Peggy Armstrong's 1951 yearbook photo.

Margaret Ann Armstrong, the daughter of Elmer and Margaret (Powell) Armstrong, grew up in Cranston and graduated from Cranston High School. Her father was the manager for Almac’s Supermarkets and her mother was a teacher and a psychiatric counselor employed by the State of Rhode Island.

Known to friends and family as "Peggy", the , the 5’3 green-eyed brunette kept busy during her teen years studying French and Latin, serving as treasurer of the student council and president of the class council, and maintaining grades high enough to place her on the National Honor Society.

In 1951, after being accepted into Virginia’s Westhampton College at the University of Richmond, the same college her mother had attended, Margaret was elected vice president of the freshman class and served in that capacity while also holding membership in the school's French and Spanish clubs, as well as the Campus Affairs Committee of the Young Women’s Christian Association, and playing on Westhampton's basketball team.

Margaret ended her first college semester, and those that followed, on the Dean’s List. In 1954, she was named Chairman of Religious Emphasis Week at the college and elected as president of the YWCA. In 1955, she would go on to be elected to "Who's Who Among Students in American Colleges and Universities” and serve as a volunteer student teacher for Albert Hill School’s fifth-grade class. But her accolades did not end there. Later that year, she was chosen as the university's "Web Beauty", to pose for the school’s yearbook, known as “The Web.” The judge of the beauty contest was none other than Norman Rockwell.

Rockwell was 61 by this time and had become one of the most famous artists in America. Having served as art director for “Boys’ Life” magazine when he was still in his teens, he’d gone on to create work for publications such as “Life” magazine and “Literary Digest.” In 1916, he painted his first cover for “The Saturday Evening Post” and his work would eventually grace a total of 321 covers for that magazine.

Known for his emotional depictions of small-town life, his work was also iconic when it came to national and international concerns. His traveling “Four Freedoms” paintings raised more than $130 million for the war effort during the 1940s. One of those, “Freedom of Want”, has become one of the most well-known Thanksgiving images of all time. In 2017, his painting entitled “Two Plumbers” sold for over $13 million.

After carefully looking over photographs of the five girls in the running for the “Web Beauty” contest, Rockwell decided that Margaret Armstrong of Cranston was the winning candidate. A formal portrait of her would later adorn the feature section of the yearbook.

A French major, Armstrong graduated that year and set out to fulfill her dream of becoming a teacher. She settled permanently in Virginia and, on Sept. 2, 1972, married Francis Tluszcz, a member of the US Air Force. After his death, she married Floyd Kline, the owner of Kline’s Trucking, on Oct. 20, 2012 when she was 77 years old.

Kelly Sullivan is a Rhode Island columnist, lecturer and author.