Margaret "Peggy" Spiese
Peggy possessed a grand love of life and of nature.
Services for Margaret “Peggy” Spiese will be held at Salem UCC, 324 Walnut Street in Columbia, PA on January 10th, 2026 at 10:00 am.
Margaret Spiese, known to many as Peggy, passed away late Tuesday night, December 2nd, 2025 at Lancaster General Hospital from stroke and heart failure. She was the wife of Stephen A. Spiese of Columbia to whom she was married for 51 years. Born in York, PA, she was the daughter of Glenn R. Whorl and Treva A. (Bailey) Whorl.
Peggy possessed a grand love of life and of nature. She loved working in her flower garden and playing with her many cats. At the age of 13, she contracted autoimmune hepatitis, and the doctors at York hospital told her parents at that time she would not be coming home. But she did come home, and throughout her life continued to prove the doctors wrong by surviving medical threats to her survival again and again.
A graduate of Susquehannock High School in York County, she went on to attend Wheaton College in Illinois as a Christian Education major for a year and a half before transferring to Lebanon Valley College, where she met her husband, Steve. She graduated from LVC in 1973 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. She was a lifetime member, along with her mother, of the York County Society of Farm Women.
Peggy was employed as a freelance writer and used her writing skills to assist a variety of local individuals with writing projects, working in The Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness Project at IU13, as a proof-reader at Lancaster Newspapers, as an administrative assistant at Co-motion Theater, and most recently as secretary at Salem UCC in Columbia.
In 2017, she published a memoir entitled Life is But a Dream, about her journey towards and through her liver transplant, under her professional nom de plume, Garet Spiese. Copies of her book are available on Amazon.com.
She is survived by her husband, Stephen of Columbia, her brother Richard and his wife Suanne Whorl of Harrisburg, her sister Kathy and her husband Russ Walker of Glen Rock, and her brother Tim and his wife Susan Whorl of Dover, as well as many nieces and nephews who loved her dearly and will miss her greatly.
A video interview with Peggy regarding her book can be found at https://youtu.be/fRrTGntovI0
If you are not already registered as an organ donor, Peggy would encourage you to become one, please go to donors1.org both to sign up for organ donation, and to make a monetary donation in lieu of flowers to the Gift of Life Donor Program.
Services for Margaret “Peggy” Spiese will be held at Salem UCC, 324 Walnut Street in Columbia, PA on January 10th, 2026 at 10:00 am.
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