LAKEWAY, Texas — A family is mourning the loss of a Lakeway woman known as "Sug" who died from complications with coronavirus.
Mary Margaret Seewald Blackwell died at the age of 83 on July 9 in Austin, her daughter, Alice Blackwell, told KVUE. She's remembered as a person who exuded happiness.
After marrying her husband in 1958, she raised five children and "surrounded them with love; taught them how to help others and, most importantly, wanted them to be happy," her obituary read. Her daughter told KVUE she is remembered for how positive she was.
"When she'd see somebody and they'd ask her how she was doing, she'd say, 'I'm so much better now that I have my two eyes on you,'" Alice Blackwell told KVUE. "She'd say, 'Life is good for a girl named Sug' when she met new people."
Her grandmother started calling her "Sug" when she was 2 years old, and it stuck with her ever since.
She was a true Texan. As a student at the University of Texas, she founded the Los Charros Rodeo Club. One of Mary Margaret Blackwells's favorite stories to recount was the time she won a silver belt buckle in the club's "wild cow milking contest." As part of the contest, she rode her horse onto a field and milked a wild cow into a coke bottle. It was "enough for one drop to pour out," so she won.
Her daughter told KVUE some of her favorite memories surround the beach house they had at Crystal Beach, where her mother would fish, hunt for crabs and play tennis.
She loved to volunteer for organizations such as the Sierra Club and Big Thicket Preservation Society. A caterer for work, she was also a "legendary" cook and baker, known for her rum cakes, crab rolls and homemade mayonnaise. Growing up, her daughter said Mary Margaret Blackwell hosted breakfast every morning for many of the kids in the neighborhood.
"Sometimes there'd be a group of 15 kids at breakfast," Alice Blackwell said. "It was always a house full of kids."
To many of her children's friends, she was referred to as their "second mom."
Born in Beaumont, Texas, Blackwell moved to Lakeway in recent years to be close to family and friends in the area. She lived at Brookdale, an assisted living facility in Lakeway, after she was diagnosed with dementia. She was transferred to the facility's memory care department when her dementia became severe. That's where her family says she contracted COVID-19.
Blackwell's daughter told KVUE she was taken to an Austin hospital around June 20 when staff noticed she was weak. Alice Blackwell said she tested positive for coronavirus and developed an infection before she was put on a ventilator.
Alice Blackwell told KVUE that, even at the hospital, nurses said she was a ray of sunshine and was "like that until the very end."
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