A Christmas letter for Lois Swoboda

In her will Lois Swoboda wrote that she did not want an obituary. To honor her wish, the Times had none. 

She did love Letters to Santa, though.

Each of the several years we worked together at the Times, she typed her share and more in the week leading up to Christmas, grabbing amply from among the bulging folders we received from the schools. It was typical of her not to shirk work.

This plodding assignment, while not as difficult as many of hers were, does have its baffling stretches when you’re looking down at just barely enough decipherable members of the alphabet that suggest the schoolkid intended a particular word, but sequenced the letters so as to make the sentence incog to to all but he or she whose eager but awkward fingers had set pencil to paper.

“I am sure Santa would get you what you want,” we would joke. “If he could figure out what you’re asking for.”

I am reflecting on this because while there are fewer this year to type, I must do them all, as Lois is no longer here to ponder the inscrutable messages that children paint on the walls of their caves.

To accomplish this task, I am taking the leaner stacks the newspaper has received this year, from Franklin County’s two public elementary schools, and dividing them into equal portions. I am typing them as I write this, tethering these tasks together with a leash designed to ensure incremental progress and rein in procrastination. This scientific method is in keeping with the rationalistic approach of Lois, holder of a doctorate in entomology.

Lois, for whom caring for dogs was a sacred duty, was not a big fan of leashing them. One of them, the infamous Gary, had a rap sheet longer than the worst offenders on the sheriff’s Facebook page, a mixed breed hound with a Houdini pedigree, whose getaways would lead to neighborhood-wide alarm and Lois’ need to rush off on the dog hunt to far-off reaches of the woods. 

Which is why when Charles Elliott called me on a Sunday to break the news that “we’ve lost Lois,” my mind immediately went to “one of those dogs has broken free again and now both of them are missing.” That, of course, was not what he meant.

The first letter in the bundle I am looking at is shaped like those four-sided folded paper “fortune tellers” with To: Soldier From: Zara, a fifth grader, with a tab that says “Pull” on the back to start the snapping finger operation. I can’t tell you what’s written inside, as my pulling it would spoil it for the soldier who receives it.

That’s the essence of a scientist, to figure stuff out. Not to marvel at chaos, or to delight in misunderstanding, or be tickled by childishness. To crack the code, to know what something means even when it is not readily apparent. To get past deeply-held belief into the provable realm less subject to the whims of the senses, to a world that can be pierced, grasped and shared by the mind to a greater extent than the senses can alone, as dominant as their grasp of things may seem at the time.

That’s why if you wanted to find Lois, you wouldn’t pay a visit to the Church on Sunday, but you might to the Meals on Wheels or to a residence where she was doing pest control for a friend. She was as faithful as anyone I have ever known, not to a belief, but to a task. To her, love was the act of doing for others, even when sometimes her feeling expressed wasn’t as warm and fuzzy as the coats of the dogs she cared for.

Now that I think about it, that emphasis on doing right may have been the driving force why Lois delved into the letter typing assignment as she did. Sure, she liked Christmas as much as anybody; many years she would use the desks at the office as a sales display of the colorfully decorated potted shrubbery trees she would market for the Philaco Woman’s Club, and each year they sold out. 

But now I’m thinking that that drive may have been to thoroughly unravel these knotted sentences so that the kid would get his or her due in the reader’s eyes. She wanted to help them be understood, so that readers would know them.

The warm and fuzzy? That was for the sentimental and the soft-hearted, and for the coats of her three dogs, Chance, Hoss and Annabelle.

To ensure that her friend’s dearest wish was honored, Trish McLemore worked to arrange the adoption of the three dogs, which now are living happily among a menagerie of nine senior dogs on Marylou Athorn’s 20-acre farm in Gadsden County.

It’s just what Lois would have wanted. Love as a verb, an act of doing.

Lois swept her own path

By Sue Riddle Cronkite Guest Columnist

Apalachicola has lost an example, an illustration, a mirror image of itself, with the death of Lois Swoboda. She was creative, intelligent, opinionated, forthright, outspoken, up-in-your face, plus friendly and loving when it was called for.

I met Lois when she checked in at the Rancho Inn, somewhere around 2000. She asked me about this place, here on the edge of the bay.

“Nice people,” told her. “Just the right size town, laid back, historic, at the junction of the river, bay and the Gulf, great seafood.” The regular tourist spiel, then, “To tell you the truth, it’s built on an anthill.”

“I know,” she grinned. “A special kind of ant, came over on a boat from Canada.” She spouted off the Latin name for the pesky little insects.

“That’s why I’m here. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on your ants.”

She didn’t look the least bit like a doctor, even an ant doctor – short, squat, close cut hair. As she set out to tell me more than I ever wanted to know about ants, I checked her in.

“I’m here to stay,” she said. “What about jobs?” She didn’t laugh when I suggested pest control; didn’t hesitate when I asked what she could do.

“Anything,” Lois said, and set about to become a fixture. She moved into Lee and Trish McLemore’s place beside the restored Monastery, joined the staff at the Times, signed a three-book contract about a horse named Old Neb who lived at the Lighthouse on Little St. George.

Lois made her presence known. She was a friend to many, adversary to some, open, honest, almost to a fault sometimes, happy, morose. She was her own person. Walked on her self-swept path, and followed her own self-hewn star.

I, and many others, admired her spunk, her first-foot-forward approach to life, laughed at her and with her, learned from her, and now will miss her, as will those who knew her, liked her, or didn’t, and those who saw her from a distance.

Her will made it clear that she wanted no notice or folderol at her passing.

Sorry about that, Lois. You never were a not-noticed kind of person. You are sorely missed already.