Warren County Report

Mrs. Glavis was not your typical 102 year-old – if there is such a thing. She is witty, charming, quite funny and very, very smart. Born in Berlin, Germany in 1906, Mrs. Glavis was the daughter of an architect. Her family moved to Düsseldorf.

From an early age, her father insisted that young Margot walk to school and walk another half an hour each day. He hired a gym teacher for Margot and her two sisters. They had a play area for gymnastics.

"I think that was key in my surviving all this time. Exercise," she says.

Having recently suffered an injury, Mrs. Glavis is using a wheelchair to get around right now. "I can’t wait to get out of this thing," she exclaimed. "I love to walk."

Margot was just shy of her 8th birthday when on June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the crown prince of Austria-Hungary was assassinated by a Bosnian Serb. Thus began a chain of events that brought her native Germany into World War I, called "The War to End All Wars" for the new levels of technological savagery (machine guns, tanks and poison gas) brought to the European war fronts.

Three years later, Tzar Nicholas II of Russia would abdicate his throne and would be replaced months later by Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik Party.

On Nov. 9, 1918, with its industrial output and economy in tatters and with anti-war marchers taking to the streets, Germany was declared a republic and the war would end.

Germany had suffered 6 million casualties and would be forced to pay reparations for its role in the war.

Twelve-year-old Margot fled with her family from Düsseldorf to the Bavarian capitol of Munich to avoid the French who, as the victors, were threatening to come over the Rhine bridge.

"People were hanging on windows on trains to escape the Rhineland," she remembered.

In 1922, Soviet troops occupied government buildings in Munich and shots rang out in the Putsch.

"What didn’t get reported in the U.S. papers was that we were all let out of school and were wandering around with the soldiers until protected."

During the next few years, Adolph Hitler and his relatively unknown Nazi Party would use Munich as a base of operations, giving frequent speeches in Munich’s famed large beer halls.

"They would march around. Young soldiers dressed in brown – only brown. They would chant through the streets," she recalled.

Once, young Margot went to the Hofbräuhaus hall to hear the fiery Hitler speak.

"I was curious what the fuss was about. He was a painter by trade and wasn’t German. He was born in Austria. He wasn’t dumb obviously but many of his actions were incredibly stupid. He would start out very quietly and build up to a screaming pitch. He would be yelling, ‘Action! Action! Action! We all thought he was absolutely crazy. We had no idea how things would turn out. I was very surprised when he became chancellor. But it was the economic devastation caused by the forced reparations that created the climate for the rise of Hitler."

While some Germans were interested in politics during the years between the great world wars, most were simply trying to survive.

Margot’s father died in 1929 and she would have to earn her way forward. Her dream was to be a teacher. Margot had earned the equivalent of a masters degree at Munich University but had to work later to earn a stipend to continue her education for a PhD. One of her professors in Munich had an American wife who submitted an application for Margot to teach German at the highly selective Wellesley College near Boston, Massachusetts in the U.S. She was offered a job and left Germany in 1930 on the Hamburg America Line.

"The children were very, very rich at Wellesley," she recalled. "They would even bring their horses to school."

During her year at the college, she witnessed a speech by New York First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. At one point she got to shake hands with President Herbert Hoover.

After a year at Wellesley, Margot left for New York to pursue her masters. "I would clean in the morning for my room and board and baby sit in the afternoons for spending money," she said.

At the Rockefeller Institute in New York she would meet two men who would influence her.

One was John D. Rockefeller, Jr. "He was a very human man," she recalled. "He would walk with us and spend time with the students. He didn’t like litter and would make a point of stopping to pick it up."

The other important man she would meet was Edward Sumner Glavis, whom she would later marry.

"He probably saw that I was a relatively cultured young lady," she joked.

For a time Mrs. Glavis taught German on the radio at WRNY. "That was an experience in itself," she deadpanned.

After teaching three years at a private school, Margot announced to a furious headmistress that she was leaving to marry Edward who then worked at the Interior Department.

Beginning in 1936 Mrs. Glavis would teach at the Madeira School, a private girls school that had just moved to McLean, VA and counts among its alumni former Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham, who graduated from Madeira shortly before the arrival of Mrs. Glavis.

When not teaching, Mrs. Glavis would tend to her cow, chickens and three horses.

"We sold the eggs and the milk to earn some extra money. We had to stop selling the milk when new laws took effect that required pasteurization," she said.

Mrs. Glavis would lose her job at Madeira in 1939, the start of World War II – German, it seemed, had fallen out of fashion.

Or so it appeared.

One group of people very interested in employing Mrs. Glavis was the U.S. Justice Department. They were impressed with her knowledge of languages, government and history.

Mrs. Glavis would go on to be an analyst for the Office of Strategic Services and the State Department.

In 1976, when Mrs. Glavis was 70 years old she left the State Department.

There was one last burning question I had to ask.

"Do you think John McCain is too old to be president?"

"Oh no," she quickly replied about the Senator, 30 years her junior. "Older men are often wise," she said.

Mrs. Glavis’ son George works for the State Department and lives in Bentonville with his wife Linda who is a member of the Warren County Board of Supervisors.

Mrs. Glavis enjoys her time at Hidden Springs. "They have been good to me; so if they want to make a big ballyhoo over my age that’s fine," she said.

We suspect they will.

Happy 4th of July Mrs. Glavis and a very, very Happy Birthday to you. You are truly an inspiration.