Peggy Fuerstenau, 1932-2020

It is with great sadness that I report that Doug Fuerstenau’s gracious wife, Peggy (Margaret Pellett) died on May 30th from coronary-pulmonary complications. I had the pleasure of meeting Peggy for the first time last year in Denver, where Prof. Fuerstenau (MEI Blog 20 July 2015) was presented with the IMPC's Distinguished Service Award at the SME Annual Meeting. Doug was also the first recipient, in 1995, of the IMPC's Lifetime Achievement Award.

Peggy was born in Franklin, New Jersey, on May 7, 1932. She met Doug while she was an undergraduate student at Radcliffe College (Harvard) and Doug was a doctoral student at MIT working under Professor A.M. Gaudin. After their marriage in 1953, Peggy completed her studies in American history and Doug began his career as an assistant professor of mineral engineering at MIT.  After graduating from Radcliffe, she continued her education at Simmons College in Boston, where she received an M.S. degree in library science.   Later she was the caring mother of their son and two daughters. Her main outside activities involved volunteer work, serving as a docent at the Oakland Museum and on various programs related to University student welfare and persons in need.

Peggy and Doug on their wedding day in 1953

During Doug’s long career at the University of California, Peggy was a welcoming hostess for dinners and receptions in their home to many dozens, if not hundreds, of professional colleagues and visitors to Berkeley from all parts of the world.  Doug’s many graduate students and postdoctoral researchers fondly remember her many buffet dinners for the group and their spouses. 

Other international persons in the mineral world came to know her at International Mineral Processing Congresses. She set a record that probably will never be surpassed in that she was an accompanying person at thirteen IMPCs, the first in 1970 in Prague and the last in 2014 in Santiago.  For the San Francisco IMPC, she was a member of the organizing committee and led planning for the program for accompanying persons. Prof. Fathi Habashi has kindly supplied this photo:

  

Peggy with Janusz and Barbara Laskowski at the Prague IMPC in 1970

Peggy and Doug with Osvaldo Bascur in Rio de Janeiro, 2001

In addition, Peggy accompanied Doug to many SME/AIME Annual Meetings, toured a few flotation plants with him, and also went on a few Homestake Mining Company trips.  In 1990 the two had a special underground tour of the Homestake Gold Mine in South Dakota, and the photo below shows Peggy and Doug at 2200 meters below ground on the  7200 Level where the rock temperature is 57 degrees Celsius. The deep mine refrigeration thankfully maintained a very satisfactory ambient temperature.

Although Peggy's education was in liberal arts, she had some familiarity with mining.  Her oldest uncle’s entire career, starting in 1907, was with the New Jersey Zinc Company in Franklin, advancing to mill superintendent at this complex gravity and magnetic separation operation.  He told Doug about Professor Richards coming there as a consultant from MIT. In his Handbook, Taggart describes the Pellett Classifier used in the Franklin mill where three different minerals, franklinite, willemite and zincite in calcite, were recovered from a rich ore containing 20% zinc. To mineralogists, the dumps at Franklin are world famous in that over 350 different minerals occur in the region, 90 of which are fluorescent, and two dozen of those occur nowhere else in the world.

Very significant to Peggy and Doug's family life was the Pinecrest cabin in the High Sierra that they purchased in 1965. Being located at an elevation of 1700 meters on the west slope of the Sierra leads to year-round relaxation and recreation and in the summer, Peggy fished and swam in the Pinecrest Lake, and in the winter there were various snow activities.  After their children became avid downhill skiers, Peggy and Doug switched to cross-country skiing.  Depending on schedules, several overseas visitors enjoyed Peggy’s hospitality at Pinecrest. Every fall, Doug had a weekend there with his graduate students but Peggy stayed completely away that weekend. The photo shows the beauty of the area after a fresh snow.

Although she was not a musician, Peggy had a great love for opera.  She and Doug had season tickets for the San Francisco Opera for fifty years and estimate that they attended nearly 300 opera performances, including some at other opera houses during their travels.  They also found time to attend a few symphony concerts and plays each year in the San Francisco Bay Area.  

In recent years, Peggy arranged for several different Road Scholar excursions in Europe and the U.S.  Their last trip to Europe was a non-technical Road Scholar excursion in November 2016 to Venice followed by a few days in Munich.  The photo shows Peggy enjoying the Grand Canal in Venice.

Doug tells me that during her last days, Peggy said several times that she was completely satisfied with the life that she had.