Creating works of art has been Margaret Swaim’s lifetime inspiration in sickness and health.
And she wants to make one thing clear: Health problems are not what define Margaret Swaim; a good heart and an artistic nature do.
Despite a serious bout with spinal meningitis in February 1991 and continuing problems with failing vision and hearing, the 78-year-old wants to talk about the positive, not the negative.
Dwelling on illness is a fault of too many senior citizens, according to Swaim. “All they do is tell you all their ailments, and I don’t think that’s what the world wants to hear,” she said. “I’m a person who likes to ignore what’s wrong and go for the positive. For as long as I can, that’s what I’ll do.”
And here is the positive.
She has applied her creativity to helping humanity. In the spring, the Libertyville senior began making puppets for donation to Tri-Agency Network in Waukegan, a family-services organization that helps individuals cope with parenting, stress, divorce and relationships.
The network, a United Way member, consists of Family Service of North Lake County in Waukegan, Family Service of South Lake County in Highland Park and Youth and Family Counseling in Libertyville.
The puppets will be used this fall by therapists in the nurturing and divorce programs to motivate children ages 5 through 11 to air their feelings, said Pam Gehrke, the agency’s community education coordinator.
Sometimes it’s difficult for kids to talk to adults. “Our puppets are children,” Gehrke said. “The kids can make a connection with them on a child-to-child level, and we find that they open up to the puppets.”
Gehrke met Swaim through Swaim’s daughter, Sallie Hamm, 52, of Libertyville, who serves on the board of Youth and Family Counseling and who encouraged her mother to channel her creativity into sewing, gluing and molding Muppet-size puppets. Gehrke supplied the patterns and the materials, and Swaim said she “just took off from there.
“I’ve done a great deal of artwork all my life; in fact, it’s been my life,” she said. “I like to do things when it serves a purpose.”
Since the diagnosis of macular degeneration, Swaim can no longer drive, so she spends most of her time in the in-law unit attached to the home shared by Hamm and her husband, Phillip. The slender woman with grayish white hair and blue eyes is kept company by her best friend, a 4-year-old long-haired male dachshund named Sedona after the Arizona town where Swaim and her late husband, John, owned a vacation home.
The former Margaret Wilder received a bachelor’s degree from Maryland College of Women. After college, she attended the American Academy of Art in Chicago, and for 2 1/2 years, she studied such forms of art as commercial drawing and architectural rendering. She then met John Swaim, and they married in 1937.
When the couple moved to California in 1940, she became a draftsman for Bell Telephone Co. in Los Angeles., while her husband worked as a banker for the Bank of California. She lived in California until moving to Libertyville eight years ago.
Upstairs in Hamm’s home, the small bedroom housing Swaim’s art studio features photographs of her dog and oil and watercolor paintings by Arizona artists.
The studio also has two work tables, an ironing board for the puppet materials and, by the window, a sewing machine.
It is in this room that Swaim transforms her imagination into tangible works of art. “I don’t get out and around as much as I used to, and I’m not happy if I’m not creating something,” she said. Though Swaim can no longer sketch, Hamm said, “somehow she sees to make these puppets. We don’t know how. It just works for her.”
Swaim explained it like this: “You can sit and be sickly, or you can fight and try to make your life worthwhile.”
Indeed, Swaim’s philosophy of life has worked wonders for her. In May, Gehrke had hoped Swaim could make six puppets by September, but the tenacious artist has just about finished her 10th one.
Swaim’s altruistic endeavors have led Gehrke to call her “a giver.” “She has a really vivacious spirit,” Gehrke said. “She’s got a lot of drive in her and desire to help other people.”
Each puppet takes between eight and 10 hours to make. “It’s not hard,” Swaim said. “It’s just tedious. I don’t work at this constantly all day long every day. I do quite a few other things.”
For seven years, Swaim worked as a volunteer for Blue Smock, a thrift shop for the Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, before quitting in March. She still belongs to the League of Women Voters in the Libertyville-Mundelein area (of which her daughter is the current co-president) and to the Town and Country Garden Club of Libertyville.
“She gives back to the organization probably more than the organization gives to her,” said Vicky Greene of Libertyville, who serves as league treasurer. “Considering her age, she gets along with young and old people alike.”
Hamm believes making puppets is a way for her mother to express thanks for life’s blessings. “It’s just giving back to people,” Hamm said. “People have been good to her. Life has been good to her.”
