The Gus and Margie Hart Dining Hall, known as The Caf on campus, is named for this long-serving and much-loved trustee and her husband. 

Granddaughter of the College’s fifth president, Rev. James G.K. McClure, Hart joined the College’s Board of Trustees in January 1979, and served “with deep, continuing devotion over the past four decades,” President Stephen Schutt said. “No one who knew Margie could fail to love her. She was remarkable in her zest for life, her desire to do good, her belief in progress, and her ability to inspire others through the force of her own incredible example. Memories of Margie will burn brightly for many years to come.”

Born in Chicago on January 3, 1922, the daughter of R. Douglas and Harriet McClure Stuart, Hart spent her early years in Lake Forest and attended the Bell School there before attending Miss Hall’s School in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. After high school, she returned to Lake Forest and graduated from The University of Chicago in 1944.

The granddaughter of a Presbyterian minister, Hart was active in The First Presbyterian Church of Lake Forest, and served for many years as trustee and Board Chair of McCormick Theological Seminary, where her grandfather had been it’s first president. She was a life trustee of Lake Forest College and Lake Forest Open Lands. She was active in many civic and charitable organizations serving on several boards, including WTTW, The National Parks Conservation Association, Cotton Bay Foundation in Eleuthera, Bahamas and, in the 1980s, the Department of Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Armed Services.

Hart greatly enjoyed traveling and did so throughout the world in part through her husband Gus’s leadership of the International Division of Quaker Oats. She constantly pushed herself to learn more and read more, and never shied away from discussions about politics or world affairs.

A memorial service will be held on Friday, May 17, at 2 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church in Lake Forest.