Margaret Yeutter Jamir

Margaret Jamir (1918 - 2013) was born to the Yeutter family on a farm outside of Adrian, Michigan. In 1954 she wrote a "thank you" letter to W. E. B. Du Bois, crediting him as a keystone step in her finding the Bahá'í Faith. As part of the Du Bois archive of the University of Massachusets at Amherst, it has been digitized and is online. It details two of the steps she mentions of her finding the religion.

Margaret's early 20th-century father was the son of an immigrant from Germany who inherited the family farm, and her mother was of the local Carnahan clan, herself a local secondary school teacher. While the road nearest their farm was unnamed, the family had a telephone before Margaret, the third of the family, was born. Social coverage in the local newspaper was such that the comings and goings of the family, their medical trials, social engagements and participation in the local Grange, a farmer-society association center of events, and the like, were often recorded. In the face of the Great Depression the Yeutter family hosted a grand gathering of the family at their farm and then vacationed to Niagara Falls. This was a family of tested means and social standing and Margaret had her place, being visible hosting youth activities of her social circle and of her Congregational Church as she approached adulthood. Upon graduation from High School we find the first mention in her Du Bois Letter. The summer of her graduation, July 1935, Margaret went to the Olivet College Young People's Conference, representing the Pilgrim Fellowship Group of the Adrian Congregational Church. Already noted for her appreciation of poetry and religious motivation, here she encountered the work of still living James Weldon Johnson, writer of the poem that became the "Black National Anthem". However, we don't know who shared or which work they shared at the conference. It "opened up for me a vast new realm". By August, Margaret had won a scholarship to attend Kalamazoo Western State Teachers College, as it was known then. There, among her academic achievements, she was soon an officer of the Inter-Church Student Council, an extracurricular activity on/near campus, and in May 1937, it held a conference on "Religious Literature”. This may have been the event at which she reviewed W. E. B. Du Bois' work that inspired her search for religion without racism: "[I] wrote a term paper on this new Theme - Negro poetry in America - and there I found your books. And I was just thinking today[1954], I do believe it was they which set me on the path of search. No other place did I find The Thought of a new Messiah, a new Christ, who would Champion all the peoples of the world."

There we pick up the third step in her process. Margaret began student-teaching in a suburb of Detroit, a St. Claire Shores elementary school, the fall of 1941, with the Attack on Pearl Harbor coming later that year. Her last year of teaching was the 1943-1944 school year. During this time she was specifically introduced to the religion. She had a habit of asking her students if they had encountered any poetry produced by African Americans and in one class a student of hers said her family had some. This led to an invitation to visit her Bahá'ís family. She said in her letter to Du Bois:

Some years later, after much doubt, hopelessness and disgust with the way the world ran in general, I found Him in The Person of Baha'u'llah[sic], founder of the Bahá'í Faith. Finding the Faith has made a vast difference in my life. A pattern began to come clear - and I received courage to go ahead and live my life with hope, realizing[sic] that if God has said "The earth is one country and all mankind its citizens," nothing can prevent its[sic] eventually being so in the physical world, in spite[sic] of the stubbornness, selfishness and stupidity of his human creation. And He fits the yardstick given in your books when He says, "You are all the leaves of one tree, the fruits of one branch."

However, that is not the end of the story. There is little visible of her activity until 1948 - though in between she did earn a license as an RN through training at Yale. Mid-May, 1948, she was in a serious car accident driving back from Louhelen Bahá'í School. Among those killed was Bertha Hyde Kirkpatrick. From June, Margaret became visible in a variety of publicly mentioned services:

• She began to be mentioned as an editor of Baha’i News from June, a service she would continue into May 1949.
• Offered a comparative religion course at Louhelen for pre-youth.
• In October, she led the public meeting on “Pattern for Future Society” for the Bahá'ís, which continued through the mid-April, 1949.
• Amid these services, she was part of the first Bahá'í wedding ceremony in the capital of Michigan, Lansing, when she married Michael Jamir.
• Together, they traveled to other Bahá'í communities, giving public talks before the end of the summer of 1949.

From there, the family would be homefront pioneers in several states and have three children. Michael and Margaret served on the National Bahá'í Indian Service Committee in the mid-1960s while living in Nebraska, where they also held public meetings. Then the family moved to Hollywood, Florida, where the summer of 1968 Michael and Margaret were at the Palermo conference commemorating the arrival of Bahá'u'lláh at Akka, and the chance to go on Bahá'i pilgrimage. In May 1971 the Jamirs took part in the First Bahá'í Floating Institute leaving Florida for Jamaica on the SS New Bahama Star. In June 1974 the Jamirs attended the Oklahoma City 3rd National Bahá’í Youth Conference of the United States. By 1976 the family had moved to Oklahoma and Margaret was the contact person for the east Oklahoma district convention, and the Okmulgee Bahá'ís formed a Spiritual Assembly in 1977 with the Jamirs. The family soon moved to other places and continued to serve into the 1980s and settling in North Augusta, South Carolina. There was a profile of Bahá'ís of Augusta, across the river, and the observance of the Centenary of the Ascension of Bahá’u’lláh shared by Michael and noting the approaching 2nd World Congress. After the Congress, Michael and Margaret and others wrote of it in Augusta. In their final years the Jamirs moved to North Carolina, where Michael died May 8, 2007. Amid news of her kin back in Michigan also passing from age, Margaret was interviewed in 2009, and she died in 2013 while living in Siler City, North Carolina, a lone homefront pioneer, though not far from her daughter Sally.

Family of origin

Margaret Yeutter was the third child of Arnold and Mary Yeutter, born on 27 December, 1918. At the time, the road the Yeutters lived on was unnamed. Elder siblings Mabel and Glenn had attended Adrian area schools. Adrian itself was about 5 miles away. Arnold had been born in Germany, was a native German speaker, and her mother Mary was born in Michigan.

Arnold’s father was John/Johan Yeutter(21 August 1849 – 12 January 1923), and his mother, the second marriage of John, was Margaretha. Margaretha had died before the birth of Margaret, while Margaret's grandfather died while she was young. Arnold, raised a farmer on his father's land, was born February 15, 1880, and had married Mary Carnahan on March 23, 1905. Mary was a secondary school teacher by 1900 while her father was a carpenter. Mary was still a teacher in August, 1905, and had been visiting with the Yeutter family by January. Mary was born March 6, 1881, to Edwin D. Carnahan and Emma Jeanette Pentlow of Adrian.

The Yeutter homestead changed hands in 1908 from John Yeutter Sr to Arnold Yeutter. The family continued farming the same land. Arnold lived to 1961, and mother Mary Carnahan Yeutter to 1966. Mabel was born by 1910. Mother Mary was ill and cared for by her mother, Mrs. Carnahan, in 1914, twice. In 1916, mother Mary was visited by aunt Alice Moore of Battle Creek, and the Yeutters visited the Ernest Carnahan family. The 1916 the local Telephone Directory lists the Yeutters of the area having telephone landlines.

Raised on the farm

Elder sister Mabel got her tonsils out in 1922. In 1923, kin were on an outing with the Carnahans to Jackson for the Sayers family reunion. A 1925 birthday included father Arnold with Carnahans and Hoags. Margaret was about 6 years old at that time. That summer, kin and friends attended the baccalaureate services of Adrian College, though it is unclear why they were attending - was it a graduation of family or friend? Late that summer Margaret had measles. In 1927, Paul Jackson, later Mabel’s husband, recovered at the Yeutter home from an operation at Bixby Hospital in Adrian. In 1928, Paul Jackson and Mabel Yeutter married in a Methodist Episcopal ceremony in Ohio and went on a honeymoon to Niagara Falls; Mabel was a teacher in Cadmus, a tiny town west of Adrian. At the time, Paul and the new family lived and worked in Palmyra, 5 miles south of Adrian - about 10 miles from the Yeutter homestead.

In 1929 Margaret was operated on in Ann Arbor for Mastoiditis, was transferred to the local Bixby Hospital with her mother attending to her. After another trip to Ann Arbor, Margaret’s care continued at Bixby, now approaching a month. Near a year later, June 1930, the Yeutters were guests of Mary’s parents in Caresco. In a family first, Carl Yeutter went to a state competition - in this case, the state 4H competition, an agriculturally centered youth development organization. A couple months later, the Yeutter-Carnahan kin visitations included mother Mary and grandmother Mrs. Carnahan. The Yeutter family Christmas reception, as the Great Depression began tearing into the economy, hosted Carnahans and Jacksons from Adrian, Walworth, Ceresco, Clarks of Chelsea; Margaret's grandparents, Ernest & Mrs. Carnahan, stayed on some days. That winter Margaret was ill with whooping cough. In April, the Yeutters, including Margaret, were Easter guests of the Carnahans’ in Ceresco, and Adrian. Margaret and friends attended the 8th-grade commencement in Blissfield, sister Mabel hosted the graduating students, and a picture was taken of Margaret at 11 years old. She was awarded for her health and desk order as well as a “Seven Month Certificate”. The main teacher was Mrs. Mary Hunt. The Yeutters’ were then guests of the Buehrers of Cadmus.

The first visible sign that religion was a significant interest of Margaret was when the town newspaper covered her attendance at the birthday dinner of Luella Knisel, her Sunday School teacher. That summer, the Yeutters and Jacksons attended the Sayers family reunion at the fair-grounds in Adrian, and late in the summer Margaret and kin visited her grandparent Carnahans.

With the Great Depression carrying on, Margaret and other students began their high school attendance in Adrian. Margaret was part of the farmer society Junior Grange, a farmer-society center of events, that winter and leading a program by giving the recitation. That was followed by Margaret hosting the Happy Go Lucky Sewing Club at her home. A month later, her grandmother moved in with the Yeutter family, got the flu, and moved home after recovering. While that was going on, Margaret led off the formal reception for the Tatohekiya Camp Fire Leadership meeting under Helen Tag at the Presbyterian church with a reading, which was repeated later in May. This was while her sister married in the Methodist Episcopal church. Her family was a crossroads of Christian Protestant denominations.

Margaret had straight A’s in her 9th-grade year, the highest of her class, but she had already won monthly awards, so she was not given an annual one. At the Grange meeting of mid-May, Margaret sang a solo, and a week later, her mother and kin were gone visiting.

In June Margaret presented her baby cousin Shirley Ann Carnahan at the Adrian Community Unity Fair for the Community Chest, (a forerunner of the United Way.) Late in June, another Grange meeting had a presentation by the Junior Grange under the lead of Edna Piekford, including a recitation by Margaret. In July Margaret, sister, and parents, traveled to Jackson - a distance of about 30 miles - probably taking more than an hour to traverse, and kin held a reception. That August, a Yeutter family reunion was held in Adrian, and, while the Great Depression deepened, Margaret’s family vacationed at Niagara Falls.

The upcoming Happy Go Lucky Sewing Club meeting was scheduled for Margeret’s home in October. Her turn in hosting came around again in early April. In May, a Mother's Day party was held at her grandmother's. There was a large family vacation out at Clark’s Lake, around 30 miles from Adrian, for July. The August Yeutter family reunion was held in Adrian with one making the trip from California.

The next high school year began with 18 students, including Margaret and several of her kin. At the fall Grange meeting, Margaret took on the role of the ‘Flora’ of the event. Margaret was part of a quartet along with her brother Glenn performing at the 2-year-old Walworth Woman's Club meeting held at the Grange Hall in later October. In November, Margaret’s parent's family & grandmother visited in Mt. Morris, over a hundred miles to the north, a trip of certainly more than 3 hrs each way.

In 1934 Margaret and Mabel and kin celebrated Glenn’s 21st birthday with a party of 23 present. Margaret sang a solo for the Grange Mother’s Day meeting in May. Kin, including Carl, spoke of their trip to Michigan State College for the high school agricultural classes for Future Farmer Week.

That fall, 13 students, including Margaret, began their last year of high school in Adrian. The Yeutter kin, including Margaret, sang "The Green, Rose and Gold”, a song written by Mabel and Paul Jackson, for the next Grange meeting. Margaret was among the women who won prizes for their cakes at the next Grange meeting, and was among the staff ‘gypsies’ that served dinner at the Walworth Woman’s Club meeting held at the Grange.

In February 1935, Margaret and the Adrian High School choir went to Ann Arbor, where their performance was broadcast during the University of Michigan’s educational hour over radio WJR, and Margaret was among the West Adrian Sunday School group attending the Leadership Training Classes at the Presbyterian Church in Adrian. Margaret was also among the delegates from the High School civics class that observed the swearing-in ceremony for the citizenship of four people at the Lenawee Circuit Court. In March, Margaret and Adrian High School choir, again went to Ann Arbor, and in April, Margaret won the Adrian High School oratorical contest, going on to a regional event at River Rouge, a suburb of Detroit. though she didn’t win for her presentation; but she still ‘lettered’ under the tutelage of Helen Harrington in the debate club, the group of which had won the county contest, and was part of the team that presented at the sub-regional event, including six high schools.

After this, Margaret was visibly a co-leader of the Congregationalist Pilgrim Fellowship group, broadening her inter-denominational inclinations. In May, among many kin’s travels, Margaret took a trip to Kalamazoo perhaps to see about her college application. She was one of the honor students of the graduating high school class and delivered the salutatory address at the commencement. Across the region’s high schools, the graduating group of seniors was 219 students.

College and first career

The summer of her graduation, July 1935, Margaret went to the Olivet College Young People's Conference representing the Pilgrim Fellowship Group of the Adrian Congregational Church, and returned home by mid-July. The event was run by Helen Boyd of Lansing, with some 300 attending, and 20 faculty giving workshops. Here she encountered the work of still living James Weldon Johnson, though we don't know who shared, or which work in particular, at the conference. In a letter to W. E. B. Du Bois decades later, she would reference this event as pivotal in setting her on the path towards the Bahá'í Faith, and sparked her interest in black poetry:

… here was opened up for me a vast new realm - which for some odd reason had not appeared in my high school texts… and I had not missed it, as children, and many adults too, overlook things which are not clearly pointed out.

By late July, Margaret visited with a friend in West Adrian, and, by August, Margaret had won a scholarship to attend Kalamazoo Western State Teachers College, as it was known then, about a hundred miles west of Adrian. Unfortunately, the collection of student newspapers, yearbooks, etc is missing the 1930s.

Margaret was visited by her family in the fall, and herself visit back home too. The Yeutters hosted a large gathering of kin and friends at the farm, including Margaret, for Thanksgiving Day, with one couple coming from Chicago, another mass reception approaching Christmas. There continued to be trips back to school and the homestead. In 1936 Margaret joined the Science Club. While not a straight-A student, Margaret still earned a status of “high scholarship” her first year. Margaret was also a member of the Inter-Church Council Student Fellowship, which staged the play "The Whirlwind" which was directed by Sadie Elma Sahler, (who herself finished her Bachelors with high honors in 1938-9.)

Margaret again returned to the farm for the after-Easter period. Margaret closed her year with no grade lower than a B, earning the right to be in the College Daisy Chain processional.

Margaret was home for Decoration Day (former name of Memorial Day.) Margaret also took part in the Congregational Church of Adrian centennial program, reading “The Legend Beautiful”, a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and was the summer Vacation Church School junior teacher for the West Adrian Congregational Church.

That fall she returned to her Kalamazoo Western State College studies. That year, she was elected to the cabinet of the Inter-Church Council Student Fellowship. Of course, she visited home. The Kalamzaoo Inter-Church Student Fellowship Council held a play, in which Margaret was assistant director under Sahler, and spent Christmas at home. She continued to go back and forth into the spring. The May 1937 Inter-Church Student Fellowship held a discussion "Religious Literature”. This may have been the event at which she reviewed W. E. B. Du Bois' work that inspired her search for religion without racism, something for which she thanked Du Bois:

[I] wrote a term paper on this new Theme - Negro poetry in America - and there I found your books. And I was just thinking today[1954], I do believe it was they which set me on the path of search. No other place did I find The Thought of a new Messiah, a new Christ, who would Champion all the peoples of the world.

Though Margaret does not name the Du Bois source that made such an impression on her, an example could be:

… By the bones of our stolen fathers,

by the tears of our dead mothers,

by the very blood of our crucified Christ

…Tell us the plan; give us the sign; whisper-—speak—call, great God

… show us the way and point us the path…

written in 1906.

Margaret was among the kin gathered at her grandparent Carnahan home after Easter, approaching Memorial Day, again visiting the Yeutters in June, though, after clearly being visible visiting home, her final two years were not as visible in local newspapers. Her yearbook listed her as a junior in college (her 2nd full year), as secretary of the Science Club, listed in her Laws, Theories, and Doctrines class, and going on the campus YWCA hikes.

Margaret was among the cast of the Inter-Church Student Fellowship production of "The Candlemaker of St. John's", and admitted/elected into the Pi Gamma Mu social sciences honor society, her fourth year. Margaret attended the marriage of a cousin March 11, 1939, at Kalamazoo.

For Margaret's senior year, and Pi Gamma Mu member, and she was again a member of the YWCA. She graduated. Her first job as a teacher was in Lambertville, Michigan, a Michigan suburb of Toledo, Ohio.

The eldest son of her great-grandfather died in California where he had moved in 1918. The winter of 1939-40, Margaret was home in Adrian assisting with the Grange meeting, and she was listed living at the homestead that spring in the 1940 Census. All the neighbors owned their homes, generally worth $1500, or more, in 1940 dollars, and the Jackson home was valued at $2500. Margaret’s profession was listed as teacher. That June, Margaret was a bridesmaid at her brother Glenn's marriage in a Baptist church to Ilah May Kimball, continuing to broaden her familial cross-denominational pattern. In August, Margaret was elected the Yeutter Reunion historian at the summer 1940 meeting.

In 1941 there was a land transfer from father Arnold. After teaching in 1939-40 in Lambertville, the school year of 1940-41, she taught in Fostoria, Michigan, well north of Detroit, some 130 miles from Adrian, while still able to visit over the winter break. The summer of 1941 Margaret was back as part of the wedding shower hosted by the Yeutters, and was one of the appointed delegates to the regional Grange Youth Conference coming to East Lansing. Margaret gave a report to the Grange about the East Lansing Grange Youth Conference held at MSU of mid-July.

Margaret began teaching at St. Claire Shores the fall of 1941, leaving the home farm, with the Attack on Pearl Harbor, though visiting home. Glenn and Idah May Yeutter visited Margaret in St. Clair Shores in March. She returned to the Yeutter homestead the summer of 1942, and the Yeutter Reunion which again elected her as the historian. Still that summer, sister Mabel Jackson and her daughter Mary Jane returned from a visit to Detroit after accompanying Margaret there. There were further trips back and forth, Margeret finished the 1943-1944 school year at St. Claire Shores.

She later tells the story of looking for black poetry and a student of hers in St. Claire Shores reported her family had some which led to an invitation to visit and, over successive visits, finding the Meese family were Bahá'ís. She said in her letter to Du Bois:

Some years later, after much doubt, hopelessness and disgust with the way the world ran in general, I found Him in The Person of Baha'u'llah[sic], founder of the Bahá'í Faith. Finding the Faith has made a vast difference in my life. A pattern began to come clear - and I received courage to go ahead and live my life with hope, realyzing that if God has said "The earth is one country and all mankind its citizens," nothing can prevent its eventually being so in the physical world, inspite of the stubbornness, selfishness and stupidity of his human creation. And He fits the yardstick given in your books when He says, "You are all the leaves of one tree, the fruits of one branch."

Before coming to the Detroit area, the Meese family had lived in Antioch, Illinois, including daughter Marilyn, moved to Ohio, but were still in the area in the later 1950s.

However, teaching was not her desired career, however much it was in her family history. After 1944 - perhaps the fall of 1945 - after the War was over, through the spring of 1948, she was at Yale Nursing School, a program she entered after volunteering in some Detroit area hospitals the summer of 1944. Yeutter's alumni records show she graduated in 1948. The program took 32 months, so she started in 1945, probably in the fall, and finished in the spring of 1948. The first African American graduate came through finishing in 1946. It was her happiest time.

Active Bahá'í, married, and place to place in Michigan

Lansing

Fresh from graduation as a nurse, she was already in a car traveling back from Louhelen Bahá'í School in mid-May, 1948. Alas, it made the newspapers because it was in a serious car accident driving back from Louhelen. Margaret Stafford, Marsha Lee Stafford, Dana Farrand and Bertha Hyde Kirkpatrick were killed in the accident or shortly there-after. L. E. Stafford, Paul Pettit, Margaret Yeutter, and Quentin Farrand survived. Margaret was listed as living at the YWCA in Lansing at the time. Margaret began to be mentioned as an editor of Baha’i News from June. Margaret also offered a comparative religion course at Louhelen for 10-15 yr olds as part of the summer program. But Margaret was not in the area employed as a nurse. Margaret had a job teaching school in Lansing, getting a raise in the summer of 1948. She was still editing for Baha’i News through the winter into Spring 1949. The Louhelen Bahá'í School faculty that fall of 1948 included her future husband Michael Jamir, and Firuz Kazemzadeh. Michael had been visible in Lansing a month before the accident. Late in the fall, Margaret led the public meeting on “Pattern for Future Society” for the Bahá'ís at the YWCA under the Lansing Assembly as the start of series of meetings held at the YWCA which continued through the winter In late February, Margaret Yeutter and Michael Jamir were the first Bahá'í wedding ceremony in Lansing. She was given a shower from her fellow teachers at Walnut Street School at the Women’s Club House with David and (never mentioned publicly) Joy Earl. "Up to the Minute News” was Margaret’s continuance of the YWCA series of meetings mid-April. The Lansing Spiritual Assembly of 1949-1950 was composed of: W. Kenneth & Roberta Christian, Sophia Butterfield, Margaret and Michael Jamir, Richard & Louis Nolen, Kittle Shetterly, and Mabel Vicary. Margaret continued the YWCA series, now with “Serving All Mankind” filmstrip. The Jamirs presented for the Ann Arbor Assembly in July at the home of Harry & Mrs. Mills on “Family Relations” as part of their series of meetings.

In January 1950 Michael and Margaret were among the committee producing the observance of the World Religion Day for the Bahá'ís. They visited in Adrian area among several relatives for the 1 year anniversary. In April, Michael was chairman for the committee that included Margaret for the event with Hand of the Cause William Sears giving a talk. That spring, Michael and Margaret went to the national Bahá'í Convention.

In November, their first child Vinson was born.

Battle Creek

Near a year after Vinson was born, Margaret worked with the Calhoun County Mental Hygiene Society in Battle Creek, recognized as an RN. The Battle Creek Spiritual Assembly had organized in 1948. Margaret was a coordinator for a YWCA series on becoming parents under the sponsorship of Battle Creek Public Schools Evening Division with the cooperation of Calhoun County Medical Society and the Society for Mental Hygiene. At the YWCA series in Battle Creek - "World religion, keystone of education” - included Margaret. Michael was a county Welfare Agent. Margaret continued parenting classes through YWCA, and the family hosted a Brotherhood (race unity) meeting in February, and visited with the Yeutter homestead in June.

In May 1953, a daughter was born to the Jamirs. that year was the announcement of the Ten Year Crusade which had international and intranational goals: Adrian, Jackson, Lansing, Ypsilanti were among communities that elected assemblies by 1962, and previous assemblies maintained were Ann Arbor, Battle Creek, Dearborn, Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, Muskegon, Royal Oak.

In February 1954, the Jamirs hosted the Jacksons from Adrian. In March Michael the left position in Battle Creek, and took a position with the Charlotte area as the County Juvenile Court Agent. It was that September that Margaret wrote a letter to W. E. B. Du Bois from Battle Creek and got a response.

Michael was replaced as Charlotte County Juvenile Court Agent January 1955.

Ypsilanti

Michael went back to school to advance his training in welfare work with the family moving to Ypsilanti, still going to the national convention. Daughter Sally Jamir was born June 1955, and there were medical complications and earlier children proceeding through grades in Ypsilanti. A couple months later Michael spoke in Ypsilanti and at the session at Louhelen, and wrote a letter to the editor in Ann Arbor on the persecution of Bahá'ís in Iran. Michael was again among the delegates elected in 1956, and hosted the Jacksons of Adrian again in March 1957 while the Jamirs lived in Mt. Clemens. Michael was again a delegate in 1957, and for 1958.

Imlay City

The delegates to the 1959 national Bahá'í convention were Mrs. Eggleston and Michael Jamir, the family now living in Imlay City, Michigan, north of Detroit. In June, 1960, Michael & Margaret and family were week end guests of her parents. They attended the high school alumni reunion.

A wider sphere, from place to place

Nebraska

That summer the Jamirs were preparing to move to Winnebago, Nebraska, while the kids stayed with Arnold & Mary, their grandparents. In early 1961 Margaret returned to the Yeutter homestead, helping to care for father Arnold, and returned to Winnebago in March. In June, Michael gave a talk at Race Amity Day, mentioned as a Children’s Social Worker, in Omaha. The Jamirs visited relatives in the Adrian area in July. In September, the Bahá'ís held World Peace Day with Michael giving the talk in Omaha. There he was profiled in February 1962 while giving a talk at the YWCA. In May, Margaret spent Mother’s Day with her mother Mary, on the way to the American Nurses Association convention in Detroit. In July, Margaret and daughters visited mother Mary and kin in the area. Meanwhile, Michael gave talks at meetings in Omaha.

In January 1963, approaching the close of the Ten Year Crusade, Michael gave a talk for World Religion Day in Omaha.

In November, there was a Yeutter family reunion, though there was no mention if the Jamirs had come. In December Michael gave a talk for Human Rights Day in Omaha, and for World Religion Day in January.

In 1964 and scattered across the later '60s, the Bahá'ís in Adrian are mentioned via the Martin family. In August, Margaret, Karla, and Sally, visited mother and kin in Adrian. In September Mabel and Paul Jackson visit the Jamirs in Nebraska during a cross country trip of theirs. That November mother Mary attended the Yeutter reunion.

In March, 1965, Michael and Margaret served on the national Bahá'í Indian Service Committee. In June-July Sally was in and out of hospitals in Sioux City, Iowa. In August Margaret & family were visiting mother Mary who had had surgery herself. She continued in and out of hospital the fall and winter, and died by February, 1966.

Florida

Nearly a year later the Jamirs moved to Hollywood, Florida. In 1967 Margaret was named in a transfer of family land as part of settling the Yeutter estate. In March the Jamirs were again visited by Mabel & Paul Jackson, this time at their in Hollywood, Florida, home. That spring Vinson Jamir wrote humous piece for World Order magazine. In June 1968 Vinson also wrote a piece on Bahá'í Youth activity in Florida. That summer Michael and Margaret were at the Palermo conference commemorating the arrival of Bahá'u'lláh at Akka, and the chance to go on Bahá'i pilgrimage. In November Vinson was a conference registrar for Gainesville, Florida. In May 1971 the Jamirs took part in the First Bahá'í Floating Institute leaving Florida for Jamaica on the SS New Bahama Star.

Oklahoma

In June 1974 the Jamirs attended the Oklahoma City 3rd National Bahá’í Youth Conference of the United States, just on the return of Karla from the Shetland Islands.

The next mention of the family is of Karla Jamir as part of a Cornell initiative on the Center for World Community. By 1976 Margaret was the contact person for the east Oklahoma district convention that was held at the Northeastern Oklahoma State University for 1976 (to serve in 1977.) Their address was in Okmulgee Oklahoma. Indeed the Okmulgee Bahá'ís formed a Spiritual Assembly in 1977 - Vinson was noted in the American Bahá'i as absent for the photograph but Michael and Margaret are visible in the back row. That fall Margaret was again the contact person for the east Oklahoma district convention this time held in the Henryetta civic center. Margaret was the contact person for the 1978 Eastern Oklahoma District Teaching Committee trying to assist 11 communities in the region build up their membership and activities with homefront pioneers. On the same page in The American Bahá'í stating that the Okmulgee Assembly itself was threatened with falling below the required nine community members after forming during the Five Year Plan.

In 1979 Vinson was visible from Okmulgee writing about whether a nursing shortage was a regulatory problem since his wife was skilled and capable and licensed from other states but could not practice in the state because of regulatory non-acknolwedgement of her status. That fall Sally was visible from Glenwood Springs, Colorado, working in the agricultural extension service, helping to found a farmer’s market.

In late summer, 1981, Michael was set to present a talk at the Moscogee Nation Creek Council House Museum. In October, Sally was next visible from Durham, North Carolina, helping the local observance of UN Day. In November, the Bahá'ís around Tulsa joined together for an observance of Human Rights Day at which Michael was one of the speakers, noted as an assistant to the Auxiliary Board. That same year Vinson was visible again in World Order with an analysis of the European Economic Community and the prospects of equal pay for the sexes.

Between 1981 and 1985, Michael and Margaret moved to Ponape, later renamed Pohnpie. Meanwhile, son Vinson earned an LLM from the University of Georgia.

North Carolina

In 1985 Margaret, Michael, and Sally were visible in Cary, North Carolina, with a mayoral proclamation for International Peace Day. In 1986 Michael was visible still in Cary in the effort to share The Promise of World Peace.

A few years later in 1991 Sally was visible in Chatham County with her cat at a pet exhibition.

South Carolina

Michael wrote a letter to editor on persecution in Iran that year from North Augusta, South Carolina. That year was also the announcement of the marriage of Steven Kolins and Sally Jamir in Pittsboro, announced in Steven’s Point, Wisconsin.

There was a profile of Bahá'ís of Augusta and the observance of the Centenary of the Ascension of Bahá’u’lláh shared by Michael and noting the approaching World Congress. After the Congress, Michael and Margaret Jamir and others wrote of it in Augusta. Further coverage came from Sally in Pittsboro, North Carolina. Michael followed with further coverage in 1993 of the Bahá'ís and persecution in Iran in the Augusta newspaper.

In 1994 Sally was visible in a piece about the Landegg Academy and agricultural practices published in One Country. She then shared coverage of a meeting in Alexandria Virginia for Ridvan and an upcoming Greensboro conference on race unity.

Final years

Margaret lost her brother Glenn and sister Mabel in 1996. Glenn died in February, and Mabel in August.

Michael died 8 May 2007 in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Margaret was interviewed in 2009 - she mentions the Meese family at St. Claire Shores.

Glenn’s wife Ilah May died in April 2011 back in Adrian.

Margaret died in 2013 while living in Siler City, North Carolina, close to her daughter Sally.