(Plain Press, April 2018)       Margaret “Margie” Bray, wife of Plain Press Managing Editor Chuck Hoven, and Plain PressCommunity Board and Website Editor, passed away on March 20, 2018 from a choking accident while dining.

Margie Bray Margie was born in the Philippines while her father worked there as a consultant for the Philippine Government.  She grew up in Pepper Pike, Ohio and graduated High School in 1974 from Glen Oak. She attended Case Western University and, in 1979, received a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities. She attended Cleveland State University where she earned a Master’s Degree in Urban Studies in 1982. During the Masters’ program, she wrote the original proposal for an innovative, experiential education High School, the Martin Luther King Law and Public Service Magnet High School.

After graduation from the College of Urban Affairs, Margie helped launch the Law and Public Service Magnet School, one of the Magnet High Schools created in response to the Court Ordered Desegregation of the Cleveland Public Schools. The school, a partnership between the Cleveland State University College of Urban Affairs; Cleveland Marshall College of Law; and the Cleveland Public School System, attracted students from throughout the city of Cleveland. Margie worked as an Urban Studies Resource Coordinator and, later, as the Project Manager of the CSU Urban Studies part of the partnership.

In the early 1980s, Margie was one of the founding members of the Hessler Housing Cooperative. The Hessler Housing Cooperative, is a non-equity housing cooperative designed to maintain affordable housing on Hessler Road in the University Circle Neighborhood of Cleveland. Margie continued to be an active member of the Hessler Housing Cooperative where she resided with her husband, Chuck until her passing.

In 1983, Margie served a one-year Congressional Fellow and Legislative Assistant with a Congressman Howard Wolpe from Michigan. She worked doing grant writing, and various office and administrative tasks for a number of nonprofit organizations over the years including the Housing Resource Center, Consumer Advisory Council, and the Long Term Care Ombudsman Program.

Margie Bray and Chuck Hoven, who met in graduate school at Cleveland State University in the early 1980s, were married on June 22, 2013. The couple loved travelling together and shared many happy moments with her family during the summer at the family cottage at Walloon Lake in Michigan.

Margie’s family includes her husband, Chuck Hoven; late father, Pierce Bray; mother, Maud Bray; brother, William Bray, his wife, Kathy; niece, Christina; nephew, Liam; and Margie’s brother, Andrew.