Margaret D. Kummerfeldt

Hamilton - Margaret Kummerfeldt was born August 28, 1922 in Nairobi, Kenya, East Africa.  Her father, Arthur Blayney Percival was a pioneer settler and the first Chief Game Ranger for the Kenya Game Department. 

Blayney Percival and his wife Winifred (Jack), were parents of four children, Donald Thomas (Punch) the eldest, followed by James, Margaret and Peter (Buster) the youngest.  The family homesteaded a 4000 acre tract of raw land about 40 miles south-east of Nairobi.  Their farm, called Mamandu, was named for nearby hills. Margaret's early years were spectacularly free from most conventions of the time.  She was home schooled until old enough to attend high school in Nairobi.  Kenya High School for Girls was a boarding school where the children from distant farms lived on campus.  Margaret hated high school and was greatly relieved when World War II broke out and she joined the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry better known as the FANYS and was active in both nursing and communications work during the world war.

In 1942, she met and later married William (Bill) Kummerfeldt, an American aircraft engineer and company representative for Grumman Aircraft Corporation.  After the war Margaret and Bill settled in central Kenya in the Athi River district where they raised six children; Peter, Keith, Susan, Ronald, Arthur and Glenn.  In 1969, Margaret and Bill, along with the two youngest boys, moved to Australia where they purchased and successfully ran a delicatessen combined with a liquor store.  In 1973, Margaret and Bill followed their now grown children to America. They lived in Washington and Colorado where Bill died in 1994.  Widowed, Margaret moved to Hamilton, Montana to be near Susan and her family, and Ronald and his wife to be.  Margaret died on May 1, 2016 after a wonderful, extraordinary life.