Marguerite Helen Velte Hasbrouck (1933 - 2023)

[Marguerite at Silver Bay on Lake George]

My mother, Marguerite Helen Velte Hasbrouck — some knew her as Marguerite Helen, others as Mugs, others as Mimi — died early Sunday morning, 4 June 2023, at the nursing home across the street from Newton-Wellesley Hospital where she had been in hospice care since August 2021.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given my peripatetic occupation, I learned of her death by text message over the North Atlantic while on a flight home from Europe to the USA. But I’ve been travelling from San Francisco to Boston to visit Marguerite every month or two since I was vaccinated for COVID-19, and I had a good visit with her last month. Other friends have also visited her recently. My brother, Robert, was with her much of this week.

We are grateful to all the friends who helped make these last two years less difficult for Marguerite, Jim, and all our family, as well as to all those who worked with Marguerite over the years in many good causes.

[Update: Scroll down for an obituary written for Friends Journal and for details of the memorial concert, meeting, and reception on Sunday, 5 November 2023.]

Marguerite willed her body to medical teaching and research, so there will be no funeral. If you are moved to do likewise, as I have been, you can do so through the Tufts Anatomical Gift Program in the Boston area, the UCSF Willed Body Program in San Francisco, or similar programs elsewhere.

A concert, memorial meeting in the manner of Friends (Quakers), and reception will be held under the care of the Wellesley Friends Meeting on Sunday, 5 November 2023. The memorial meeting will be in a hybrid format, meaning that it will be open to participation in person or on Zoom.

Feel free to leave messages in the comments below, or to send them privately, Please let me know if you haven’t already received an e-mail message from me, and want to be notified of the memorial meeting, or if there are other people who I might not know who should be notified.

Marguerite’s partner of more than 30 years, Jim Casteris, is now living with his daughter Lynda and her family in Maine. He can be contacted at:

Jim Casteris
P.O. Box 783
Winterport, ME 04496
207-223-5031

Donations in Marguerite’s memory may be made to the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), where Marguerite volunteered in the New England regional office and served as a member of the national board of directors.

Peace and love,

Edward Hasbrouck (and Ruth Radetsky)
1130 Treat Ave.
San Francisco, CA 94110
415-824-0214
edward@hasbrouck.org

[The Remington portable typewriter, c. 1922, that my grandfather, F. Mowbray Velte, passed on to my mother, and that she passed on to me when I left for college in 1977. Note the retrofitted “Rs” key and type bar for use in India.]

Marguerite Helen Velte Hasbrouck

October 30, 1933 (Lahore, Punjab) – June 4, 2023 (Newton, Mass., USA)

Marguerite Helen Velte Hasbrouck was born in Lahore, Punjab (today Pakistan), where her father was a professor of English at Forman Christian College. When she was three years old, her parents brought her back to the U.S. in search of better treatment for tuberculosis and osteomyelitis in her legs. A year later, she was told she should give up hope of walking unaided. “That’s what you think”, she told the doctor, sticking out her tongue at him. She cast off her leg braces and crutches not long afterward, became a strong walker, swimmer, and paddler, and delighted in defying anyone who underestimated her strength, endurance — or wit.

Due to her childhood illnesses, she didn’t start formal schooling until eighth grade, but she graduated from high school at sixteen and earned a degree in comparative government and religion at Barnard College. “I thought of being a lawyer”, she said decades later, “but I was timid, and law school wasn’t what women did.”

Marguerite raised three children – “each very different, and each of whom I helped to be their different selves”, she would say proudly – and worked at a variety of administrative, editorial, and legal jobs including at Wellesley College, where her role included representing the college to the Wellesley Chamber of Commerce, and later as editor of a computer industry trade journal. As co-chair of the Bates School PTA, Marguerite co-founded the Bates Pumpkin Festival, which became an annual town institution that has continued for more than fifty years. After getting involved in Wellesley town politics through the League of Women Voters, she served as an elected member of the Town Meeting and the School Committee and an appointed member of the Advisory Committee.

In 1987, as administrator of the Arlington Street Church in Boston, she testified at a Congressional hearing on break-ins at churches that offered sanctuary to refugees from U.S. wars in Central America. She spent the last decade before her retirement as a paralegal at the Nature Conservancy, where she took special joy in being able to help protect the place she felt most at home, Lake George in the Adirondacks. But she most wanted to be thought of as a writer and a musician. She played organ and piano, sang, and served on the board of the Old West Organ Society.

Marguerite was a member of the Wellesley Friends Meeting and a regular attender for almost thirty years of the Friends Meeting at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Norfolk, which she had helped organize in response to a request from one of the incarcerated men. She was one of the founders of the Massachusetts Criminal Justice Policy Coalition, facilitated Alternatives to Violence Project workshops at prisons throughout New England, and received a lifetime achievement award from the Massachusetts Department of Correction for her volunteer work.

Marguerite was active in Quaker witness for peace and justice, including as clerk of several committees of the Wellesley Friends Meeting and the New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, as a contributor to Peacework magazine and a volunteer at the New England office of the American Friends Service Committee, and as a member of AFSC’s national board of directors.

As a legal worker, Marguerite served on the board of the Massachusetts Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) and worked as a volunteer with the NLG Military Law Task Force and the GI Rights Hotline.

Marguerite is survived by her partner of more than 30 years, Jim Casteris (P.O. Box 783, Winterport, ME 04496) and his family; son Robert Hasbrouck of Boxborough, MA; daughter Dorothy McDonald and son-in-law Bob McDonald of Sudbury, MA; son Edward Hasbrouck and daughter-in-law Ruth Radetsky of San Francisco, CA; grandson Kyle A. H. McDonald of Concord, NH; sister Lois Carstens of West Brandywine, PA; and many friends.

A concert and memorial meeting in the manner of Friends (Quakers) will be held under the care of the Wellesley Friends Meeting in hybrid format, in person in Wellesley and online, on Sunday, 5 November 2023. All are welcome.

Donations in Marguerite’s memory may be made to AFSC.

Memorial for Marguerite Helen Velte Hasbrouck

Sunday, 5 November 2023, Wellesley, MA, and on Zoom
(download program; Zoom link sent by e-mail to those who RSVP’d)

Concert and meeting for worship in the manner of Friends (Quakers)
Houghton Chapel, Wellesley College campus (and on Zoom), 12:30-2:30 p.m. EST

Meeting for worship, 1-2 p.m. EST; music before and after the meeting by Kevin Murphy, organ, and Cynthia Schwan, piano. Parking will be available in the Founders Lot next to the Chapel.

All friends are welcome to a reception to follow at the Wellesley Friends Meetinghouse, 26 Benvenue Street, Wellesley, MA, 3-5 p.m. EST. Parking is available at the Meetinghouse, which is 1 mile from the Chapel.

For distant friends and those unable to join in person, the memorial concert and meeting will be made accessible on Zoom. Information for Zoom participation has been sent to those who RSVP’d. If you haven’t gotten it, check your spam folder or contact me directly.

If you plan to come from far away, please RSVP to Edward Hasbrouck, edward@hasbrouck.org, 415-824-0214. There’s ample space for all in the Chapel, but it would be helpful to have an idea of expected attendance.

Feel free to contact me if you have questions about accommodations, transportation, etc. or would like to get together before or after the memorial. Ruth and I plan to be in Wellesley for a few days around this date, as well as visiting Marguerite’s partner Jim Casteris in Maine.

I look forward to sharing music, memories, and food with you.

Please share this invitation with other family and friends of Marguerite whose e-mail addresses I might not have, or who might not have gotten my messages if they were wrongly filtered out as spam.

[Marguerite Helen and Edward Hasbrouck in the lobby of the Federal courthouse in Boston after Edward was sentenced for refusal to register for the draft, 14 January 1983. AP photo published on the front page of the Boston Globe and in numerous other newspapers. Most used the caption suggested by the wire service, “Hug from Mom”.]

Some writings by Marguerite, including some we wrote together:

• Comments to the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service (2019)
• Red Sox fans and the Boston police (23 October 2004)
• Who will fight these wars? (by Marguerite Helen and Edward Hasbrouck, Peacework, March 2003)
• Kashmiri People Struggle For Human Rights And Self-Determination (by Marguerite Helen and Edward Hasbrouck, Peacework, September 1990)
• Holiday greetings to U.S. Attorney William Weld (unpublished letter to the Boston Globe, 22 December 1982, following my conviction on 16 December 1982 for refusal to register for the draft)