Margretta Hazel Lawery Hammerquist
OBITUARY
Margretta Hazel Lawery Hammerquist, known as Peggy, passed at Piedmont Gardens, Oakland, at 103, on May 13, 2026. With the care of Continuum Hospice Program, her daughter Karen, her son Kirk and staff of the Skilled Nursing Program she died after a long life well lived.
Peggy was born at her home on December 11, 1922 in Jersey City, New Jersey to William Lawery and Hazel Halkyer Lawery. Her parents met in southern WA as her Finnish father was the rural postman and delivered mail to her Danish mother on his route. They married and her father got a job as a Pullman Conductor on the Southern Pacific Railroad. They had two children, Estelle, and Peggy, 5 years apart. Life during the Depression was painful but her mother creatively found large homes to rent that their family could share with boarders for extra income.
Her older sister, Estelle Lawery, whom she adored, left the family to marry when Peggy was in junior high. Peggy spent her childhood in Oakland, and graduated from Oakland High School in 1941 and was accepted at University of California (CAL) after high school. She studied undergraduate Social Sciences and then graduated with her master’s degree in Social Work with her goal of being a psychiatric social worker. While at UC Berkeley she met Joseph Hammerquist, an engineering student and they married in 1947 at the Unitarian Church. Her husband Joe decided to make his life working for Consumer Cooperatives(or the Coop). She continued to work as a social worker in high schools and elementary schools in the Bay Area. They purchased a large older home in Berkeley, renovated it and raised two children, Karen and Kirk. She was thrilled to be a professional woman, married, have two children, a beautiful home and be politically active in the Bay Area community–re: civil rights, anti-war demonstrations, consumer rights, and democracy. In the 1960s the family discovered the beauty of the Hawaiian Islands and went every summer after that.
Joseph Hammerquist and she divorced after nearly 25 years of marriage. She purchased a 40 y/o bungalow/ home in N. Berkeley. She took care of it for 40 years by adding stained glass windows, updated kitch/bathrooms while preserving the charm. She quit smoking and took up counted cross stitchery and adopted her cat Muffin.
Her yard flourished as did her family that she cooked for and counseled –her children, grand and nieces and nephews. She met monthly with her 4-5 closest women friends .. “gourmet club” and played mahjong. Even with amazing health, the 15 concrete steps up to her Berkeley bungalow became too difficult for her.
At age 92 she moved to her own apartment in Piedmont Gardens, an Oakland senior facility to spend time with her friends. She started the Social Work Committee to help residents transition to Piedmont Gardens. She lived there for 8 years before a difficult fall resulted in her going to skilled nursing that she resided in for 2.5 years.
She was preceded in death by the tragic passing of her grandson, Justin Dawson, and her great grandsons, Robert Dawson and Tyson Mehus, and the passing of her mother, Hazel Lawery, her father, William Lawery, her sister, Estelle Lawery, and her husband, Joseph Hammerquist.
We will miss her dearly and as her great grandson, Joseph said as she was peacefully dying, “You taught me kindness Grammy.” Family thanks all who loved her and to Continuum/Hospice and the many staff at Piedmont Gardens of Oakland, Ca. who also loved her. Aloha’oe.