Obituary
In the care of Solemn OaksMarguerite Ondrusek, 96, of Maple Bend, known to two generations of this county as Miss Peg, died Tuesday, September 22, 2026, at the Newaygo County Medical Care Facility in White Cloud.
She was born Marguerite Anna Ondrusek on May 8, 1930, in Bitely, to Czech parents who had come to cut timber and stayed to farm poor ground. She rode four miles to a one-room school and grew up to teach in one — Cypress School, eight grades, thirty-one children in her largest year, one stove, and a water pail she filled herself.
She taught for forty-three years, the last twenty-two of them at Maple Bend Elementary after the county schools consolidated, and she never made peace with the consolidation. She thought a child learned better within earshot of older children. She said so at meetings, at length, for years.
She never married and never seemed to think the question interesting. Her life was full: the school, the historical society she founded in 1974, the county's cemetery records that she transcribed by hand across eleven summers, and a correspondence with former students that ran to hundreds of letters a year and continued until her eyesight went.
If you can read a Newaygo County census page today without going blind, it is because Peg Ondrusek typed it out for you. Services are Sunday. The family asks that former students introduce themselves by the year they were in her room; she would have known immediately.
She is survived by her nieces and nephews, Alena Ondrusek Groves of Hesperia, Vaclav Ondrusek of Grand Rapids, and Marta Sedlak of Ohio; many great-nieces and great-nephews; and several hundred former students.
She was preceded in death by her parents, Vaclav and Anna; and her brothers, Frantisek and Jan.