Marget Breckner Lippincott was born February 23, 1942 in St. Louis, MO, and died May 12, 2017 in La Antigua, Guatemala, where she moved recently in pursuit of a dream.

 

Marget Breckner Lippincott was the only child of Jane McMillan Breckner and Kenneth Duus Breckner.  She was a graduate of John Bourroughs School Class of 1960, Washington University Class of 1964, attended the University of Missouri and received her MA in Teaching from Webster University.

 

She married John Shewmaker in 1964, and had two sons with him, Michael Shewmaker (b) 1966 and David Shewmaker (b) 1968.  She Married Peter Lippincott Feb. 25, 1978, with whom she helped to raise her step-son, Daniel Lippincott (b) 1974.

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Marget began her career as a teacher working in early childhood education at the New City School in St. Louis.  She later went on to co-found, with Dora Gianoulakis, Patricia (Budde) Barber, John Geers, and Peter Lippincott the Childgrove School, which had it's original location at Fontbonne College, before moving to the old Masonic Temple at Delmar Blvd. and Trinity Ave. (Now the Church of Scientology).

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She went on to teach at all levels of education in St. Louis, including at Mary Institute, John Bourroughs, University of Missouri, St. Louis,  Harris-Stowe State College, Meramec Community College and Florissant  Valley Community College.  It was in the community college experience that she discovered her love for adult education and life-long learning, something she practiced in her own life.  In 1990, she moved to Ft.Smith, AR to teach at West Ark Community College as a professor, later achieving tenure.  The college went on to become part of the University of Arkansas system.

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The foundation of the Childgrove School was formative in more ways than creating an educational institution. The school itself was named for an English Country Dance, a type of set dance you might see in a Jane Austen movie.  She had been interested in folk music before her marriage to John Shewmaker, and they both embraced the folk and traditional music of St. Louis.  Various friendships, took her to nationally significant folk festivals.  Around 1976, she was a major force in starting a contra and traditional square dance group in St. Louis.  The group had its beginnings at the Childgrove School at the schools original location at Fontbonne College (eight couples or so on carpeted floor to recorded music with Peter calling the dances, is how son David remembers it), before taking off after her marriage to Peter Lippincott in 1978.  By that point the school was at the Delmar location, and the wedding celebration featured a contra dance on a wooden floor, and Marget said that it was that event that made the dance scene explode.  The Childgrove Country Dancers danced for years at the school before moving to the Church of the Holy Communion at Jackson and Delmar, and then on from there.  Over 40 years after its initial inception, the Childgrove Country Dancers are still dancing.  As part of the community, she and her husband Peter often had a monthly "potluck and sing" which was announced on the dance flyers that were mailed out to area dancers.

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Because of her role in building community through song and dance as an organizer and dancer, she went on to serve on the National Council of the Country Dance and Song Society, a national traditional arts organization started in 1915 by the English folklorist Cecil Sharp.  Her son David has continued that legacy through his own service work with CDSS and other organizations, and her son Michael is an active musician and dancer.  All three sons worked at the folk dance and song retreat Pinewoods Camp, in Plymouth, MA.  The early experience at Family Week at Pinewoods was instrumental in building a contra and square dance community in St. Louis.

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In college, Marget studied medieval studies along with English.  Her numerous trips abroad always had a focus on history, architecture, and art: the humanities were her great love.  Eventually she and her husband Peter bought a 15th Century house in the Southwest of France in the Lot-et-Garonne, which they have been lovingly restoring over the years on their return trips to France.  She ran several small cultural tours in France and Italy through her project Micro-Tours.   As a scholar she was allowed in to the original Lascaux Cave near Montignac in the Dordogne.  The cave, which has 600 17,000 year old paintings, was closed to the public by the French government in 1963, so getting in was quite a feat. In the early 80s, she was part of a cultural trip to Beijing as part of a St. Louis-Beijing sister cities cultural tour before China had fully opened.  She has also traveled extensively in Central America, in search of the right climate to retire to.  She and Peter found a home in La Antigua, Guatemala near their friends Ellen and Irene.

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Peter and Marget moved to La Antigua in January of 2017.  In May, after surgery, she developed heart failure, and died very early the morning of May 12, 2017.  

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She is survived by her husband Peter, sons Michael, David and Daniel and her grandaughter Anna.