Gretchen Marquardt Seager, who spent nearly 40 summers on Chappaquiddick with her third-generation summer resident husband David Collins Seager III living out her favorite saying, “AWGF” – “ain’t we got fun” – died in Altadena, Calif. on Nov. 2, 2025, shortly after suffering a stroke. She was 93.
As a young couple, Gretchen and David often visited the Chappaquiddick summer home of David’s parents, David Collins Seager II and Elizabeth McReynolds Seager, where Gretchen, like other house guests, was required to hammer shingles to finish the house. She also attended summer clambakes at the large Chappaquiddick compound built in the early 1900s by her husband’s grandparents, Samuel (Bert) Herbert Seager and Adelaide (Granny) Davis Seager.
When Gretchen and David moved to California, they longed to spend summers on Chappaquiddick. In the late 1980s, Gretchen urged David to build their own house on the island, which she helped design, insisting on cheerful, white-washed interior walls. They never missed a summer again until dementia and old age intervened.
Gretchen won a school-wide French language award in her first year at Connecticut College, the alma mater of her mother, Helen Beiderbecke Marquardt. She later transferred to Northwestern University, the alma matter of her basketball star father Reuben Allen Marquardt. There, she joined her big brother, Allen Charles Marquardt, and Allen’s close friend and Gretchen’s future husband, David Seager.
Gretchen and David married in 1954 in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. When Gretchen’s brother Allen and his wife Natalie Kleindienst were killed in a car accident in 1959, Gretchen and David rushed to gain custody of the couple’s 18-month-old son, Clay, lovingly folding him into their young family.
In 1967, Gretchen and David trekked across the country in a wood-paneled station wagon with their children over Christmas to start a new life in San Marino and Pasadena, Calif.
In her 40s, Gretchen took the bold step of working as a real estate agent when most of her Pasadena peers didn’t work. She later teamed up with great success with her youngest daughter, Gretchen Beiderbecke Seager, at Sotheby’s.
She loved her establishment country clubs and rocked her bright Lili Pulitzer dresses, but was also a free thinker, voting for Barrack Hussein Obama for President, speaking at a public school meeting in favor of sex education (losing friends in the process), supporting abortion rights and windmills in the Sound.
She loved taking risks, earning the nickname Exacta Lady for her success at the track and becoming a savvy investor by starting a Standard But Not Poor women’s stock investment club.
She served on the board of Sycamores, a Los Angeles nonprofit serving homeless and at-risk youth, and the Boys & Girls Club of Pasadena.
A talented athlete at 5-foot-4 and 110 pounds, Gretchen won many tennis and golf tournaments in Edgartown. She gleefully told how she shimmied down a post after locking herself outside on a second-story porch at Chappaquiddick.
She is survived by her husband of 72 years, David, 97; her sister, Anne Edmondson; her four children, Susan Seager, Sarah Seager, Gretchen Beiderbecke Seager and Clayton Marquardt; seven grandchildren, Annarose Mittelstaedt, Oliver Mittelstaedt, Charles Marquardt, Anne Marquardt, Flannery Seager-Strode, Allegra Gutierrez and Olivia Gutierrez; two great-grandchildren, Olympia Mittelstaedt and Audra Marquardt; and four nieces and nephews and their families.
Throughout her life, Gretchen would fill the house with the joyful music of one of her mother’s first cousins, the brilliant 1920s jazz cornetist Bix Beiderbecke. She dreamed of returning to Bix’s birthplace in Davenport, Iowa for the annual Bix Beiderbecke festival and to visit the Victorian houses of her beloved grandparents and German immigrant great-grandparents. But time passed, no concrete plans were made, and dementia got in the way.
A final message from Gretchen’s family: Take those family trips now, while there is still time.