Marjorie “Maggie” Jeane Funderburg (née Lievense), who had a plethora of admirers for all of her good deeds in the community, died May 18, just 10 days shy of her 102nd birthday, at Cathedral Village, where she lived for more than a decade.
Before that, Funderburg lived for a dozen years in the Hill House at Chestnut Hill and prior to that, a half-century in Powelton Village.
Marina Oshana, a philosophy professor who grew up next door to Funderburg, told the Local last week, “In a nutshell, Maggie embodied Powelton. She was energetic, civic minded, unflappable and somehow managed to be one of the best moms on the block.”
“She was super active in every community she lived in,” said her daughter, Lise Funderburg. “In Chestnut Hill, she reshelved books at the library and volunteered for more than 30 years at Morris Arboretum. She was all around a gregarious and inspiring person, and I say that with no bias, of course. She passed just as she had wanted to — peacefully, painlessly, swiftly and in her own room at Cathedral Village.”
Funderburg’s children — Diane, Margaret, and Lise — all of whom live in Mt. Airy, and dear friend Marny Walsh were with her when she died. Lise Funderburg, a longtime professor at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of the acclaimed book, “Black, White, Other,” a groundbreaking oral history of 46 adult children of interracial marriages. Maggie Funderburg’s late husband, George, was Black.
According to Diane Funderburg, her mother “lived a life defined by adventure, community and curiosity. She started out on the South Shore of Chicago, the daughter of Jacob Lievense, a bookkeeper, and Lola Vance Lievense, a zoology teacher. Maggie grew up during the Great Depression and went to college during World War II. She graduated from Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa, and it was there from a visiting lecturer that she first learned of pacifism and the work of the Quakers.”
Maggie Funderburg’s long association with Philadelphia and the Quakers began during World War II, when she came to Philadelphia to be an aide at the Byberry State Hospital for her college senior thesis. Working there was one of the great adventures of her life, she told friends and family members, and it included a hitchhiking trip with coworkers to New York’s Times Square to celebrate peace with Japan.
Funderburg joined an American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) work camp in 1948, where she helped build a pottery studio at North Carolina’s Penland School of Handicrafts. She then went to a work camp in Goettingen, Germany, where she helped build houses for refugee families from the East Zone. Two more years in Germany followed, working in refugee camps and the AFSC offices.
Back in Philadelphia, she chose to live in Powelton Village in one of the Friendship Cooperative houses, where she met George Funderburg. The two were married at the First Unitarian Church, went on to have the three daughters, then separated in 1972. Maggie lived in Powelton for more than 50 years, where she was a community activist, co-founding a babysitting cooperative, writing the “Over the Fencepost” column for the Powelton Post and serving as a Democratic committeeperson.
According to Marny Walsh, a long-time friend, “Maggie had the rare combination of a commitment to worthy causes and a great sense of humor, which enabled her to maintain lifelong friendships with those helping to rebuild houses after World War II in Germany to running ‘The Attic’ (charity thrift shop) for 10 years well into her 90s at Cathedral Village, benefiting the employees and the years in between raising her family and running a B&B in Powelton Village.”
In 1959, Funderburg joined with a group of neighbors and friends to establish a cooperatively owned beach house in Harvey Cedars, N.J., a former Coast Guard dormitory that still operates today. Top O’ the Dunes, as it’s called, was the site of many joyous family holidays that included highly competitive ping-pong matches dominated by Funderburg for decades. Her daughters said she vanquished her opponents with a killer backhand spin developed during her high school days.
“For many summers,” daughter Margaret Funderburg told the Local, her mother “piled us girls into her car and drove us out to Little Birch Lake in Minnesota, where her parents had taken over a small resort. Her sister, Louise, who predeceased her, ran the resort for many years, and the annual visits helped Maggie and us maintain strong connections with her family.”
Once her children were in school, Funderburg launched a 20-year career as an early education teacher in the Get Set and Follow Through programs, then went on to teach in Philadelphia’s public schools. In addition to working full-time and raising three rambunctious girls, she earned a master’s degree in early childhood education from Temple University. In the late 1970s, she arranged an exchange year with a teacher from Brighton, England, cementing her status as an Anglophile.
Upon retirement, Funderburg turned her house into a bed and breakfast, which connected her to a global community of new friends in Finland, Australia and Haiti.
Her interests “included decades of studying Iyengar yoga and volunteering at the Morris Arboretum, where she was honored for 30 years of service,” Lise Funderburg said. “Travel was a great passion, and she roamed far and wide with friends and Elderhostel, on boat trips and bicycle adventures. She loved word games and took no prisoners when it came to Scrabble. Maggie played the piano and loved to sing.
“She was a longtime member of Philadelphia’s Singing City Choir, and when she moved to Cathedral Village in 2014, she joined its chorus. She worked in their greenhouse, joined a German translation group and book club, and volunteered at the Chestnut Hill Library. She cultivated a plot in the Cathedral Village community garden, dispensing zinnias and sungold tomatoes to all who would take them.”
In addition to her daughters, Maggie Funderburg is survived by granddaughter Phoebe Funderburg-Moore; son-in-law John Howard; nieces Carol Venezia, Elizabeth Huebner and Marjorie Huebner; Freyja Howard, Jason Howard, Adelaide Moschler, Ebo Nunoo, Sareba Nunoo and Bowen Diamond as well as many, many friends and admirers.
A celebration of her life will be scheduled in the fall. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Morris Arboretum or World Central Kitchen.
Len Lear can be reached at lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com.
