Though Margaret Peirce was forced to give up teaching English and Latin when her eyesight began to weaken, it didn't stop her from seeing as much of the world as a single lifetime would allow.
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And when the limp in her step became more pronounced, it didn't keep her from walking the cobblestone streets near Kronborg Castle in Denmark, to view the setting of her beloved Hamlet. Nor did it discourage her from traveling the lands once walked by Homer.

"She would not sit back and say 'No, no, I can't do this' or 'I'm not going to do this,' " Peirce's longtime friend, colleague and traveling companion Lucille "Lue" Muldoon remembered Thursday.

Peirce, 85, died of natural causes Sunday at her home in Cudahy. She taught high school students for more than 40 years, but her work neither began nor ended at the schoolhouse door. She spent her evenings correcting papers and drawing up lesson plans, and her summers visiting universities to develop courses.

And her travels, such as the summer she spent at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece, in 1976, served as a teaching resource.

"She made slides from the pictures she took and used them in her classrooms," said Muldoon, a former English teacher at South Milwaukee High School, where Peirce taught for 30 years.

She was born Margaret Lavinia Peirce on Jan. 10, 1921, in Milwaukee. She learned the value of education from her mother, Emma, a Latin teacher, and gained a love for travel from her father, Gilbert, a railroad engineer.

Her father's work for the old Chicago Northwestern entitled her to a railroad pass.

"She used to travel the country," said Muldoon, who met Peirce in 1955.

Peirce earned a bachelor's degree in English and Latin from Downer College in Milwaukee and a master's degree in Latin from the University of Wisconsin in Madison before she began teaching at Oconomowoc High School in 1943.

After 11 years, she began teaching at South Milwaukee High School, where graduating seniors were grateful for the high standards she set, Muldoon said.

There were times, however, when Peirce would learn from her students, Muldoon said.

"She thought the students of the '70s were her best ever," Muldoon said. "They were thinkers, they were challenging, which caused teachers to rethink their own ideas at times."

When her weakening eyesight forced her to retire in 1984, she indulged herself in the things that brought her joy, such as the symphony, the theater and charity work through St. Sylvester's Parish.

And the world that she previously brought to her students through literature became her own classroom, "even when her leg would hurt or she couldn't see very well," Muldoon said.

"She never lost her enthusiasm for life."