By Valarie Schwartz
Staff Writer
The trees of this place made the greatest first impression when Maxine Swalin arrived as a 32-year-old newlywed with her husband, Benjamin, in 1935. When she sighed her final deeply appreciative breath last week, 74 years later, the trees were the only living things left, older than her 106 years.
School children all over North Carolina of several generations knew this “music lady†whose tremendous efforts made it possible for Benjamin to succeed in resuscitating the first state-funded orchestra in the nation. As comfortable as she was on the stage, as a performing musician, speaker or award recipient, she was every bit as approachable and gracious in her personal life, which she lived according to directions from her conductor husband: “Study — improve your mind — share your knowledge so it will help someone — keep your friendships in repair — think and act in minuet time.†Benjamin Swalin died Sept. 29, 1989.
Twenty years later, Maxine died peacefully on Oct. 8 in her home, having found ways during the long decline toward natural death to strive every day for her ultimate ability. As each diminishment presented itself, she adjusted, accepting the help of others in achieving her goals. When a shoulder injury in her 80s impaired her piano-playing ability, she took lessons to learn a new way to do what she’d done since age 4.
We became friends when she was a few months shy of 95, and for almost 12 years she modeled how to live joyfully, frugally and fruitfully. She so inspired a group of friends that last year, when she turned 105, a Memorial Hall concert was given in her honor, raising funds and consciousness to further one of her last causes — completion of the Arts Common on the UNC campus.In June, she got to see the site of a bench that has since been built in her honor with those funds.
Maxine found no sacrifice in trading the golds and winter whites of her native Iowa for the verdant greens of North Carolina. With a passion for art, she returned to painting in her 80s, with trees as frequent subjects. During an outing to the Coker Arboretum in May 2004 (age 101), she plopped down on a bench in front of a giant beech and announced that she was going to study it for a pastel painting. I snuck behind her and took photos to assist her. She painted the tree and “the little white-haired woman,†which later showed up mounted, framed and wrapped (all by her), under my Christmas tree.
Her 2005 handmade New Year’s card included this:
“As 101 turns into 102
I’m grateful to be located
On a cliff of coloring
Overlooking Morgan’s Creek.
I live in a house of trees.
Best wishes to my friends
For the New Year.â€
Syd Alexander grew up knowing the Swalins and was their attorney for over 30 years. He said that Maxine was in her 90s when she decided to take a painting course — in Florida — traveling there in her car. Unable to stop her or to convince her to take a phone, he found someone to drive her there, then waited for her to call him when she was ready to return.
“She called me one day and said she was home,†Alexander said. When he asked her how, she said she had been in a grocery store and mentioned to the cashier that she was headed home to Chapel Hill when the man in line behind her said he was going to North Carolina by bus the next day. He drove Maxine home instead.
At a party a few years ago, she lit up when beer was among the beverage offerings. “Beer?†she asked excitedly. “Oh yes, please.†During the years when she and Ben introduced the symphony to all 100 counties of the state, they spent summers in Innsbruck, Austria, enjoying time with other musicians each afternoon in a beer garden. It became our custom in her last years that my visits to her often included still-warm-from-the-oven gingerbread I’d take her along with a beer we’d share. The last time, she drank it from a straw, pronouncing it, “strong … good,†like Maxine.
For over 40 years, she appreciated the service and friendship of Harris Farrington, who kept up her house and drove her around after she quit driving at age 99, and whose sisters prepared her meals.
Millie Beale Stinson, who grew up in Chapel Hill and first saw an orchestra with “lovely Maxine and tall and stately Dr. Ben,†served as her most constant nurse during her last three years. Breakfast time had become a special time for Maxine, Harris and Millie, making it apt that they were both at her side at 8:35 a.m., when Maxine found her way into the next stage of life. “It was very sweet, really,†Millie said.
In Maxine’s musical parlance, she played to the end: dolce, amoroso, espirando (sweetly, lovingly, dying away); teaching us how to live until we die.