Margaret Ann "Peggy" Stacks class of 1971

STACKS, MARGARET (PEG) A. East Lansing Peg was born in Alpena, Mich, on Feb. 26, 1953. She died on May 25, 1979 on board American Airlines Flight 191 in Chicago. Peg graduated from Okemos High School in 1971 and received a B.A. in Religion and Philosophy from Michigan State University in 1975. She was employed as the manager of Jocundry's Bookstore in East Lansing. Peg is survived by Fred and Margaret Stacks of Okemos; John Barnes of East Lansing and three brothers, David of Okemos, F. Douglas of Lansing, and Don of Mobile Ala. Memorial services will be held at 10 a.m. Friday, June 1 at St. Katherine's Episcopal Church in Williamston and 10 a.m. Saturday June 2 in St. James Episcopal Church in Cheboygan, Mich. The family asks that, in lieu of flowers, a contribution be made to a trust fund to be named later.

Lansing State Journal (Lansing, Michigan 30 May 1979)

 

Margaret Ann "Peggy" Stacks, only daughter of Frederick W. (1924-2014) and Margaret Add (Wheat) (1925-2007) Stacks, was born 23 February 1953 in Alpena, Alpena County, Michigan.  She graduated from Okemos High School in 1971.  Peggy was killed in an airliner crash 25 May 1979 in the Chicago, Illinois O'Hare International Airport vicinity.  O'Hare Airport lies within in Cook County but extends into DuPage County.

Lansing State Journal (Lansing, Michigan) Sunday 27 May 1979

 

 

 

 

5 FRIENDS, COMPETITORS CRASH VICTIMS

Up until 3:00 p.m. Friday, May 25 the five Lansing area residents aboard American Airlines Flight 191 were friends and competitors in a common vacation.

In the end, that vacation - and their love of books - brought them together to share the tragic fate of 296 other passengers aboard the doomed DC-10 which plummeted 2,000 feet to the ground only minutes after takeoff from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

All five were bound for Los Angeles' Convention Center for the Saturday opening of the American Bookseller's Association's annual four-day trade show and convention.

Three of the five were employees of Jocundry's Books in East Lansing.

The other two were employed by Suits News Company in Lansing.

All are now dead - the aftermath of the worst air disaster in U.S. aviation history.

They are  John Robison, 40, 327 University Drive, East Lansing.  Robison, owner of Jocundry's Books and former Michigan State University English instructor, opened the store two and a half years ago.  He is survived by his wife, Madra, and his 8 year-old son, Benjamin.

- Gail Dhariwal, 28, 593 Virginia Avenue, East Lansing.  Mrs. Dhariwal, married to Cyrus Miller, was an employee of Jocundry's Book Store.  They had no children.

- Margaret (Peggy) Stacks, 26, 650 Wayland Avenue, East Lansing.  She was a manager at Jocundry's Books.  Ms. Stacks, only daughter of Frederick and Margaret Stacks of Okemos, is survived by her parents and brothers David, Frederick and Donald.

- Douglas Ruble, 29, 307 West Madison Avenue, DeWitt Township.  Ruble was chief book buyer for Suits News where he had worked since graduating from DeWitt High School in 1967.  He was graduated from MSU in 1971.  He is survived by his wife, Jenny, and four children, Doug, 9, Laura, 4, Barbara, 3 and Sally, 1.

- Marcia E. Platt, 26, of 1438 Haslett Road, East Lansing.  She was assistant book buyer for Suits News Company where she had worked since 1970.  She is a graduate of East Lansing High School and MSU where she studied English.  Ms. Platt is survived by her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Platt of Sacramento, Calif., and two sisters Karen Platt of San Diego, Calif. and Marilyn Porter of Oskaloosa, Iowa.

Besides being common victims of a mind-boggling tragedy, many of the passengers aboard Flight 010 shared some kind of interest in the publication industry.  Many were bound for the same convention as the five from the Lansing area.

Bulletins on the airplane crash traveled quickly over the electronic media late Friday afternoon.

Acquaintances of the five dead say they were overcome with dread the moment they heard the news that a Chicago to Los Angeles flight had crashed, although confirmation of their suspicions that any of the five might have been on the plane wasn't to come from American Airlines until six hours later that day.

Friends, relatives, and coworkers of the Lansing victims were uniform in their descriptions of the five dead as people with an intense literary bent, artistically inclined, and exceptionally intelligent.

Ms. Platt's sister, Karen, was driving from San Diego, site of the second worst disaster in aviation history only eight months ago, to L.A. Friday afternoon to meet her sister when she heard news of the crash on her car radio.

She returned immediately to San Diego to call her father and inform him of the news.

"The official notification didn't come until about 9 p.m. your time," said the senior Platt in a telephone conversation between Lansing and Sacramento.

"It's a terrible shock...one of those things that just doesn't happen to you or your family," he said, his voice beginning to waver.

She was a very creative person...she was just beginning to take her graduate courses in creative writing at Michigan State University," he said.  "We had just seen her a couple of months ago.

"We kept in pretty close contact - we were pretty close, we were pretty close..." he continued in a whisper veiled by muted weeping.

Douglas Ruble was a promising young executive at Suits News Co. and was representing the firm, along with Ms. Platt, at the convention.

He had risen through the ranks to assume the position of literature purchasing agent, second in importance only to the company's president and owner, Alan Suits.

"When we heard about the crash, we called immediately to find out if that was the flight they were booked on," Suits said Saturday.  "We didn't know until 10 p.m. that they had actually gotten on the plane.

"Doug is known in the book publishing industry for his knowledge of books," Suits said.

"It is a big shock to our company because they were the top executives at Suits News...they were both very popular, very talented and capable young people," he said.  "It is a major loss to us, to their families, and the entire book industry.

Another friend said that Suits spent four or five hours Friday night sitting by and trying to comfort the young widow of the popular Ruble, who was described as not having "an enemy in the world."

"We all held the hope that Dog hadn't gotten on the plane," said Ruble's brother, Charles.

We all waited...but the longer we held out hope, the worse it got," he said.

"We're very shocked - it's something that comes and we just don't want to accept it, but reality came with all the confirmations that he was one of the dead and we've just got to give up not believing." he said.

"People at the store called me to say there was a crash...at that time, no one knew the flight number," said Mrs. Robison.

"But then on the radio, I heard it was an L.A. flight that crashed, and that's when I started getting worried," she said.

"I just don't know what to say," she said of the confirmation of her husband's death last Friday night.  "It's a tragedy...three fine people have been lost."

"He'll really be missed in East Lansing - - he had tremendous sense of community, " said neighbor Tom Husband of Robison, whose bookstore was known not just as a bookstore but as a gathering place for artists, writers and entertainers.

"He'd invite poets in to do readings or whatever and break open a case of champagne," said Husband, top aide to House Speaker Bobby Crim.  "At his house, too, he socialized with writers and artists.  He was a literary intellectual.

"He may have been physically big, with a gruff voice, but he was the kindest man I ever knew," Husband added.  "He was totally without guile."

Robison was also active in the amnesty international movement ("he abhorred injustice of any kind, " Husband said) and also served on the commercial committee, an advisory committee to the East Lansing Planning Commission.  There his colleagues regarded him as a visionary, whose favorite project was to someday have a large greenhouse space in downtown East Lansing.

Gail Dhariwal had been a wife for only a year.

She was interested in literature and the arts all her life.

Her husband, Cyrus, was unavailable for comment, but her brother-in-law, Tom Miller, spoke well of Mr. Dhariwal.

She was just a good person, an artist - she was heavily involved in the East Lansing art community," said Miller.

"We heard about the crash a couple hours after it happened," he said.  "Everybody was apprehensive because we knew she was headed for L.A.

"It's terrible," he said.

Another Michigan victim was Michael Misna, 47, Bellevue, manager of University Microfilms of Ann Arbor and a president of the Van Buren Township school board..