SDSU Pioneer Warmer Dead at 71

Margery Braden Warmer, one of the first female administrators at San Diego State University and a tireless mentor to scores of women graduates, died early Wednesday, relatives said. She was 71.

Warmer had been hospitalized for about a year after a brain tumor was diagnosed in 1988, said her husband, Craig Warmer.

“She was liberated before it was fashionable,” said Warmer’s daughter, Jennie Warmer Bshara. “She was never pushy, but she was frank. Women in the ‘50s and ‘60s, even more than today, had to walk a fine line. . . . It was tough back then. She was tough.”

Warmer came to SDSU in 1956, then a state college with 8,000 students, and rose through the ranks of administration to become dean of activities for three years in the early 1970s. By the time she left in 1975, San Diego State had become a university with more than 30,000 students.

The most vivid memories from those who knew Warmer best come from the period of campus unrest in the late 1960s, Bshara said. Warmer held discussions with campus activists, helping to dissipate the anger raised by the nation’s racial division and involvement in the Vietnam War.

“I remember her from the trouble days,” Craig Warmer said. “When nearly every administrator was under attack, there she was: very cool, poised, self-possessed.”

Warmer is credited with several campus innovations. She instituted two honor society chapters, Phi Beta Kappa and Mortar Board, which began as an honor for women and evolved into a coed society.

Warmer continues a family tradition of educators: Her mother was a schoolteacher in their hometown of Chanute, Kan.; Bshara is a journalism teacher at Montgomery High School in the Sweetwater Union High School District; Craig Warmer is a social science teacher in the Grossmont Union High School District.

Warmer’s interest in education and feminist issues was ingrained by her mother, who had been discouraged from formal education, Bshara said.

“I think she would be proud to know she opened a door for other women,” Craig Warmer said.

After retiring from the university, Warmer volunteered with the San Diego YMCA and was elected president in 1982. Under Warmer, the YWCA founded the first local shelter for battered women.

Memorial services are scheduled for 2 p.m. Monday at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, 700 D Ave., Coronado.