Margaret McIntosh LaFollette was born October 12, 1931, in Basin, Big Horn County, Wyoming at the home of her aunt, Alice Pierce, her mother's sister, probably to be nearer to a doctor. Her parents lived 1 mile south and ½ mile east of Burlington, Wyoming, about 20 miles from Basin. Her father, John Willard McIntosh, was a farmer who plowed his fields behind a horse or 2 horses. His first wife had passed away, leaving him with 2 children, Gary and Lena McIntosh. Her mother, Sara Jane Preator, was a widow with 4 children, Mailan, Darel, Jack, and Sara (nicknamed Trease – short for Treasure) Hibbert. Margaret was the only child born to both of them. Her half-siblings were all quite a bit older than she was.

She remembers her brothers Mailan and Jack liked to catch wild horses to train. Her sister Lena was raised by her father's sister, Roah Dunsworth. Trease was in high school in Basin, then in Murray, Utah, where she lived with her mother's parents, attending school and working. She remembers playing with her cousin Sally in her father's sheep wagon, which had a tiny woodstove and a pull-out table. She remembers her pet dog, Brownie, who followed her everywhere.

When she was about 5, the family moved ½ mile further east to a 2-story homemade of cottonwood logs. Her parents dragged the long narrow porch from the previous home, poured a concrete floor, and set the porch up on the west side of the house. The porch contained the wringer washer and 2 wash tubs, and the kerosene stove her mother used for cooking and canning in hot weather. In later years, it held the long chest freezer. She reported that the yard was fenced, but the fencing didn't completely keep the chickens out, so she had to be careful where she did somersaults. She and her friends enjoyed the swing dangling from one of the large trees in the yard.

This house featured a large garden spot, outhouse, raspberry and chokecherry bushes, and an old pioneer orchard with 2 large crabapple trees she liked to climb. It also had transparent and other apple trees and plum bushes. Before they got electricity, they used kerosene lamps for light.

She remembers her mother would put strychnine in eggshells and set them out for magpies to eat; the magpies liked to raid the chicken nests. She also remembers her mother resting a long gun on top of a fence post to shoot at magpies.

West of the house were the chicken coops and a grainery with 2-3 rooms for storing wheat. She liked to play in the wheat. They also raised sheep, pigs, and turkeys. The turkeys were especially efficient at eating the grasshoppers that threatened the crops.

Her parents were active members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Her father was the Sunday School Superintendent as long as she could remember. Her mother took her with her to church meetings a lot.

Her mother had a big old beautiful heavy black upright piano, and wanted all her children to learn to play, but her other children coaxed to quit and she let them. Then they wished they hadn't quit, so she wouldn't let Margaret quit. She arranged for her to take lessons from teachers in Basin or Greybull, or from a local piano teacher when available.

Margaret had firey red hair and remembered well the boy who put the ends of her braids in an inkwell.

When she was in the 8th grade, the church pianist went to college, and she was called to be a ward organist. The organ was a pump organ; you had to pump the pedals, or no sound came out. She could barely play "Catch the Sunshine", the easiest hymn in the book, so they sang that a lot! Her best friend Carol Partridge was a church chorister.

Also in 8th grade, she was persuaded to play trombone because the school band needed another trombone player. She said she never practiced but carried that trombone to and from school half a mile each way to meet the school bus, and said it was a wonder her right arm wasn't longer than the left one.

Margaret attended college at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. She and her mother were very excited for her to go. She later wished she had studied harder; her grades were okay, but she could have excelled more. She said what she really wanted was to be a wife and mother, but what she did not realize was that while waiting to become a wife and mother, she could have excelled at many things, learned much more than she did, and would have had more to bring to her family.

She had thought she would become either a Home Ec teacher like her sister Lena, or else a music teacher like her high school band and chorus teachers whom she admired. She visited the music department first at college and they got her enrolled before she could visit the Home Ec department. She ultimately graduated with a bachelor's degree in music education, with a minor in English.

She attended the LDS Institute for classes and social activities, and it was her second home sometimes.

One summer she worked for a motel-dining-store on the road to Yellowstone Park. She was to clean the rooms and wash the laundry every day and hang it on the line. She said she wasn't a top employee. While there the superintendent of Manderson, Wyoming school visited her because he needed a music teacher. She was qualified, so that fall she taught band, chorus, and English. On the weekends her parents drove to Manderson and took her home with them to do her laundry and go to church.

She loved teaching. She said there is a saying that the first two years one teaches, the teacher should pay the school because a new teacher needs to learn so much. She was convinced that is true. A minor in English was not enough. The band drummer hid the big beater for the bass drum and she never did find it.

The nearest LDS church was in Basin at that time. She would catch a ride to teach Mutual in Greybull in a barracks, where her class met under one light bulb. Other classes had their own light bulbs. When they danced, young and old all danced together. She always attended Sunday School and Sacrament Meeting in Burlington with her parents.

One Sunday she was leading the singing and Everett LaFollette, who had just returned from a mission, was blessing the sacrament. He and Thorley Briggs wanted to double date, and Everett asked her. He was carrying hod for his brother who belonged to a brick laying group currently working in Bozeman, Montana, and after that first date, Everett drove to Burlington every weekend and they dated. They married July 28th, 1954 in the Cardston, Alberta Temple.

They lived in Manderson for a year while she taught school and Everett worked in Basin. Then they moved to Salt Lake City, where Everett got a job in a hardware store as a salesman. Eve was born while they lived there.

When they had 2 children, Eve and Mark, they moved to Kearns, Utah, south of Salt Lake City. There Everett worked for a furniture store in Murray. Ray was born there.

When the furniture store burned down, Everett was unemployed for a time and Margaret did substitute teaching for the schools.

After Jack was born, they moved to Burlington, Wyoming, to farm with Everett's father. They initially rented a small house in Burlington, but then Everett bought the "Kelly Place", an old farmhouse with about 200 acres, corrals and the like. There was a large garden plot they put to good use.

Before Paul was born, Margaret had a lot of false labor. One day she was not feeling well and Everett let the children ride on the tractor with him. Ray got his leg caught between the rear wheel and the wheel well, broke his leg, and they took him to Basin to get it casted. When they returned, they learned Margaret's mother had died.

Margaret's father was very lonesome after her mother passed. He used to come and hoe their garden spot.

It became apparent they wouldn't be able to make a living on the farm, so Everett sold some of it, rented some of it to other farmers, and they moved to Powell, Wyoming, where Everett worked in a hardware store and attended Northwest Community College. Then they returned to Burlington to a teacherage (housing provided for school teachers), where Margaret taught school for 2 years while he continued commuting to Powell to college.

Once Everett finished at Northwest, they moved to Logan, Utah, where Everett enrolled at Utah State University and worked in a furniture store. They initially lived in student housing, in a "quad", a 2-bedroom apartment, which was pretty cramped for a family with 5 children 12 and under. Most of the other married students were much younger with babies or toddlers, not used to older kids riding bikes or skateboards! Eventually they moved to Hyrum, Utah. Margaret taught elementary classes in Hyrum and Wellsville until Everett graduated. While they lived in Hyrum, Margaret's father came to live with them, and continued with them until his death in 1971.

After Everett graduated, they moved to Byron, Wyoming, where Everett worked at a bentonite plant for about a year. Then Everett got laid off at the bentonite plant. He worked for local farmers, milking and irrigating. He tried a stint as a life insurance salesman, then worked at the sugar factory in Lovell, and even commuted to Worland and worked at a Gambles store. Then he took a job at Greybull Schools as a Distributive Education teacher for 2 years. They moved to Greybull, Wyoming.

By this time, Melinda had been born, and 2 ½ years later, Amy was born. After Everett's teaching contract wasn't renewed, he worked as a hardware salesman in Basin, and at the grain elevators, then was hired as custodian of the Basin-Greybull LDS church, where he worked for 15 years. He was offered a job as head custodian over chapels in Worland Stake, but they would have had to move to Worland, and they were tired of moving.

Margaret wanted all her children to learn music. They all got piano lessons, although Eve and Paul were the only ones who continued them. Eve took violin lessons in Burlington and Logan, and played clarinet in the band. Mark got a violin and Ray played a school cello. After Everett graduated and they returned to Wyoming, there weren't opportunities to continue stringed instruments, so Mark and Ray both played tuba. Eventually Melinda played French horn, and Amy also played tuba.

After Everett retired and the kids were all grown, they arranged to go on a mission to England, working on the 1881 English Census project. They were first trained in Birmingham, then assigned to Cheltenham. They lived in an upstairs bedroom with Jennie Mason, a sister in the ward there. Every weekday they worked in a room in the chapel. The genealogical societies of England and the Genealogical Society of Utah had agreed that the Church would film the 1881 census of England, print them off and mail the prints back to England where the Genealogical Societies in each county would copy the information on paper forms. Then volunteer groups in each county would compare the transcripts with the originals for correctness and type the information onto a computer so the names could be indexed. Their group would compare what had been copied to films of the originals and type them into the computer.

They particularly enjoyed their chief, an Englishman named Brother Sutton, who told them funny stories and jokes. On their days off, they enjoyed visiting the local historical sites. Margaret found that they were within 10 miles of where her grandfather, Richard Preator was born. They enjoyed visiting the towns where her ancestors had lived.

In time Everett became the head of their team and they were transferred to Birmingham. One night Everett fell, hit his head and got a magnificent black eye. Over time, he began to walk strangely. They went to a doctor who said he would arrange for him to be seen by a neurologist. If they didn't get a call in 2 weeks, they were to let the doctor know. Meanwhile, the mission supervisor said Everett should return to the states to be seen sooner. This was on a Thursday. On Friday they packed, and Saturday they flew to Utah, where they were met by Mark and his wife. Mark took them to his home in Ogden, and the next day, Sunday, Everett had trouble lifting his right foot to go upstairs, so Mark took him to the hospital where he was diagnosed with a cerebral hematoma – bleeding on the brain. That night a specialist operated. In 2 days a nurse was walking him around the halls. When he had recovered sufficiently, they went to Salt Lake City and finished their mission there, still working on the 1881 Census of England.

A couple of years later they went on a mission to Denton and Lubbock, Texas to help ward members do family research. While there, Everett was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and the medical center in Lubbock just happened to be one of the best places to be for a problem like that.

Margaret and Everett were always active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Margaret was usually called to teach something – Primary, Relief Society, Seminary, Nursery. She also served as a ward organist. Everett was ward clerk in several wards, and served as a stake missionary.

Several years after the end of their Texas mission, facing some medical issues, they moved in with Eve and her husband Grayson in Ogden, and later, Roy, Utah, staying with them for about 10 years before transitioning to Lotus Park Assisted Living facility in West Haven, Utah. Everett lived there for about 6 weeks before he passed into the next life in July, 2023. Margaret continued there until her passing September 2, 2024.

Margaret's goal in life was to marry in the temple, be a wife and mother, and always be active in the church. She and Everett managed to do those 3 things. She was a wonderful mother. She was predeceased by her husband, Everett, sons Mark and Jack, and son-in-law Shawn Ambrose. She is survived by 5 of her children: Eve (married to Grayson Douglas Orr), Ray (and wife Sue Werner), Jack's wife, Shauna Smith, Paul (and wife Kathey Whiting), Melinda (widow of Shawn Ambrose), and Amy (married to Tom Pondolfino.) She has 27 living grandchildren, and 26 great-grandchildren.

She lived her life in constant pursuit of self-improvement. Even in assisted living, she made it a point to do a Pilates routine every morning and walk either the halls or (weather permitting) the sidewalks of the facility. By that time, she was on oxygen due to heart trouble, so she carried her portable concentrator in a 4-wheeled walker. She read constantly, and as her vision deteriorated due to macular degeneration, she read e-books on a tablet, where she could enlarge the print and have it backlit. She did quite a bit of indexing for Family Search on a computer until her eyes tired. After Everett died, although suffering from mild dementia, she still enjoyed friendly relationships with her fellow residents and repeatedly expressed her appreciation for the kind and attentive staff at the facility. They all expressed their appreciation for her as well.

In the week before her death, having been placed in hospice care, she was visited by all her living children and as many of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren as could come to her. She greatly enjoyed a luau hosted by her facility, which included grass skirts, flowers in the hair, Hawaiian music, a catered Hawaiian meal, hula dancers and a fire dancer. The night before her death, she came to Eve's house and enjoyed dinner with her daughter Amy and Eve's daughter, Esther Montgomery's family. Then around 1:00 p.m. on September 2nd, she quietly lost consciousness and passed away very peacefully. She had repeatedly expressed the desire to be with her beloved husband; now she is there. While we who remain will miss her, we are comforted to know she is surrounded by love and we will join her one day.

Margaret's celebration of life will be held September 28th, 2024 at Roy West Stake Center, 5080 S 3100 W, Roy, Utah 84067. A family meeting and prayer will begin at 10:30 in the Relief Society room. A family luncheon will be held in the cultural hall following the service.

The service may be viewed live on Zoom :

Meeting Time: Sep 28, 2024 11:00 AM Mountain Time (US and Canada)

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https://zoom.us/j/91950707621?pwd=bw1xBFQXqaSsi1LvNfMeysC5OOl2q3.1 Meeting ID: 919 5070 7621 Passcode: 103595

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