By Ben Green
Margaret Veir, founding president of the Christopher Street Block Association and active member of the Federation to Preserve the Greenwich Village Waterfront and the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, died on Sept. 15 in Los Angeles.
Maggie, as she was known to all, was a graduate of Parson’s School of Design and a fashion designer when not volunteering for civic good works. The arc of her life in between took her all over the Orient, Europe and U.S. into cutting rooms as a designer, boardrooms as a director and classrooms as a teacher. She designed clothes for top designers Charlotte Ford, Diana Vreeland and Herman Geist. She also created fashions for Mary McFadden Knitwear, Albert Nippon Knitware and her own line. She traveled widely on merchandising and production trips.
From 1976-1982, she also performed costume restoration work for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and helped design and produce shows for the Costume Institute of the Museum.
She married Curt Hettinger at Niagara Falls in New York on Sept. 18, 1989, and became Maggie Veir-Hettinger. They moved to Pasadena in 1993, and she turned to community and educational passions. She was a founding board member of the Arroyo
Heritage Foundation and on the board of directors of the South Pasadena Preservation Foundation. She was the program director of the Children’s Center for the Arts in Pasadena from 2001-’04, touching the lives of thousands of children with art. At the time of her death, she was due to be teaching at the Chouinard School of Art and was an active elder in the Calvary Presbyterian Church in South Pasadena.
She was a consummate storyteller, a gifted cook and gardener, talented flute player and avid mystery reader. She helped stray animals, lost people and good causes. “Life is a banquet and most people are starving to death” was Maggie’s motto and she ate well and shared the feast generously.
Memorial Services were held at the Calvary Presbyterian Church in South Pasadena on Sept. 25, 2004. The Maggie Veir Art Scholarship has been set up in her name. Tax-deductible donations can be made to the South Pasadena Alumni Association (S.P.H.S.A.A.) and mailed to P.O. Box 1219, South Pasadena, Cal., 91031. The checks’s payee line should be to the nonprofit S.P.H.S.A.A. and written on the check should be “For the Maggie Veir Art Scholarship.”
