On August 19, 2025, Margaret Schaefer Lamberton died peacefully at 82 years old after a summer-long illness and complications from diabetes at the Waynesboro Hospital in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania. Her family was by her side.
Margaret was born to Mae and John Schaefer in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, New York. One of her earliest memories, she described, was watching from her front porch war ships return up the Verrazano Narrows to the Brooklyn Navy Yard at the end of World War II. Margaret attended Visitation Academy in Brooklyn and graduated with honors from Wheeling College, a Jesuit school, in Wheeling, West Virginia. In 1964 she moved to Washington, D.C. and joined Lyndon Johnson’s poverty program working on Capitol Hill. Subsequently, she married Harry C. Lamberton Jr., a fifth generation Washingtonian, had two children, Harry C. Lamberton III and Mary Rawlings Lamberton, by whom she is survived.
Margaret joined her husband in the real estate business selling houses in central Washington with the old and established firm of Sandoz, Inc. In the early 1990’s she and her husband founded Re/Max Capital Properties with offices in Chevy Chase, DC, Capitol Hill and Georgetown. When that business was sold, she established Margaret Lamberton Real Estate, a DC cooperative and condominium apartment sales firm. Among her great pleasures, she said, was working with sellers and buyers alike while enjoying the great beauty and variety of Washington DC – a city she loved. Margaret was a long-time docent at Tudor Place Historic House in Georgetown.
Margaret was an avid gardener at the family place in Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania. There Margaret started with a mainly barren three-acre piece of land, designed gardens and planted a variety of trees with numerous borders of flowers, a boxwood garden, and perennials all amidst several lawns. She often said, “Gardens are good for the spirits – whether an eight-foot- wide patio or terrace or abundant acreage. Plant a garden.” She was a past president of The Blue Ridge Summit Garden Club.
Margaret Lamberton is survived by her husband, Harry Clabaugh Lamberton, her two children, Harry Lamberton (Meredith) of Houston, Texas and Rawlings Miller (Jonathan) of South Hamilton, Massachusetts and her five grandsons: Clay, Davis, Mason, Owen and Nathanial. She is predeceased by five brothers and sisters and survived by her beloved sister, Dolores Schaefer Burris, and numerous nieces and nephews.
A celebration Mass will be held at St. Rita’s Catholic Church in Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania at 11:00 A.M. on September 27, 2025.
In remembrance of Margaret, plant a tree, a shrub or a flower.
Grove-Bowersox Funeral Home, Waynesboro, PA is assiting with the arrangements.
