Obituary of Beverly Harrison (Rainer) Magill

Beverly Harrison (Rainer) Magill died in Albuquerque, NM, on April 24, 2023 at the age of 92. She was born in Jersey City and grew up on the Rockaway River where it flows through Boonton Township. The daughter of Lois Harrison (Wortham) Rainer and Erwin Joseph Rainer, she lived in a log cabin until her father turned it into a stone house. As a child, Beverly walked to a two-room schoolhouse behind what was once Powerville School and then graduated from Boonton High School in 1949.

She received her BS in elementary school education at Beaver College (now Arcadia University) in Glenside, Pennsylvania. In her junior year, she met her future husband, Richard E. Tag, at a University of Pennsylvania mixer. After graduation, they headed west where she gave birth to her first son in Pasadena, California. They ultimately came back east and bought property in a wooded area of Boonton Township where their growing family lived in an ultra-modern house – a “cigar box on top of a shoe box” – designed by her husband. Beverly went on to become a beloved second, fourth, and fifth grade teacher at Rockaway Valley School where she rarely missed a day of work and served as a chaperone for the annual eighth grade field trip to Washington, DC.

In the summers and during spring break, she and her second husband, William A. Magill, travelled the world and were among the first Americans to visit China when it opened its doors to foreigners in 1978. In the early 1980’s, they retired in the hills above Montego Bay, Jamaica, where Bill would sometimes captain a small boat and sail them around the Caribbean. Just before the new millennium, they returned to the States, moving first to Belen, New Mexico. When her second husband died in 2001, Beverly moved to Los Lunas and then finally to Albuquerque. She continued to travel, often with her sister Jean (Rainer) Rowe who predeceases her.

Beverly is survived by her children, Peter Harrison Tag of Seattle, WA, Nancy Robertson Tag of New York City, and Kyle Wortham Tag of Albuquerque, NM; son-in-law Nick Scordato and daughter-in-law Kim Prairie; grandsons Dylan Depriest-Tag and Jack Harrison Scordato; three stepchildren, William Magill, Melissa Magill Cameron, and Jeffrey Magill along with many step-grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

To honor Bev’s memory, the family suggests donating to Joy Junction of Albuquerque (https://bit.ly/3Hozw6R), an emergency homeless shelter in New Mexico, or to her alma mater, Arcadia University (https://alumni.arcadia.edu/).