Margaret Ruether Lico

Margaret Ruether Lico

17 September 1960 – 3 May 2024

 

Margy Lico was always generous with her time and talent, for her boys, her family, her friends, her social and charitable organizations, and her Church.  She loved to entertain and was an exceptional hostess.  She had a discerning eye and an eclectic sense of fashion and design.  She had a knack for making everything more beautiful.  She had an absurdly good memory for people and events.  She was great company.  She was always game.  She was instinctively kind.  She was a woman of eternal optimism and dauntless faith.

 

Born in Columbia, Missouri, Margy was the first of the five children of Jo and Gene Ruether.  She loved the visual arts since she was a little girl, and was very disappointed to find out that her “Creative Writing” summer camp didn’t teach calligraphy.  She studied ballet for 13 years, cheered and played golf for her Rockbridge High School, and competed in junior golf tournaments all over the state.

 

Margy went to Southern Methodist University to study art, and joined the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority.  After college she moved to Washington, DC to work in the White House Domestic Policy Office for Vice President George H.W. Bush.  It was in DC that Margy started her career as a graphic designer, first as the head of the design department for a top political consulting firm (where, among other things, she designed the 1988 Bush/Quayle bumper stickers), and then with her own firm in Georgetown.

 

It was also in DC that Margy would meet her future husband, Jim, after several failed attempts by mutual friends to set them up.  They shared love of country, golf, good parties, music, great friends, art, a ready laugh, travel, a nice cocktail, and the Catholic faith.  With the Cold War ended, Jim left his job at the State Department for law school, and he and Margy got married in 1991.

 

Margy brought her graphic design talents to California, working with clients like Electronic Arts and Schwab, before answering a higher calling — motherhood.  She dedicated herself to raising three strong boys, and devoted her creative skills to enhancing their school experiences — serving as the Mother’s Club president at Our Lady of Angels in Burlingame and as the President of the Ignatian Guild at St. Ignatius College Preparatory in San Francisco, and to leadership positions in her charitable and social clubs, the Junior League, The Francisca Club and the Hillsborough Garden Club.  She loved to travel, golf with Jim and her boys and her friends, and watching the sun set from the Dunes Shelter of the Monterey Peninsula Country Club. 

 

Margy bore the burden of her disease with the same grace and faith that carried her through her whole life, always with hope and optimism, and never a word of complaint or self-pity.

 

Margy is survived by her husband of 32 years, Jim, her sons Max, Nick (Hope), and Ben, her mother Jo Ruether and her siblings Susan Loredo, Sally Burke, Dan Ruether, and Katy Trent.

 

A funeral Mass for Margy will be held at Our Lady of Angels church, 1721 Hillside Drive, Burlingame, California, on Monday, May 13, at 11:00 a.m.