I am making headway, but not quite there. Here is where I'm at:

When I open Word, it goes straight to a blank page. If I change the margins to .5", and save as default, each additional document I open using Ctrl-N has .5" margins.

However, when I close word, even if I save all the documents, the next time I open word the blank page it opens to has 1" margins, and if I type Ctrl-N, each new document has 1" margins.

So it seems like I lose my default margin change to the Normal template every time I close Word. Is it possible to make it permanent?