

Appeared in Reed magazine: December 2012