Marguerite Lefèvre
14 March 1949 — 22 May 2024
A passionate schoolteacher, a tireless traveller and a beloved grandmother — a life turned towards others and the beauty of the world.
A childhood in Lyon
Marguerite Lefèvre was born on 14 March 1949 in Lyon, in the working-class district of La Croix-Rousse, just after the war. The eldest of four children, daughter of a printer and a seamstress, she grew up in a modest flat where one learned early the taste for work well done and respect for others.
School, then university
A curious and diligent pupil, she earned her baccalauréat in 1967 then left the family home to study modern literature at the University of Lyon. The first in her family to attend university, she discovered literature, art history and a new independence there, in the effervescent Lyon of the late 1960s.
A life as a schoolteacher
Once graduated, Marguerite devoted nearly forty years to teaching. A schoolteacher first in the Lyon region, then in Haute-Savoie where she settled in the early 1980s, she left her mark on generations of pupils through her patience and her conviction that every child carries a light within. Many, grown into adults, still wrote to her.
André, and a family
In 1971, she met André, a gentle young engineer, at a dance in Annecy. They married two years later and would never part for fifty years. Together they raised three children — Claire, Julien and Sophie — and welcomed with wonder five grandchildren, the great joy of her later years.
A love of the world and of photography
As soon as the holidays allowed, Marguerite packed her suitcase and her camera. In love with Italy, she returned again and again to Florence, whose every alley and church she knew. She brought back thousands of photographs from her travels, convinced that “we truly possess only what we have looked at with attention”.
The garden, heart of the home
In Annecy, her garden was the true heart of the home. It was there, under the old apple tree, that she gathered her loved ones in the fine season, amid the laughter of grandchildren and the scent of roses. She passed away there peacefully on 22 May 2024, surrounded by her family, leaving the memory of a radiant and generous woman.
Gallery
