FORT WALTON BEACH — Margaret Pierson has led a life of excitement, challenges and adversity. But if you ask the 95-year-old woman she would tell you she was just doing her job all those years.
Pierson, a native of Alabama who lives at Westwood Retirement Resort, was inducted into the Alabama Social Work Hall of Fame last week for her more than 50 years of service and innovation in the field.
“I was, of course, pleased and honored, but there were a lot of other people who did a lot more than I did,” Pierson said. “But there were a lot of good years with a lot of good results.”
Pierson says her career was an adventure. She joined the Navy shortly after high school to code and decode messages as part of a communications team during World War II. That job took her to Washington, D.C., and New Orleans until she left after three years of service.
Pierson returned to Alabama and earned a master’s degree in social work. She began consulting with State Crippled Children’s Services and started the first summer camp in Birmingham for handicapped children at Camp Crosby.
She served as an Alabama delegate for the 1960 White House Conference on Children and Youth and helped establish the School of Social Work at the University of Alabama.
“What people don’t understand about what I did is that the stories weren’t always that tragic,” Pierson said. “We saw success, but what I was doing wasn’t special. What I was doing was just a part of my everyday job.”