Audrey M. Beekman Wargo

1915 - 2008

Audrey Wargo, a pianist and music teacher, was born in Washington, D.C., the only child of Daniel Dewitt and Lora Matilda Earle Beekman. Her mother was a Bible worker who later became the first secretary-treasurer of the District of Columbia Conference. Audrey’s father was a dentist and professor of dentistry at George Washington University. His father had been an Episcopalian minister and professor at Princeton University.

While studying music at Washington Missionary College, now Washington Adventist University, and working at the Review and Herald Publishing Association in the 1930s, she met George Wargo, a former child prodigy on the viola, member of the National Symphony, and a recent convert to the Seventh-day Adventist church. They married in May 1937 and would have a son, Paul.

George became chair of the WMC music department in 1942. During his thirteen-year tenure as chair, Audrey taught piano and was a frequent accompanist for her husband and others. She continued to accompany him while he taught at the University of Virginia from 1955 to 1959, and when he became chair of the music program at Pacific Union College in 1959, she taught in the department until 1970.

She was residing in Yountville, California, when she died at age 92.

ds/2009/2013

Sources: Pacific Union College View Point, Fall 2008; Obituaries for her mother and father, Columbia Union Visitor, 14 May 1936, 6, and 22 July 1954, 6.