75 years and still going strong

Ask Max Swartwood what he thinks about the big party his family is planning March 9 to celebrate his 75 years of marriage to wife Ida, and he has a quick answer.

Ask him if he is also prepared to drive in an open-air convertible, weather-permitting, with his wife as featured guests in the St. Patrick's Day Parade through downtown St. Charles on March 8, and Swartwood fires off the same answer.

"I hope I sober up by then," the 95-year-old resident of Provena Pine View Care Center in St. Charles says with a big laugh, while wife Ida rolls her eyes as if she has heard this gag many times before.

Truth be told, neither Max nor Ida Swartwood, also 95, ever drank alcohol or smoked a cigarette, two factors they figure aided their longevity.

As for the secret behind 75 years of marital bliss?

"I would say never quarrel, and we never have said a cross word to each other in all this time, have we?"

Max asks, glancing over at Ida, who smiles and nods in agreement.

The Swartwoods also reaped the benefits of a serene, yet hard-working rural lifestyle in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania, where they first met as fifth-graders in a one-room schoolhouse and eventually started dating as eighth-graders.

"I once heard my mother say that she thought my father was kind of cute in the eighth grade and that's when they started really liking each other," said Dwight Swartwood of St. Charles, who helped his parents move here from Florida eight years ago so he and his wife, Joyce, could help care for them.

"I think my mom was allowed to go out with boys at about age 16, and she had dated a couple of other guys, and my father got mad about that because I think he assumed they were going steady," Dwight said. "My dad had quite a jealous streak in him."

Max eventually won out over other fellows, capturing Ida's heart and eventually sustaining a marriage for 75 years -- a feat few couples achieve.

Max and Ida remain proud of their farming heritage, and a painting of Max's boyhood farm home is displayed on the wall in their small room at Pine View. But Max claims he spent more time tending to cows and horses than he did courting his bride-to-be.

"If I went to a neighbor's house, they could always tell when I was with the cows or horses," Max said. "I brought that cow smell right up there with me."

When Pine View recently held its Valentine's Day party, Max and Ida were proud to say they danced during the event.

But dancing wasn't Max's strong suit in his younger days.

"She did more of that than I did," he said, pointing across the room to Ida. "The only dancing I did was when my dad was after me with a whip, and that happened pretty often."

Ida smiled as if to remember the trouble Max would find himself in. "It's kind of laughable now, but it wasn't back then," she said with a laugh.

"Well, you know, we had eight kids in the family," Max explained. "So my dad had to keep someone dancing almost all of the time."

Max and Ida spent many years farming together in Pennsylvania and also dealt with a stroke that Ida suffered at age 33 that left her right arm paralyzed and had her bedridden for four years.

Because he was a "farmer boy" in his late 20s and responsible for the family farm when World War II broke out, Max never was called into military service.

He fondly recalls going to school in a horse-drawn wagon and the first car that he owned -- a Ford Model T in the mid-1920s.

When his health required that he give up farming, Max turned to a job with the AAA Motor Club, which he excelled at until his retirement to Florida.

The couple has two sons, four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, all part of an extended family of 96 people, expected to attend the anniversary brunch at the Hotel Baker on March 9, to celebrate a marriage that has lasted since 1933.

Dwight Swartwood said that many people have asked him the secret behind his parents' longevity and his answer is only a slight revision from the secret that Max shared about never saying a cross word.

"My dad says he always gets the last words in, and those words are 'Yes, Dear,'" Dwight said. "But then my mom says that she actually gets the last words in by saying, 'Thank you.'"

But Max sums it up the best.

"I was lucky to find a girl like her," he says, looking at his wife with the same fondness he likely displayed as a 13-year-old boy. "I have never been sorry a minute yet, because while I worked the farm she looked after everything for us."

Congratulations and well wishes can be sent to the couple at 611 Allen Lane, Provena-Pine View, Unit 307, St. Charles, IL 60174.