Margot Zimmerman

Margot Lurie Zimmerman died peacefully on January 8, 2026 at Stonebridge at Montgomery, a retirement community in Skillman, N.J. She was born in Williamsport, Pa. in 1935 and grew up with her sister Linda (b. 1940) in Utica, N.Y., where her parents, David and Frances, owned several clothing stores. Margot Lurie graduated from Cornell University in 1956 and married Paul Zimmerman, a Yale Law School student, the following year. She taught social studies and English in New Haven and in Phoenix City, Ala., near the base where Paul served in the U.S. Army. Then they moved to suburban Washington, D.C., where Margot gave birth to their three children: Jeffrey (b. 1959), Jonathan (b. 1961), and Julie (b. 1965).
The family relocated in 1966 to Bangalore, after Paul was named the South India regional director of the U.S. Peace Corps. Margot volunteered at an orphanage, which marked the beginning of her four-decade career in family planning and public health. After a stop in Tehran, Iran, they moved to New York City and then back to Washington. Margot became the director of the D.C. office of the Program for the Introduction and Adaptation of Contraceptive Technology (PIACT), which pioneered the development of pictorial family-planning information for non-readers. It also insisted that people around the world should have the right to choose their own contraceptive methods, a controversial idea at the time. The organization was folded into the Program for Appropriate Technology and Health (PATH), where Margot served as Vice President. Her last position was as director of the PATH office in Nairobi, Kenya, where Margot and Paul lived for several years before retiring in the late 1990s.
After that, they continued to travel the world. Margot and Paul visited six continents and over 100 countries. They often organized trips with their American friends, including two memorable 20-person journeys to India. Their last voyage was a return to Iran in 2017, shortly before Paul died. They collected art everywhere they went, especially India, where they discovered several young painters who would go on to become preeminent figures in the South Asian art world. A sample of their artwork was exhibited at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell, where Paul and Margot donated one of their pieces to the permanent collection. Margot was generous in her gifts to other philanthropic enterprises, as well. During her final years in New Jersey she gave significant support to Housing Initiatives of Princeton and to HomeFront, which assist needy families in the state.
Margot Zimmerman led a rich and purposeful life, devoted to work and friends and family. She took enormous pride in her children and her six grandchildren: Alison, Sarah, Amy, Rebecca, William, and Andrew. She was equally proud of her children's spouses: Sharon Weinberg, Susan Coffin, and Adam Ratner. Last year she welcomed her first great-grandchild, Zachary. She was looking forward to the arrival of a second one this spring.
We will remember Margot Lurie Zimmerman for her intense engagement with the world and her commitment to making it a more just and fair place, especially for women and girls. Donations in her name can be made to Planned Parenthood or to the National Institute for Reproductive Health.
Arrangements are under the direction of Mather-Hodge Funeral Home, Princeton.