High Flying Love

Written By: Luke Osteen | Issue: 2020/04 - April

When you encounter Margie Shambaugh in her apartment at Chestnut Hill, she registers as an alert, enthused 93-year-old who refuses to succumb to the weight of her years.  

That dynamic energy is revealed by the paintings that adorn her walls (products of her ongoing art classes) and the quicksilver nature of her conversations, which range from the deeply personal to the implications of the cable news cycles. And always, the gentle humor directed at herself and the world around her. 

“I was born in Miami,” she says (and proves by pronouncing it “Miam-uh”). “When the (Second World War) broke out, I was in high school, working at a roller skating rink. To drum up business, the owner went around hiring pretty girls to work at the rink, just skating around. Well, I could hardly skate, but I guess I was pretty enough. He hired me and I learned to really skate.” 

Whether it was her natural beauty or her confident skating technique, young Margie caught the attention of the ruggedly handsome (and motorcycling) Bob Shambaugh, who’d soon become an airman with the US Army Air Corps.  

The couple fell in love and decided to marry before Bob was shipped overseas.  

The trouble was, if a student at her high school chose to get married, she’d be booted out. No exceptions. 

Well, almost no exceptions. 

Margie, who was president of the Student Council, somehow ensured an exception was made. 

“I suppose I got enough friends and people on my side that the Dean of Women really had no choice but to let me continue my education,” she says. “I just had to agree that when I returned, I wouldn’t tell any of the girls about what happened on my honeymoon.”   

It was also during this time that her best friend, Mary Gaffney, earned her pilot’s license, a rarity for a woman at the time.  

Somehow, Mary coerced/beguiled her friend into getting her own license and before long the duo were flying alongside each other, an even stranger sight in 1940s Florida.  

When the war ended, Bob returned and he and Margie opened a small engine repair service that allowed them to indulge in what had become a powerful passion for both – flying for the love of flying. 

Mary cheerfully threw herself into the crazier parts of aviation – frost flying (low level night flying over a vegetable crop lined with flaming barrels to circulate warm air and prevent freezing), sky-writing, and the no-room-for-error world of aerobatics.   

But Margie had her share of drama. She once, from the cockpit of her own plane, watched Bob declare an emergency and set his plane down on a Florida double lane highway, complete with oncoming traffic. Fortunately, Bob and his little place emerged unscathed.

Eventually, the couple retired and, at the age of 60 Margie began her college career at the University of Florida. Throwing herself into her studies with the same level of passion that gave her mastery of flight, she graduated with a Fine Arts degree with High Honors. 

She worked as a volunteer coordinator at Ocala’s Appleton Museum of Art. 

Then, when she and Bob moved to Highlands, the couple opened another small engine repair business. Well, half of the building was devoted to repair jobs, the other half was an art studio, where Margie led extension art classes through Southwestern Community College. 

And even that wasn’t enough, because she eventually became the volunteer coordinator at The Bascom.     

Today, Bob is no longer with us, but Margie is ebullient in her life at
Chestnut Hill.  

“They take good care of me, and they make me laugh and they listen to my stories,” she says.  

  For Margie, it’s clearly a safe landing. 

by Luke Osteen