Dorothy Pegg

Dorothy Pegg never mentioned her age. She seldom mentioned her race, despite setting countless racial firsts as a civic leader. She seldom mentioned her home's firebombing, though it inspired a nationally historic integration drive. Pegg, who died Tuesday at University Hospitals at 104, preferred to mention her many trips and the many cultural activities she promoted. "I like to think they weren't deferring to me because of race," she told The Plain Dealer in 1966 about becoming the first black director of the Women's City Club, "but choosing me on ability and as a person. With the passage of time, people will be accepted more on merit than for representation of a certain group." At her death, Pegg was still a board member of the Cleveland Institute of Music. She'd attended a meeting there two weeks ago. Over the decades, Pegg had been vice president of the Women's City Club and the Cleveland League of Women Voters, a committee chair for the Cleveland Council on World Affairs, and a trustee of the Cleveland Playhouse, Metropolitan YWCA, National Council for World Visitors, Great Lakes Theater Festival and more. As education chairwoman for the Cleveland Orchestra, she expanded programs and tours for children and conducted many of those activities herself. Friends said she was gracious and formal. She hosted many tourists, led English classes for long-term ones and taught them to call her "Mrs. Pegg." "She was a lady. She was very discrete," said Leatrice Madison of Shaker Heights. If necessary, "she would tell you off in a very ladylike way." Pegg was born Dorothy Singleton to a physician in Washington, D.C. She earned degrees from the University of Chicago and American University. She taught in D.C. and Baltimore, specializing in reading skills for black remedial students. During World War II, she was a correspondent at American Red Cross headquarters with field directors in war zones. She married John Pegg in 1944 and followed him to Cleveland in 1946. He attended Western Reserve University law school, and she taught at Quincy, Warner and Longfellow schools for six years. In 1955, the Peggs started to build a $40, 000 home on Corby Dr. on the Cleveland side of the Ludlow neighborhood, which straddles Shaker Heights. They would have been among the neighborhood's first black residents. The next January, a month from completion, a bomber destroyed the home. Some 40 volunteers, including neighbors, ministers and Cub Scouts, braved cold weather to clean up the mess. The house was rebuilt that year, and the Ludlow Community Association arose to launch a nationally pioneering drive for peaceful integration. In 1968, the Peggs moved to another part of Shaker Heights. They also traveled around the world three times, climbing the Great Wall of China, crossing Siberia by train and going on safari in Africa. John Pegg died in 1979. The childless widow gradually lost touch with her distant survivors. The childless widow took an apartment in Shaker Heights and was tended in later years by a young singer from Taiwan whom she'd helped welcome to Cleveland. FRIENDS MAY GATHER AT CHURCH OF THE COVENANT FROM 11:45 TO 12:15 WEDNESDAY PRIOR TO FUNERAL SERVICE


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