Margaret Hollinger, singer, actress, writer, and fund-raising whiz, dies at 79

Margaret Hollinger, 79, of Cochranville, a singer, actress, model, writer, and prolific fund-raiser for Episcopal Academy and other local organizations, died Friday, April 15, of complications from Parkinson’s disease at home.

Known around Villanova, Drexel Hill, and Philadelphia in the 1940s and ’50s as the “little girl with the big voice,” Mrs. Hollinger made her professional stage debut at 8 at the Academy of Music in the Philadelphia Grand Opera Company’s production of Rigoletto. Naturally vivacious throughout her life, she went on to perform in nightclubs, dinner theater, cruise-ship productions, and on stock, national company, and off-Broadway stages, most notably as the girl in The Fantasticks and Lili in Carnival.

Chip Hollinger, her husband of nearly five decades, said Mrs. Hollinger’s favorite line of dialogue was from The Fantasticks: “Please, God, please, don’t let me be normal.” And she wasn’t.

“She was a brilliant woman,” said her husband. “She had a vision and was full of life.”

Later, while raising her three sons, Mrs. Hollinger became a prolific fund-raiser and innovator at Episcopal, the Academy of Notre Dame de Namur, and the Philadelphia Drama Guild. She helped create the development office at Notre Dame de Namur and, working as the director of development and later in the office of institutional advancement, was instrumental in, among other things, Episcopal’s obtaining and funding its new $213 million campus in Newtown Square in 2008.

Mrs. Hollinger wrote books about her mother, who died at 49 of colon cancer, and her own work as a fund-raiser. She said in an obituary that she wrote herself that she was most proud of the distinguished service award she received as an honorary graduate of Episcopal. She wrote that she was “bemused by the fact that the first half of her professional life was spent on the receiving end of applause, the second applauding others.”

Mrs. Hollinger studied music and acting at the University of Pennsylvania and the Curtis Institute of Music. She worked with international singing instructors Euphemia Giannini Gregory and Martial Singher at Curtis and was named Penn’s outstanding actress four years in a row.

She became a protégé of Metropolitan Opera star Lois Hunt and Broadway’s Earl Wrightson, and studied acting with Uta Hagen at the Herbert Berghof Studio in New York. She also worked in commercials and ran a dinner-theater production company with her husband.

She was featured in a 2013 story in The Inquirer about her granddaughter, Elason, the first girl to be born on her husband’s side of the family in 137 years. “We’re over the moon,” she said. “I can’t wait to take her to the theater.”

Born Dec. 21, 1942, in Philadelphia, Meg McGarry grew up in Villanova and Drexel Hill and graduated from Notre Dame de Namur and Penn. She met her husband at Episcopal in 1970, and they married in 1973, lived in Bryn Mawr and Merion Station, and raised sons Jason, Jonathan, and Joshua. They moved to Cochranville, in Chester County, in 2018.

She was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2000, retired from Episcopal in 2012, and worked as a consultant with nonprofits over the last decade. She wrote in her obituary that she was “in the business of making people happy, providing the opportunity to ‘give ’til it felt good’ in support of a worthy cause or institution.”

Her sons said Mrs. Hollinger was “wise,” “supportive,” and “grounded,” and helped everyone she encountered be the best they could be. She had elegant clothes for every occasion, sang her favorite show tunes around the house, designed imaginative Christmas cards, and inspired others with her dulcet renditions of hymns at chapel.

“She was all about relationships,” her husband said. “When she met you, she wanted to know everything about you. She was a real people person.”

A family visitation is to be from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday, April 22, at the Chadwick & McKinney Funeral Home, 30 E. Athens Ave., Ardmore, Pa. 19003. A private interment is to follow. A memorial service is to be at 11 a.m. Saturday, April 23, at the Class of 1944 Chapel at Episcopal Academy, 1785 Bishop White Dr., Newtown Square, Pa. 19073. A reception is to follow.

Donations in her name may be made to the Meg and Chip Hollinger Scholarship Fund at Episcopal Academy, 1785 Bishop White Dr., Newtown Square, Pa. 19073, and the Michael J. Fox Foundation, P.O. Box 5014, Hagerstown, Md., 21741.