Guide to the Margaret Flory Papers

Margaret Flory was a leader in ecumenical relations and student mission work in the Presbyterian Church. Flory was born in 1914 in Wauseon, Ohio. She graduated from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio with an A.B. in English in 1936 and an M.A. in Speech and Dramatic Art in 1938. After graduation, Flory taught speech and drama at Alabama State College for Women from 1939 to 1940 and then served as the campus ministry director at the Westminster Foundation at Ohio University from 1940 until 1944. Flory also completed post-graduate study at Union Theological Seminary in New York from 1940 to 1942 and received an L.L.D. from Maryville College in 1987.

In 1944, Flory applied to serve as a missionary to China with the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Board of Foreign Missions. When her missionary work was delayed due to World War II, she began working with the Board of Foreign Missions in New York City as the Area Secretary for Women’s Work. She became director of the Board of Foreign Missions Office of Student Work in 1951 (this changed to the Office of Student World Relations with the Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations in 1958). During her eighteen years in this position, she implemented several new mission programs for students. Flory created the Junior Year Abroad program in 1953 and it was one of the first study abroad programs in the country. Throughout its run, the program allowed for over a thousand students to serve in places such as China, Brazil, India, Ghana, and the Philippines. Flory also executed the Frontier Internship in Mission program in 1961. This program allowed recent college graduates to gain international mission experience in “unreached corners of the globe.” With the reorganization of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.'s mission work in 1972, Flory assumed a new position in the Program Agency as Associate for Human Resources Planning and then in 1977 as Associate for Patterns of Ecumenical Sharing where she directed a pilot project called Education for Mission.

Flory’s work with students connected her with the ecumenical student movement in both the United States and abroad. She planned the 1955, 1959, and 1963 Quadrennials of the Student Volunteer Movement in Athens, Ohio which were week-long conferences attended by several thousands students interested in working for human rights. Flory was a strong supporter of the World Student Christian Federation and mission programs implemented by the National Council of the Churches of Christ and the World Council of Churches. She traveled extensively during her career to ecumenical conferences and to mission fields in Asia, Africa, South America, and Europe.

Flory officially retired from the UPCUSA in December 1980, but remained active in Presbyterian-related organizations. She accepted a position as program coordinator for the Gilmor Sloane House at Stony Point Conference Center in New York and continued to travel around the globe to the mission fields that she helped construct. She moved to College Walk, a retirement community in Brevard, N.C., in 1990 and helped with church relations at Warren Wilson College. Flory also wrote three books between 1955 and 2000, including an autobiographical account of her life’s work Moments in Time: One Woman’s Ecumenical Journey. Margaret Flory passed away in 2009.