Margaret Hickey

Margaret Buchanan Hickey, 90, died on December 28, 2007 at the Brighton Gardens in Columbia, Maryland. She was a homemaker, substitute teacher, long-time volunteer for Meals On Wheels, and a founding member of Trinity Presbyterian Church, Arlington, Virginia, and a current member of Beech Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Hendersonville, Tennessee. She was a graduate of Beech School in Shackle Island (now Hendersonville) and Gallatin High School, Gallatin, TN. She was also a 1939 graduate of Vanderbilt University, where she also received a Master of Arts in Mathematics in 1941. She taught high school mathematics in Hendersonville, and worked for the U.S. Employment Commission monitoring migrant workers as they moved from the rural south to the automobile manufacturing centers during World War II. As a teacher her subject of choice was math, but as a substitute teacher she was assigned whatever there was a need: from art class to boys gym. No matter the discipline she always found out a way to include a bit of mathematical theory in the class, believing eventually everyone needs to understand a little algebra. She was raised in Shackle Island, Tennessee, on a family farm claimed in the mid-eighteen century when the area was America's western frontier. She was the daughter of Dr. Robert Norman Buchanan and Margaret Terry Buchanan of Shackle Island, and the sister of Dr. Robert Norman Buchanan, Jr. of Nashville, and William Thomas Buchanan of Chicago. She was the granddaughter of William Lee Terry and Sarah Garrison Terry of Shackle Island, and Governor John Price Buchanan and Francis McGill Buchanan, of Murfreesboro, TN. She traveled widely, visiting more than 40 countries. Her husband Thomas J. Hickey died in 1985. Originally of Lowell, Massachusetts, he was a patent examiner and later a director of the United States Patent Office. She is survived by: her sons, Thomas James Hickey, Jr. of Clarksville, MD, and Robert Terry Hickey, of New York, NY; her daughter-in-law Rosemary K. Hickey; her grandchildren Kathleen Anna Hickey and William Thomas Hickey; her nephews Robert Norman Buchanan III, John Blackman Buchanan, Richard Allen Buchanan, Alexander Blackman Buchanan; her nieces Jane Buchanan King Corcoran and Carol Buchanan Wallace; and her many grand nieces and nephews. Funeral will be on Monday, January 31 at 11 a.m. at Beech Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Hendersonville, Tennessee, with burial to follow at the Historic Beech Cemetery. Contributions in her memory should be sent to Historic Beech Cemetery Association, c/o Robert L. Worsham, 2025 New Hope Road, Hendersonville, TN 37075.