Barbara McSwain Colton
August 30, 1918 – April 11, 2017
Barbara McSwain Colton passed away on April 11, 2017. She was 98 years old and had outlived every one of her generation of family and friends.
Barbara was born August 30, 1918, on a small farm in California near the town of Merced to John Floyd and Naomi McSwain. She was the youngest of three siblings, her brother Steve and sister Marjorie. As a teen she moved to the East Bay and attended Berkeley High School. She encountered tragedy during this time when her mother, now divorced from her father, was a victim of a murdersuicide by an apparently deranged suitor.
An appearance in Berkeley High’s production of Romeo and Juliet as the nurse gave her an appetite for the stage. After graduation, she moved to San Francisco with her sister Marjorie and got involved with The Wayfarers, a well-known community theater in the 1930s, with which she performed in many plays. There she met Joseph Colton, who mostly built sets and played the piano; he was smitten with her good looks and charm, and soon they became a couple. When a career in theater seemed out of reach for her, she decided to accept Joe’s offer of marriage, and on August 6, 1941, they wed. High blood pressure kept Joe out of uniform, but the two joined other members of the Wayfarers in performing camp shows for the troops throughout the war.
In 1946 Barbara and Joe gave birth to daughter Wendy and in 1947 to son Geoffrey. They moved into a modest home in San Francisco across the street from Sigmund Stern Grove, and there they raised their family. That house was the site of many an extended family Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner for decades to follow. Barbara and Joe lovingly maintained the home, commencing countless do-it-yourself projects they figured out how to do on their own. Barbara continued to live in the home until 2015 before moving to a senior community in Modesto to be closer to daughter Wendy.
Barbara was a person of many talents. Possessed of a fine singing voice, she performed as a youth with her brother Steve’s band—his stage name was Dude Martin. Soulful ballads were her specialty. She had a particularly mellifluous speaking voice, which she used to great effect as a volunteer reader for the blind, both in person and on tape, through a program of the Library of Congress in the years before talking books became ubiquitous.
Joe’s hobby was photography, and for many years Barbara and Joe supplemented their income with a portrait studio operated out of their home. Joe shot and developed the pictures, and Barbara posed the subjects and retouched the negatives and prints. She taught herself to paint and produced several fine oil portraits of family and friends.
She had a fine command of the English language and an impressive vocabulary. She was the “go to” person whenever Geoff or Wendy had questions about spelling, grammar, or usage, which continued for decades after both finished school. She was inclined to let you know if you used or pronounced a word wrongly, but was usually tactful about it.
Barbara had a keen interest in politics and world affairs. She was a committed conservative Republican, much to the delight of son Geoff and the dismay of daughter Wendy. She was always up to a spirited conversation about public policy or the current political campaign. She voted in every election, including 2016.
Her love for the theater never waned. She and Joe liked nothing better than to invite friends for dinner and spend the evening reading scenes from Private Lives, Hay Fever, or Mary, Mary. She once said that after you’ve known theater people, everyone else seems a little dull. Both Wendy and Geoff inherited the theater gene and pursue that interest to this day.
She loved the Giants and was almost convinced that the reason she lived so long was to see them win the World Series three times.
Highlights of Barbara & Joe’s time together included two multi-country trips to Europe with Barbara’s much-loved sister Marjorie Whitaker, and a cruise to Alaska for their fiftieth wedding anniversary. They were married for fifty-six years at the time of Joe’s passing in 1998.
She is well-loved and remembered by her daughter Wendy Scott and her husband Robert Scott, their daughter Anissa Gerdts and son Andrew Scott, his wife Leslie Scott and daughter (and Barbara’s great grandchild) Lua; and by her son Geoffrey Colton and his wife Dana Gordon-Colton, their son Christopher Colton and his wife Bridget MaguireColton, son Tyler Colton, and daughter Roxanne Colton.