Mom closed her eyes for the last time on Wednesday, November 7 ^th , resting in her favorite chair, looking out the front window of her Gilroy California home. She was 97. Margaret Hagen – "Maggie" – and her husband Bob "Coach" Hagen raised me and my sister Karen here. We were a loving family, always with laughter.

Maggie grew up in a small mining town near Pittsburg Pennsylvania, the second youngest of three sisters and a brother. It was a modest house; for a time she shared a bed with her sisters, sleeping cross-wise. After the war, she left her home for San Francisco, seeking opportunity. At work there, she became friends with Doris Hagen, who quickly identified her as a potential bride for her Bobby. Bob and Maggie were married in 1949. The next year, Bob accepted a job teaching and coaching high school in the small farming town of Gilroy (population 5,000). Maggie soon gave birth to Karen, and Bruce followed two years later, in 1952.

We Hagens had many friends, and our lives centered around sports: swimming with the Gilroy Gators in the summer, courtside with the Gilroy High Mustangs in the winter, and golf year-round. While Dad – she called him "Hagen" -- took center stage, Mom filled all the supporting roles. Maggie was a coal miner's daughter, and she learned homemaking skills from her Czech immigrant parents. She loved her roses and fruit trees, and put up gallons of canned fruit from Gilroy's annual harvest. Her cookies and pies were always in great demand by her children and grandchildren. The Hagens loved food, music, and road trips in the family station wagon… from regular jaunts to her sister and mother-in-law in San Francisco, to the epic cross-country journey to see her family on the East Coast.

Dad passed on far too early – in early November, 41 years ago -- but Mom carried on. She worked in Gilroy antique and collectables shops. She traveled in Europe with Bruce's mother-in-law, while keeping up her game at Gilroy Golf and Country Club.  And she was not shy about taking on City Hall, holding local officials accountable for abating neighborhood nuisances. She was generous with her grandkids Laurel, Tyler and Riley, and in October she had the pleasure of meeting her infant great-granddaughter Mei Margaret Hagen, and holding little Mei on her lap.

Maggie had a long life, good by any measure. She left many loving friends and memories. Goodbye, Mom.

Memorial Services Saturday, November 24, 2018 - 1:00 PM at Habing Family Funeral Home.