Margaret Marie (Dillon) Maxwell, 94, of Columbia, SC, passed away on August 5, 2024, at her home. Margaret was born December 15, 1929, on Woolverton Mountain in Conway County, AR to her parents James Henry Dillon and the former Margaret Marie Dillon.

Margaret, her parents, and her 7 brothers (John, Bill, Ira, Arvell, Luther, Bob, and Edward) eventually moved to Tulare County, CA and settled near the town of Exeter, CA, until World War II called her brothers to serve our nation by fighting the Nazis and the attackers of Pearl Harbor. It was during these years she became pen pals with one John Maxwell, an infantry soldier of the 82nd Airborne Division of the US Army.

After the Axis fell to the Allies and Maxwell was decommissioned from service in late 1946, the young couple of Johnny and Margaret were married in April 1947 and returned to Maxwell’s home state of Michigan to go back to work for General Motors while she made a home for  their new family in Farmington. In 1948, Margaret gave birth to her son, Patrick Maxell, and in 1951 the Maxwell family welcomed their youngest member, a daughter, Brenda Maxwell. 

Over the next two decades, the Maxwell's grew much like the communities around them and Margaret took great pride in the home she created for her family.  With her children aged and beginning to graduate, Margaret went to work part time for a number of different venues, ranging from industrial warehouses, to assembly lines to assisting nurses in residential care.

But, Margaret found a second life’s passion in the title of “Grandma” with the birth of her first grandchild Tige, followed by Ryan and Angela a few years later. Before the birth of her last grandchild, however, Margaret suffered the greatest loss she would ever face when her husband succumbed to heart disease in June 1985 at the young age of 59. For the first time in her life, Margaret moved to Ferndale to be closer to her church, Bethel Missionary Baptist, and would move to Visalia, CA in 1988 to be closer to her brothers and sisters in law. 

For the next decade and a half, Margaret would make bi-annual trips back to the East Coast to visit her family and grandchildren until 2006 when she moved to Columbia, SC to be closer to her family members. And, beginning in April 2011, she welcomed the births of five great grandchildren over the next 8 years.

Margaret is survived by her daughter, Brenda Watts (Mike); her grandsons, Tige and Ryan Watts; her granddaughter, Angela White (Nathan); great granddaughters, Kennedy Marie Watts and Ava Marie Mae White; and great grandsons, Elijah Clyde Watts, John Daniel White and Jensen Nathaniel White. She was preceded in death by her parents, her brothers, her husband John, her son Patrick, and a grandson in law Nigel.