Margareta K. Pollard passed away on December 24, 2020. She was born to Joseph and Maria Ascherl in the small Bavarian town of Ullersricht, Germany. Margareta married Lewis H. Pollard, who preceded her in 2016. Margareta was an outstanding homemaker and loved to knit, work in her garden and was a Eucharistic Minister at St. Joseph Catholic Church for many years. She enjoyed traveling the world with Lewis while in the Army; together with their daughter, Sonja. Margareta worked part time at Laurel Health Foods and enjoyed the interaction with customers. When her sister, Anna, asked her to help with caring for their mother, Maria, she pitched right in for 8 years. In 1993, she became a caregiver for Lewis, who had a massive stroke, but lived another 23 years. Margareta is survived by daughter, Sonja (Ted); grandchildren, Chris (Emily), Eric, Adam, (Roxana) and great grandson, Charles Lewis Lindsay-Smith; many brothers, a sister, nieces, nephews, all of whom she loved and touched deeply. May she rest in peace.
Aunt Margareta began to exert her beneficent influence over my life as her first nephew from its earliest stages a week after I was born when she served at age 19 as godmother for my baptism in the U.S. Army chapel at the Weiden in der Oberpfalz kaserne. This foreshadowed her lifelong interest in my welfare and that of the numerous other nieces and nephews that followed. Indeed, throughout her 88 years, she was a stalwart exemplar of Christian charity in all aspects of her life such as her longtime service as a Eucharistic Minister and the extended care and assistance she rendered so selflessly and uncomplainingly to her mother, Maria, and husband , Lewis, in their final illnesses as well as to Warren, one of her brothers-in-law, as he contended with the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease. She performed these acts of mercy with exceptional forbearance and refrained from lamenting the impositions on her time and stamina that these efforts entailed.
She was no less admirable in fulfilling more routine social obligations, for I well remember the hospitality she accorded me and my parents when we visited Maryland while living in Illinois and New York in the 1950’s and 1960’s. She followed my academic attainments with interest.
Aunt Margareta will be remembered in a perpetual Mass enrollment at Saint Pio’s monastery in Italy. May the Lord bestow His ineffable peace upon her, and may she intercede for all of us from her celestial abode!—John J. Joswick (Nephew)
It was heart-rending to learn that the only remaining of my four sisters had died suddenly on Christmas Eve last year, for I had felt a particular bond with Margareta given our closeness in age after she departed from Maryland several years ago to live in Arizona with her daughter and son-in-law. Speaking with her always rekindled memories of childhood and her generosity as well as her fondness for pranks to which my older sister Anna and I sometimes fell victim. When Margareta was about 8 years old, she was sent occasionally to a farm in a neighboring village to perform chores. She then had an aversion to chickens and feathers, and I once walked several miles to rescue her and then hid her in the attic lest anyone discover she had returned before her tasks were completed. I also hold pleasant memories of Margareta and Lewis taking the time to socialize with my late husband, Chester, at Fort Meade when we shopped at the commissary weekly, for his ability to communicate had been severely compromised following a massive cerebral hemorrhage in 1984. They also made the effort to visit Chester often when he was languishing at a care facility in 2006 and 2007 before his sad death. May Margareta rest in peace! —Katharina Joswick (Sister)