Longtime LV resident Pribble dies

Monday, April 20, 1998 | 10:26 a.m.

Marguerite "Maggie" Pribble was an independent woman who in many ways was ahead of her time.

She earned insurance and real estate licenses during an era when not many women sold life insurance policies or property.

She was co-owner of an Arizona business that made women's denim shirts and skirts long before they became the fashion statement they are today.

And she loved the Dodgers baseball team. As a young woman, Pribble took trains from Indianapolis to Brooklyn to watch her favorite Major League squad. She later took similar trips from Las Vegas to Los Angeles to watch them play ball.

On April 9, Pribble, who has been blind for the last two decades, listened to her beloved Dodgers on the radio. She was filled with joy when her favorite player, Mike Piazza, hit a two-run homer and a grand slam in a 7-2 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks.

The next day, Pribble died of heart failure at a Las Vegas nursing home, where she has resided for about a year, recovering from a broken hip. She was 86.

Services for the Southern Nevada resident of 42 years will be private and are being handled by Davis Funeral Home.

"My mother had a very saucy disposition and knew how to have great fun," said Connie Benzenbower of Las Vegas. "She definitely was an independent woman who liked the desert and mountains of Southern Nevada as much as she loved to play quarter video poker."

But, her first love was the Brooklyn Dodgers and, after they moved to the West Coast in the mid-1950s, the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Several years ago, as a Mother's Day gift, a close friend made a wood carving of Piazza. Pribble treasured the statuette and kept it in a place of honor in her room.

Born Marguerite Swift on May 15, 1911, in Boone County, Ind., Maggie was the youngest of eight children of a farming and cattle-raising family.

As an infant, she rode in a covered waggon from her family's farm to Missouri.

Unlike a lot of rural youths of her era who quit school to meet the demands and responsibilities of farm life, Pribble stuck with her studies and earned a high school diploma in Lebanon, Ind.

She used that education to secure good jobs in the 1930s and '40s. For many years, she was a women's clothing buyer for J.C. Penney Co. Inc. and later sold insurance and real estate for several companies in the Midwest.

Pribble moved to Arizona in the 1940s, where she co-owned Harland Manufacturing Co., in Tucson, which made women's denim clothing.

Pribble, who in her prime stood 4 feet 11 inches, was an excellent athlete, excelling in golf and bowling. In her later years she enjoyed taking her grandchildren bowling.

Pribble moved to Las Vegas in 1956 and nine years later married her second husband, Jack Pribble, a Las Vegas distributor. He died in 1969, the year Maggie retired and soon after moved to Pahrump. She returned to Las Vegas in the late 1980s.

During her retirement, Pribble enjoyed gardening and golf, but was forced to give up those pastimes when she became legally blind in 1977, her daughter said.

"She was very proud of what she accomplished during her lifetime -- especially passing her (insurance and real estate) tests," Benzenbower said. "And she was always there for her family."

In addition to her daughter, Pribble is survived by a stepson, Don Pribble; four grandchildren; and three great grandchildren. She was preceded in death by four brothers and three sisters.

DONATIONS: In Pribble's memory to Crystal Cathedral Ministries, Box 100, Garden Grove, Calif., 92642.