by Betsie Freeman, Omaha World-Herald, May 11, 2014
Most people spent New Year’s Eve 1999 either celebrating
or worrying about Y2K — the impact of the new millennium on everyday life.
Never one to follow convention, Margaret Sheehan
Fitzgerald Gallagher did something different: With her stepdaughter, she
traveled to Nevada and joined a nuclear weapons protest at a testing site. She
was 81 at the time.
Friends and relatives expected nothing less. Gallagher,
known as Peg, had a passion for social justice issues such as racism, the death
penalty and wars she considered to be unjust.
“War and violence — she was just completely and utterly
against it,” said granddaughter Joan Manriquez of New York City. “She
spent a lot of time and energy protesting that.”
Gallagher was arrested several times, including the day
she participated in a “die-in” at the then-Qwest Center Omaha in 2009, when she
was 91. She spent the last year at Immanuel Fontenelle nursing home, and died
Tuesday at age 96 after a bad fall over the weekend.
Son Rich Fitzgerald, an Omaha dentist, said his mom
talked to him about injustice and inequality from the time he was a young boy.
Seeing African-Americans on television, for instance, was an opportunity to talk about employment discrimination. If he was a manager when he grew up, she told him, she expected him to hire minorities.
The lessons stuck. Fitzgerald said he accompanied his mom
to protests against the Iraq War on Dodge Street during rush hour each
Wednesday for several months.
Gallagher herself faced discrimination. After her first
husband died in the early 1960s, she needed work and applied for a job as a
real estate saleswoman. When she was turned down because of her gender, she
started Shamrock Realty with a friend, breaking a barrier in that industry. Ten
years later, she broke another one when she became the first woman agent at the
Byron Reed Co., her son said.
Gallagher was born in Omaha and graduated in 1936 from
Central High School, where she was the prom queen. She got a teaching
certificate from Duchesne College. She married Eugene Fitzgerald in the early
1940s, and he died in 1963. She married Joe Gallagher, who also was widowed, in
1968.
She had a reputation for perseverance.
“She was gentle and not judgmental, but still very
persistent. When she saw something that she felt was wrong, she would continue
to work against the wrong any way she could,” Rich Fitzgerald said.
She used that persistence and her powers of persuasion to
put together an anti-war coalition of rabbis, priests, pastors and
representatives of Islam. They filled St. Cecilia Cathedral for a prayer for
peace service during the first Persian Gulf War.
Gallagher was a devout Catholic who never missed Mass.
She also participated in an ecumenical Bible study group.
In 2005, she received a Women of Wisdom Award from the
University of Nebraska at Omaha Program for Women and Successful Aging. It
cited her longtime activism with the League of Women Voters and Nebraskans for
Peace. She also got a lifetime achievement award from the Douglas County
Democratic Party.
But her family came first, her son and granddaughter
said.
Besides Manriquez and Rich Fitzgerald, survivors include
sons Mike and Terry Fitzgerald, 28 other grandchildren and 47
great-grandchildren.
Scores of them will be present for Saturday’s 11 a.m.
funeral Mass at Holy Name Catholic Church, 2901 Fontenelle Blvd.
“Her zest for life, her incredible joy in her family and
her devotion to her grandchildren and children. She never let a birthday go by
without a note.”
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
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