Cleveland Heights - Memorial services for Margaret L. Fonda, a retired Cleveland schools art teacher, will be at 10 a.m. today at the Alcazar Hotel, 2450 Derbyshire Road, Cleveland Heights. The 89-year-old Cleveland Heights resident died Aug. 24 in her home. Fonda believed in giving her students practical as well as classroom experience, often taking them on field trips to Washington, D.C., and Greenfield Village in Detroit. Devoted to her students, she worked late many days to help students with projects and displayed their works at the annual May Show at the Cleveland Art Museum. In 1967, she received the Martha Holden Jennings Award for excellence in teaching. Her teaching career began in the Tupper Lake school system near Lake Placid, N.Y. After she married Army Lt. Donald Fonda in 1943, his military assignments took the couple to New York City and Atlanta, where she also taught. Her husband died in 1974. Fonda began teaching in the Cleveland schools in 1946. She taught art at Patrick Henry, Harry Davis and Charles W. Elliot junior high schools. She retired in 1972. In retirement, Fonda remained active as a member of the Seniors Scholars Program at Case Western Reserve University. A son, Charles of Beachwood, said his mother had been completing a book, "Early Schoolhouses of the United States." Fonda was born in Cleveland and graduated from Cleveland Heights High School. She received an education degree from the former Western Reserve University and a degree from the Cleveland Institute of Art. Surviving with her son is a sister, Jane Edwards, of Aurora. Donations may be made to the Cleveland Institute of Art, 11141 East Blvd., Cleveland 44106, or the Cleveland Museum of Art, 11150 East Blvd., Cleveland 44106. Arrangements are by the Brown-Forward Funeral Service, 17022 Chagrin Blvd., Shaker Heights. Plain Dealer, The (Cleveland, OH) - August 30, 2002.