Obituaries

Madison - Margaret Ann “Peggy” Benjamin, died Wednesday, April 20, 2016 at her residence in Oakwood Village, Madison, after a long and grueling battle with complications from lupus. She was 68 years old.

Peggy, who spent her childhood in Tomah and moved with her family to Madison when she was 14, was a 1966 graduate of Robert M. LaFollette High School. She attended the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point and graduated from UW-Madison in 1970 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology.

Peggy had a long and productive career first as an administrative assistant at UW-Madison, later as a legal administrator at law firms both in Madison and Milwaukee. She was chief legal administrator at the prominent Milwaukee firm of Borgelt, Powell, Peterson and Frauen, and held several leadership positions with the Association of Legal Administrators.

Peggy’s last career step was at Borders, Inc., where she worked as a human resources specialist at the company’s headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After leaving Borders, she returned to Madison, where she has lived for the past decade.

Peggy was an avid and adventurous traveler, including a visit to China and Japan with the People to People exchange program in the early 1990s. Peg has also made visits to Russia, Switzerland, Ireland, Peru, the Amazon basin, the Galapagos Islands, and throughout the United States. She toured Paris, the Loire Valley and Brittany with her brother David and sister-in-law, Junko Yoshida.

Because of her failing health, including a kidney transplant in 2009, Peggy retired early and has lived for most of her residence in Madison at the Loraine condominiums on West Washington Avenue. She was active as a volunteer poll worker on election days, she loved “downtown life” and was devoted to the Wednesday Night Concerts on the Square program every summer.

Besides her brother and sister-in-law of Madison, Peggy is survived by a younger brother William, of Tomah, by three stepsisters, Sherry Tolle and Ruth Blow of Tomah, Connie Steele of Roseville, Calif., by a stepbrother, Tom Church of Tomah, by three aunts and by many cousins.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be held at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, April 26, 2016 at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church, 602 Everglade Drive, Madison, with Father Bart Timmerman presiding. A visitation will be held from 4 p.m. - 6 p.m. on Monday, April 25th at Joyce - Ryan Funeral Home, 5701 Odana Road, Madison. And again from 10 a.m. until the time of Mass at Church on Tuesday.

In lieu of flowers, please contribute to the National Kidney Foundation in Peggy’s name.

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

John Donne