Margaret Lee Chadwick

Chadwick, born in Spanish Fork, Utah, was the daughter of Anna Myrtilla (Wray) and Theodore Lee, a Utah Presbyterian minister, and one of eight children.[1][2] In 1910, she enrolled at Wooster College in Ohio, and then transferred to Stanford University on a scholarship.[3]

After college graduation, Chadwick accepted a teaching position in the now defunct city of Metropolis, near Elko, Nevada. After a year, she traveled to China, where her brother Paul Lee was stationed. He introduced her to Naval Officer Joseph Chadwick, who was also stationed there.[1] The couple married in Shanghai in 1921[4] and relocated to California.[5] They had three children, Theodora, also a graduate of Stanford, Joseph Jr., who also joined the Navy, and David, a pediatrician engaged in research and lecturing[1][4] and who joined the Navy as well, in its V-12 Navy College Training Program.[6]

One of her husband's final tours was to San Pedro, California. The couple enrolled their children in local schools, which both parents found unsatisfactory.[1] So, in 1935, Chadwick founded the open-air home school on the front porch of her home on Le Grande Terrace in San Pedro with four students, two of them her own sons.[7] The other two were Mark and Jean Roessler, whose parents Fred and Edna, were early residents on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.[1] Through deeding more than 33 acres from developer Frank A. Vanderlip for a permanent site and the initial buildings paid for by the Robert Roessler family, in 1939, the school moved to a hilltop in Palos Verdes with 75 day and boarding students, and was the first high school on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.[8] Her husband, Lt. Commander Joseph Chadwick, helped run the school.[1]

In 1963, the Chadwicks retired. At the same time, the Roessler-Chadwick Foundation was formed and trustees were named.[7] Margaret Chadwick wrote in her 1978 book A Dipperful of Humanity, her emphasis on the school was a "dedication to enrolling a student body that reflects a broad economic, cultural and ethnic mix," mirroring the real world and stressing the importance of attracting a student body that represented “a dipperful of humanity.”[9]

In October 2018, her youngest son, David Chadwick, 13 months before his 2020 death,[10] was given the 2019 Distinguished Alumnus Award from Chadwick School, from which he graduated in 1942.[6]

Chadwick wrote three nonfiction books. The first, Looking at the Sunset Upside Down: The Autobiography of Margaret Lee Chadwick, was released in 1976 by Omega Books.

In 1978, Anchor Press released A Dipperful of Humanity: The Chadwick Adventure in Education about the Chadwick School.[7]

Her third book, The Lee Family of Spanish Fork, Utah, was released in paperback by Anchor Press in 1979. It outlined Chadwick's Utah heritage.[12]

Her husband died at age 77 on August 13, 1970. Chadwick, called “Aunt Maggie” by her students, died at 91 on May 2, 1984.[1] She was the grandmother of actress and singer Kate Morgan Chadwick.[13]

• Margaret Lee Chadwick at Find a Grave
• Joseph Chadwick at Find a Grave