Margaret Gibson

On Monday March 31st, 2025, Margaret Ferguson Gibson, loving wife, mother, and grandmother, passed away at the age of 81.

Margaret was born on November 22nd, 1943, in Bronx, New York, to Leonard and Edith Ferguson. After her early childhood in New York, her family moved to Connecticut where she attended elementary through high school, graduating in 1961. She attended Stanford University in California and spent her college summers in Provincetown, Massachusetts. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Stanford in 1965 and met her future husband, Benjamin around that time. Margaret attended graduate school in Chicago at Northwestern University where she received a Master of Arts in Political Science in 1966. She subsequently returned to the Bay Area where she began a career as one of the first computer scientists working for the Southern Pacific Railroad, living in San Francisco from 1966 to 1968.

Margaret and Benjamin married on July 20th,1968 in San Francisco and left for a Canadian honeymoon before settling together on the East Coast in Maryland, where she worked for the Computer Sciences Corporation on contract work with the Atomic Energy Commission. They then moved to Brooklyn in 1970.

In 1972, Margaret and Benjamin made the decision to move from New York to Los Alamos, New Mexico where they would spend the rest of their time together outside of a few temporary living destinations (Seattle '77, Maryland '81, Australia '86), raising three sons in New Mexico, James, Michael, and Stuart.

In 1984, Margaret received a second graduate degree from the University of New Mexico, an MS in Computer Science, and in 2005, a third graduate degree from UNM, an MS in Biomedical Sciences.

She was active in the First United Methodist Church of Los Alamos, as well as the Los Alamos chapter of the American Association of University Women serving as an officer so many times that she exhausted her eligibility. She donated to numerous charities ranging from children's healthcare to nature conservation.

Margaret was preceded in death by her father, Leonard, and her mother, Edith. She is survived by her husband Benjamin, and children, James (Tracy), Michael (Jenny), and Stuart, her two sisters, Barbara and Kathy, four grandchildren, and several cousins, nieces, and nephews.

A private ceremony will be held in April with a planned celebration of life later in 2025.

Donations can be made to First United Methodist Church of Los Alamos or a charity of choice in her name. Please visit www.riverafamilyfunerals.com to leave messages, stories and pictures for the Gibson family.