Marjorie "Margie" Hays

Lifelong Hastings resident, Marjorie D. “Margie” (Williams) Hays, 86, died of natural causes on Sunday, July 12, 2020, at Perkins Pavilion Good Samaritan Society-Hastings Village, Hastings, NE.

Graveside services will be 10 a.m. Saturday, September 5, at Greenwood Cemetery in Trumbull, NE. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Start Over Rover, Nebraska Nature Conservancy, or to a memorial of the donor’s choice. Since there are material sharing restrictions, we ask that you bring your own pen for signing the registration book or memorial envelopes. If you do not bring one, we can do that for you.

Known as Margie, she was the oldest of four girls born to Guy and Doris M. (Shultz) Williams. Margie was born in Hastings in her grandmother’s home just two blocks from where she lived for the past sixty-four years. She married Curtis E. Hays on April 6, 1951. Their first son, Michael, was born in 1952 in Corpus Christi, TX, where Curtis was stationed as a US Marine. They returned to Hastings where daughter Patricia was born in 1953. Curtis was killed in a car accident on March 3, 1956. Later that year, son Jonathan Curtis was born, but sadly died from SIDS the following February.

Margie was a homemaker but gave so much more to her community. She was an active and well-known volunteer as well as a friend to many throughout the decades she lived in Hastings. Always interested in learning, she was a charter member of the Great Books Foundation book club in Hastings starting in 1959. She was also active in Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, serving as a troop and den leader and on their respective councils. At various times she served as an officer on the boards of the League of Women Voters of Hastings, Hastings YWCA, and Planned Parenthood.

Margie’s interest in the environment was expressed through her membership in the Audubon Society and Nebraska Nature Conservancy. Through the League of Women Voters, she had become interested in water in Nebraska, and wrote many papers and participated in many water district meetings. Also passionate about recycling, she helped keep the Hastings recycling project going for many years, enlisting family and friends to help on weekends collecting papers and aluminum cans. She also worked hard to secure community donations to keep the recycling truck in repair.

Though plagued her entire adult life by a slowly debilitating neurological condition, Margie kept up her volunteer activities, becoming a volunteer teacher for English as a Second Language, teaching countless international residents of Hastings. She often gave women students driving lessons or taught them to knit, using those opportunities to help them advance their English skills. From this work, she helped found an International Club, which brought together women from other cultures with Hastings women where they shared cultural information.

As if she wasn’t busy enough, Margie also loved to knit and crochet and do other craft projects. Over the decades she made more than 100 Santa Claus Christmas stockings for friends and family. She knitted sweaters, crocheted doilies and tablecloths, and rugs, always as gifts for others. Margie knitted through every meeting she ever attended.

If you know Margie, you know she loved to entertain, and she hosted countless luncheons and dinners for family and friends. As an incredible gardener, her table was always graced by beautiful bouquets of flowers she grew and arranged herself.

Margie also was a member of the Hastings Garden Club, a pinochle club, and played bridge occasionally. She delivered Meals on Wheels and also regularly took several older Hastings residents to the grocery store every week.

Margie was preceded in death by her parents; husband; both sons; sister, Norman Jean Walker; brothers-in-law, Jerry Frisch and Duane Walker; and son-in-law, James Krueger.

She is survived by her daughter, Patt Hays (Cheyenne, WY); sisters, (Thelma) Ann Frisch (Harlingen, TX) and Judie Briggs and brother-in-law, George Briggs (Lincoln, NE); daughter-in-law, Cheryl Stevens (Blair, NE); grandchildren, Joshua and wife, Shawna Hays (Lincoln, NE), Nathanael and wife, Sara Hays (Lincoln, NE), Sara Hays Childers (Omaha, NE), Nick Krueger and wife, Dani Rowland (Littleton, CO), and Tom Krueger and wife, Kylie (Elizabeth, CO); great-grandchildren, Trenton Hays, Kaitlyn Hays, Jackson Miles, Madison Miles, Jamison Childers, Evie Hellman, Grace Hays, Faith Hays, Billie Danger Krueger, Carter James Krueger, Dorian Krueger, and Jack Reed Krueger.