Longtime Island resident Margaret Engstrom Quarles died on Aug. 7 from a heart malfunction. She was 101 years old.

Quarles’ father bought the family’s East Mercer Way waterfront property in 1925. He built a cabin and used it as a vacation home, until eventually moving that structure up the hillside to building the home Margaret still lived in, with a caregiver.

Margaret Quarles and her husband, Kenneth, were honored as the 2006 Citizens of the Year for donating nearly seven acres of rare open space — located west of East Mercer Way and adjacent to Pioneer Park — to the city of Mercer Island, preserving it for park and recreation purposes.

Quarles’ neighbors helped her celebrate her 100th birthday last year on March 4.

At the party, she talked about how she used to ride her horse around her land on the south end of the Island. She loved sitting on the dock in the summers and watching the boats go by and looking across the lake at the Seahawks training facility.

Her nephew, John Weiss, said that there will be no service for Quarles. She and her husband did not have children.