Obituary of Margaret Booker Manring

Margaret Manring (born Booker), Peggy to her family and many friends, died on July 2, 2020 at the age of 82 at her home in Hillsborough, NC.  She was born in Greensboro, NC on April 16, 1938.

   A dedicated wife, mother, and grandmother, Peggy is lovingly remembered by her husband Andres Manring, former husband Jake Phelps, her sons York and Kent Phelps, and her grandchildren Julian, Sam, Chaska August, and Anastasia Phelps.  She was loved and respected by her friends who remember her as wise  and compassionate.

   Peggy was among the founding faculty at the Carolina Friends School where she taught from 1971-1981.  Peggy had a lifetime commitment to fairness and justice and she embraced the Quaker credo "To find that of God in everyone", She taught many subjects, but her forte was Art, and she was famous for her course in natural fabric dying.

   She earned an MA at Duke University and in 1982, joined the Media Department at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM).  She taught a video course that gave students the opportunity to develop their own style of creativity and self-expression.  Before long she became head of that department.  She is remembered as an efficient, enthusiastic loyal, and considerate boss.

   Peggy's personal mission as an educator was to serve the underserved.  To fulfill this goal, she created a Distance Learning (DL) department, and under her administration, NCSSM became a state leader in DL.  Her goal was to providing a full range of educational opportunities to teachers and students using interactive video to deliver quality courses in Mathematics, Humanities, and Science taught by NCSSM teachers.  In 1992, she received a RER Nabisco Next Century School startup grant.  At first, courses were delivered by local cable connections to Riverside and Southern High Schools in Durham.  Then, in 1996, Peggy seized the opportunity presented by the newly created NC Information Highway (NCIH) to create seven Cyber Campuses at county high schools in isolated and rural areas of NC.  In 1998 she was awarded a Technology Innovation Grant ($6.5 million) from the U.S. Department of Education.

   Today, teachers with the NCSSM DL program partner with high school teachers across the state to integrate technology and new approaches into their existing courses, to adopt new courses, to develop Advanced Placement courses, and to offer short sessions on special topics for curriculum enrichment.  By the 1999-2000 school year, the program served 60 different schools in 26 counties and provided instruction to 480 educators and 2,365 students.

   In 2001, she received the Governor's Award for Excellence for outstanding dedication and commitment to the citizens and state of North Carolina.

   Peggy practiced and taught Yoga for 50 years.  Her students remember her as a genuine caregiver, advisor and humorous teacher.  She was a tireless learner and never ceased to learn new ways of teaching Yoga  She was an intuitive genius at designing new sequences of asanas, and borrowing movement sequences from Qi Gong and Dao In.  She had an acute sensitivity and intuition about the individual strengths and weaknesses of her students and was tireless in her effors to maximize the healing and health benefits of each pose.  Her students remember her loving attention and respect.