Peggy Coates Amante

Peggy Amante embarked on her last trip on December 16, 2024, from her home in Houston – a bigger adventure than any of the others. As she said many times in recent years, she had a GREAT life. And she got to do almost all the things she wanted to do, the singular exception being sleeping in a yurt in the Hindu Kush in Central Asia.

Peggy Coates was born June 15, 1934, in Washington, D.C. She grew up in Santa Monica, California, with her brother, John, and sister, Colleen. Peggy remembered her parents, Ed and Faye, as very generous and ethical, and that they worked hard and expected people to pull their own weight and not to take others or things for granted.

Their neighborhood had lots of kids who all got along together. They played baseball in the street, and later made a baseball field in a vacant lot. During WWII, they trained themselves as "resistance fighters," making obstacle courses to keep in shape. Even as a child, Peggy had a way of bringing people together and making it fun.

Peggy graduated from St. Monica Catholic High School and then Mount St. Mary's College in Los Angeles. She paid her college tuition ($1,500 for four years) using her 60-cents-an-hour wages from her waitress job at the St. John's Hospital coffee shop. She loved to talk about the time Paul Newman stopped in and what a gentleman he was. After college, she worked for IBM for a couple of years.

In 1957, she married Gene Amante, and they bought a house in Manhattan Beach, where they had the first two of their five children, Chris and Annie. They later moved to Chicago, where Stephen and Patrick were born, then to Westport, Conn., where Sharon was born. Waterloo, Belgium, was next, where Peggy thought nothing of traveling extensively around Europe with five young kids. When they came back to the U.S., the family landed in Weston, Conn., before moving to Houston in 1971.

Peggy thought it was fun having five kids. She liked having them around and liked having their friends around. She enjoyed camping and traveling and waterskiing with all of them. There were a number of summer-long road trips, for which Peggy arranged and mapped the luggage and camping gear layout in the van, and "trained" the kids to unload, set up, and repack according to her precise instructions. The kids often brought friends along. Each person was allowed two sets of clothes, so they had one set to wear while the other was being washed. Stories from these trips became college essays, favorite Thanksgiving table topics, and lessons for future trips her children would take with their own kids.

In 1976, at 42, Peggy began her second act by earning her master's degree in public health from the UT School of Public Health in Houston. She worked for UTSPH in a variety of positions until she retired in 2004. She loved working there and always looked forward to going to work every Monday morning.

Throughout her life, Peggy made the best of friends. One of her favorite stories was the time she noticed a family in church speaking French. She followed them out and introduced herself, and the rest was history. Both families became longtime friends, exchanging children for summer visits between France and the U.S. over several years. She also visited them often in France, including being the only non-family member to be invited to their every-five-year family reunions.

Peggy had friends all over the world, so frequently had places to stay during her many years of many travels. She visited 32 countries on six continents, and most states in the U.S., and often connected people she knew who were traveling with her global network of friends.

She wanted to share her love for international travel. In 2009, Peggy founded the annual Globetrotter Grant, so far giving money to more than 30 adventurous college students from Texas A&M University to help pay for planned trips outside the U.S. More than a dozen Mount St. Mary's College students also received grants through 2015. Globetrotter recipients have visited more than 50 countries with the grants.

Peggy loved to read – history, mystery, adventure – anything with good stories. (By the time she was 10 years old, she had read every dog and horse book in the children's section of the Santa Monica Public Library.) She was a huge fan of BBC television, especially period and mystery shows. When Downton Abbey aired, she crushed on the show's Mr. Bates (actor Brendan Coyle) and binge-watched an entire season in one sitting.

She loved Oscar, her pet tortoise when she was young. He was the size of a large dinner plate and ate rose petals, dandelions, and lettuce. She had many decorative turtles in her home and jumped at the chance to talk about Oscar when asked about them. Favorite songs included the "Chariots of Fire" theme by Vangelis, "Wimoweh/The Lion Sleeps Tonight," "No Other Love" (Chopin Etude in E), and "One Tin Soldier Rides Away" from the movie "Billy Jack." (This last one is a beloved family "performance" piece – when Peggy played the song or the movie, all the kids would belt out the lyrics at the top of their lungs, leaping about dramatically then collapsing in fits of hysterical laughter.)

She loved dark chocolate, especially ice cream, and in her later years made a point of having it most days. She loved vistas and landscapes; her favorite beautiful place was Patagonia.

When asked what mattered most to her in life, she said nothing has ever been as important to her as her kids, and now her grandkids. Her friends are way up there, too, most of them very long term. She thought of their friendship as a gift, and each one of them would say the same. And there was travel, always travel.

Peggy fostered a sense of wonder and curiosity in her grandchildren, and kindled many of their interests, from travel to theater to health care. She continues to influence who they are, and especially who they will become, because she exemplified an incredible capacity to grow and find adventure in each stage of her life until the end.

"I don't think my life could have been any better than it is or was."

Peggy is survived by her children, Chris Amante (Dean) of Seattle, Annie Amante McBath of Houston, Stephen Amante (Sharise) of Missouri City, Texas, and Patrick Amante and Sharon Lamson (Leonard), both of Houston; her grandchildren, Rachel and Ava McBath, Natalie Oliver (Cole), Matthew and Daniel Amante, and Russell and Paige Lamson; 11 nieces and nephews; and her former husband, Gene, and wife-in-law, Betty. Peggy was preceded in death by her parents, sister, and brother.

A funeral Mass will be held at 10:30 a.m. Monday, Feb. 3, 2025, at St. John Vianney Catholic Church, 625 Nottingham Oaks Trail, Houston 77079. A reception will follow. For anyone wishing to honor Peggy, please consider donating to the Peggy Amante Endowment for Study Abroad at Mount Saint Mary's University or the Peggy Amante Globetrotter Grant Endowment at Texas A&M University.