A funeral service is 11 a.m. Thursday for long-time Nevadan Margaret G. Bay, 80, who died Sept. 2, 2006 in Gardnerville.
Bay helped found Stagecoach, Indian Hills and Genoa Estates during her long marriage to Jack W. Bay, who died in Carson City in 1980.
Bay was a resident of Genoa for the last 27 years. Prior to that she had lived and worked in Carson City, Ely, and Hawthorne, but she was always a Eureka girl at heart and a life-long proponent of Nevada's history,
The service will be at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 891 Mahogany Dr., Minden.
Mrs. Bay was born in Whitman, Neb., on June 12, 1926. She was the eldest of five children born to William R. Gergen and Celia L. Christman. Her father, originally from Montana, was a fighter pilot in World War I but returned to ranching and then mining. Her mother was a school teacher, a post mistress, and eventually a nurse at the Ely hospital.
During the depression, the family moved from Nebraska to Laramie, Wyo. Mrs. Bay's father operated a mine near Centennial, Wyo., and the children spent their summers camping at the mine and their winters in Laramie. She went to grade school and her first year of high school in Laramie where she established friends that she corresponded with throughout her life. She also became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints which was also a consistent thread throughout her life.
Mrs. Bay moved to Eureka in the early 1940s. Her father became a mining partner with Jack L. Bay, who was later a state senator from Eureka County. The Gergen family had been acquainted with the Bay family for a number of years, having originally met when the Bays also lived in Laramie. She attended her sophomore and junior years of high school in Eureka, establishing friends and interests that would shape the rest of her life. She worked at the Laborde's Basque Restaurant, learned a bit of Basque, and broadened her interest in learning about the people who settled in Nevada and their history. She worked at the town's soda fountain and briefly at the Eureka Sentinel. On March 25, 1944, she married Jack W. Bay, son of her father's partner, as he was departing for World War II. The marriage lasted 37 years until his death in Carson City in 1980.
Still living with her parents while her husband was at war, Mrs. Bay moved with her family to the San Francisco area in 1945 due to the WWII closure of the mines, so that explosives could be diverted to the war effort. As a result, she attended her senior year of high school at the Poly-technical high school in San Francisco. While there, she was selected to be one of the student pages supporting the international conference in San Francisco to found the United Nations.
Following the war, her family moved back to Eureka but Marge briefly remained in California to be reunited with her husband.
They moved to Hawthorne and opened the Hawthorne Business Service, the first of several businesses they would operate over the years, in which Marge often served as the office manger. From Hawthorne, they moved to Ely where Mrs. Bay's husband ran a real estate firm and she worked as a receptionist for the Hotel Nevada. In Ely, they also became active in politics and in the Democratic Party. Mrs. Bay was a life-long, ardent, Democrat; having started as a local intern with Sen. Pat McCarran, D-Nev. From the "cow" counties, she supported her husband's election to the Nevada Assembly as a representative from White Pine County, her father-in-law's election from Eureka county, and friends who ran for office both partisan and non-partisan. Politics for her was about making contributions, active participation, and caring about the issues. Over the years she participated in Democratic State conventions, voter registration drives, election boards, and as a worker at polling stations. However, the highlight of her support to the Democratic Party was participating in the Nevada committee for the election of John F. Kennedy, whom she met personally when he visited the state during the 1960 election.
In Ely, Mrs. Bay also began her active support to community projects. She helped found the White Pine County Museum, served on the Juvenile Delinquency Board, and later, when she moved to Carson, she was active in the Nevada Heart Association. Late in life she also enjoyed serving as a docent at the Genoa courthouse museum and, informal, town historical storyteller. History was her passion, from doing family genealogy to learning about the people who settled Nevada's ranches and valleys.
Mrs. Bay lived and worked in Carson City during the 1960s and 1970s. She helped her husband run various real estate businesses and, particularly, helped launch new land development projects. They established Genoa Estates, where she made her home until her death. They started Stagecoach between Carson and Fallon. They helped create the Indian Hills development to the south of Carson City. Marge once noted that in more than 30 years of creating new places for people to live the most difficult thing was coming up with names for all the streets and locations they developed. She thought she had escaped having anything named after her until one year there was a last minute glitch with the Douglas County commissioners and they needed to add one more, short, street to get Genoa Estates approved. They added a street on the spot and, over her objections, it was called Margery Lane. It is just off Centennial Drive and across from the Genoa cemetery where Marge will be buried.
A few years after her first husband's death, Marge married Andrew Zoppi, who operated a local construction business. Zoppi's family hailed from Susanville and Italy and he had worked on numerous different kinds of constructions project around the state of Nevada. It expanded Mrs. Bay's genealogical interests and gave her a chance to learn additional details on the growth and development of Nevada from a new perspective. They remained married for nearly 20 years.
In addition to her former husband, Marge is survived by her son, Steven Bay, his wife Janice, and her granddaughter, Jamie Bay of McLean, Va. She is survived by her sisters, Ann Wright of Saint George, Utah and Alice Souza of Ely. She is also survived by numerous nieces and nephews. She was preceded in death by her parents, her brother Bill Gergen, her sister Neva Tognoni Bida, her first husband, Jack W. Bay, and her daughter and granddaughter, Cynthia and Tamrun Bay.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be sent to the Genoa Volunteer Fire Department, P.O. Box 54, Genoa, NV 89411, the Genoa Cemetery Association, P.O. Box 554, Minden, NV 89423, or to the Genoa Courthouse Museum.
Arrangements are in the care of FitzHenry's Carson Valley Funeral Home. A viewing will take place from 10-11 a.m. Thursday prior to services at the church. Interment will be after the service at the cemetery in Genoa.
