A LIFE WORTH LIVING
by Cheri Tips and Nancy G. Hone

March 2005

As we celebrate 50 years, it is only fitting to include a memorial to NHF Life Member Margaret A. Syring, who spent 50 years as a health-freedom activist.  This early, natural health pioneer passed the health-freedom legislative word around with zest until her dying day.  The loss of such a dedicated advocate of our causes truly saddens us but must give us impetus to spread the natural health-care message in as impassioned a way as Margaret did.

Margaret lived her life in St. Paul, Minnesota.  At the time she espoused natural health, “new science” had just emerged with a philosophy that embraced the increasing use of drugs and surgery while persecuting and suppressing natural-health therapies.  This would not deter Margaret, who fought tirelessly to ensure that individuals were able to keep their rights to natural-health practices by getting people politically active, and endlessly lecturing, advocating the natural way.  If she saw someone in the news whom she thought would benefit from this knowledge, then she would contact them and offer them her help.

Margaret was an international lecturer, a Minnesota naturalist, a metaphysical psychologist, a teacher of applied psychology, a monologist, a health and light researcher, and chairwoman of the Minnesota Pure Foods Association,  to name a few.  She started organic buying clubs to provide a place for people to buy healthy foods years before there were co-ops.  She was a poet, writer, teacher of nutrition and healthy living, a photographer, organic gardener, a naturalist, and a comedienne.  She loved nature, plants, birds, animals, and people.  Using her pen name “Margaret  Lawrence,” she wrote for many publications including the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, Pioneer Press, St. Paul Dispatch, Healthways, Minnesota Christian Journal, and numerous others.  She gave inspirational lectures and taught Sunday school classes at Faith Lutheran Church.

Margaret Adele Syring’s life was big, but the natural-health community knew her by her biggest assignment on this planet, which was her work spreading the word endlessly all over the world about the benefits of natural-health care.

What a great honor to have known Margaret and to have been fortunate enough to have had her devotion to natural health and its freedom make such an impact and positive inroads for health-freedom for over five decades.  The greatest show of respect for this fine lady would be to carry on her work and message.

Nancy G. Hone is an NHF member, Margaret’s friend, a fellow natural-health practitioner, and co-founder of the Minnesota Natural Health Coalition and Legal Reform Project.  In 2000, the Minnesota Natural Health Coalition successfully passed the first bill in the nation to make the practice of natural-health care legal in Minnesota without licensure, a first in the country.  Many States have followed suit, two of which have passed similar laws.