Meg Hagemann | PASSAGES
Published 10:02 am Monday, October 10, 2016
Meg Hagemann, an activist, health educator, and long-time Bainbridge Island resident, died in her sleep Sept. 14, 2016. She was 79.
Meg was born May 11, 1937, in Lansing, Michigan. Her first five years were spent with her maternal grandparents, and most of her next eight years were spent in a series of foster homes before moving in with her mother.
Meg met her future husband Ed Hagemann while studying at the University of Washington, and the couple spent time in Berkeley while Ed completed a master’s degree in naval architecture. They bought their first home in West Port Madison in the early 1960s and had a foster child before adopting Ian and then Clark in the late 1960s.
Meg founded and led Berry Day Care Center for the children of migrant berry pickers and then Bainbridge Day Care Center to create a safe place for children in the 1970s. After separating from Ed, she opened The Captain’s House as the Island’s first bed-and-breakfast in 1982.
She completed a degree from UW in cross-cultural community health education and found work as a health educator with Kitsap County, winning several statewide awards for her work on initiatives to outlaw smoking in foster homes and promote bicycle safety for children. She continued to host bed-and-breakfast guests after retiring from the county until shortly before selling her home to a couple who had been bed and breakfast guests.
She then moved into the Madison Avenue House assisted living community, where she worked to ensure that the residents had healthy meals while fighting an increasingly severe case of Alzheimer’s disease until it became necessary to move her to an off-island facility in May of 2016 so that her increased needs could be met. Her contributions to the island’s character and community will be missed.
She is survived by her brother Mel Ingold (Tucson, Arizona) and her sons Clark Chase (Edmonds) and Ian K. Hagemann (Seattle). Her body was cremated on Friday, Sept. 16 and her ashes will be scattered in a private ceremony. There will be no memorial, and the family asks that any remembrances be made to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
