Kirk, Margaret "Peg"
Margaret "Peg" Kirk was born to Bernard and Veryl Sidley in Akron, Ohio, in 1933. She attended Kent State University and graduated magna cum laude. While in college, Peg worked as a "curb girl" at a car hop to pay her bills. She also attended summer school and completed her English degree in just three years.
In 1953, Peg married John Kirk. She taught school that year in a small public school system in Wayne County, Ohio, while John finished college and worked part-time as a radio disc jockey. After he enlisted in the military, the Kirks moved around the country, celebrating the birth of their first child, Kathleen, at Fort Sill in Oklahoma.
The family then spent time in Florida and had two more children: a son, Jeff, and a daughter, Christina. In 1963, John accepted a job as the Theater Department Director at Kearney State College and moved the family to Nebraska. Peg earned her master's degree in English at Kearney and prepared to begin a new teaching job. However, she never got a chance to start it because John was offered a teaching job at Illinois State University, and the family moved to Normal in 1966.
After a year, Peg landed a job at Normal Community High School and began her 27-year career there. "I was always loved to interact with the kids, and I had a variety of things I could teach," Peg said.
In the late 1970s, the Unit 5 School Board announced budget plans to add classes to existing teacher workloads without consulting with any teachers. Peg was troubled that the Superintendent's Advisory Council refused to give teachers a formal seat at the table, and that's when she "finally got involved in the Unit 5 Education Association (UFEA)."
Peg was instrumental in establishing UFEA as the bargaining unit for teacher contract negotiations and served as union president for two years. She rallied teachers, parents, and other professionals to support UFEA, drawing both media and public attention to the matter. According to Peg in a 1977 Letter to the Editor in the Pantagraph, “if we simply lie back and take it, without a fight, without a struggle, without even a whimper of protest, then perhaps we deserve the shabby treatment that we get.” Today, UFEA actively represents almost 1,000 teachers in McLean County.
In addition to her regular teaching schedule and union duties, Peg also became the National Honor Society adviser and eventually took on the demanding position of speech team coach. Her team won the state championship in 1980.
After she retired from teaching in 1994, Peg continued to be active in the community. She helped train future educators as a student-teacher supervisor at Illinois State, and served six years on the Board of Directors for the Beyond the Books Foundation to support classroom resources for local teachers. She also volunteered at the McLean County Museum of History for many years (including being a regular performer and tour guide for the Evergreen Cemetery Walk), acted at Heartland Theatre Company, and worked with the ISU Senior Professionals.
Peg and John were honored as History Makers in 2015. During their oral history interview, Peg remarked, "We keep going like there's no tomorrow!"
Peg and John were married for over seventy years. She passed away at the age of 90 in 2023.