Margo Oxendine – Ladies’ Horticultural Luncheon speaker

Margo Oxendine

Tommy Price, Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival® President, is pleased to announce Margo Oxendine as the featured speaker for the Ladies’ Horticultural Luncheon presented by Spring Arbor Assisted Living.

Margo was born in Arlington, Virginia. She was quite happy in the “big city.” But, when she was seven, her State Trooper father decided to move the family to Bath County, in the mountains of western Virginia. What a culture shock for Margo! Her classmates had friendships or kinships they had formed since birth. Margo in no way fit in with them, and they let her know it! It wasn’t until high school that Margo let her comedy gene – inherited from her father – fly free. Then, she discovered the way to make friends was to make them laugh.

After majoring in Theatre at Virginia Commonwealth University, Oxendine found herself on a jaunt to Key West, Florida. There, she wandered onto a replica of a Spanish galleon, and quickly got a job with Mel Fisher’s Treasure Salvors. She spent five years diving for treasure in the Gulf of Mexico, helping to salvage the sunken Spanish galleon “Atocha.” It was a huge adventure. It also got Margo her first writing assignment: A biography of Fisher for a he-man magazine called “Argosy.” She kept writing, and even was among the first small group of Americans allowed into Fidel Castro’s Cuba, on assignment for People magazine.

That wasn’t enough. She joined a local comedy troupe that enjoyed much success on the island.

So, why not move to San Francisco? She did. But comedy writing quickly took a back seat to “real” writing, for magazines.

A bad riding accident shipped the ailing Margo back to Bath County, where she recuperated, and began writing for the local newspaper, The Recorder. Today, she writes columns for two newspapers, and a magazine, Cooperative Living, seen throughout Virginia. She has also written a musical, “Over Here, Over There,” and a PBS Documentary, “Back Roads to Bath.”

Now supposedly “retired,” she spends her time writing, reading, and walking through the woods. She’s traded shark sightings in the islands, for bear sightings in the forest. She’ll take bears over sharks any day!

The Ladies’ Horticultural Luncheon will be held at Millwood Station Banquet Hall located at 252 Costello Drive, on Friday, April 29, 2022, from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Tickets are $35.00. Please call the Festival office at (540) 662-3863 for ticket information.