Pride of Widener
Couple retires after dedicating 71 years to Chester school
CHESTER >> Widener University was in a state of flux in 1981 with the retirement of Clarence R. Moll, Ed.D., from the school’s presidency. Moll’s 22 year-term saw the Pennsylvania Military College add a civilian component in 1966, transition to the civilian Widener College in 1972, and gain university accreditation in 1979. Vice President of Development Robert J. Bruce succeeded Moll to the presidency for a 20-year term that would greatly expand the university’s graduate programs and physical plant.
Among the changes at the top that year, the university grounds crew welcomed Bill Swanson to its ranks. Swanson’s wife, Tracey, would join him at the university four years later as a clerk typist for the School of Nursing.
The couple jointly retired in July after a combined 71 years of carrying out the daily support staff work to implement the university’s growth over the past four decades. Upon retirement, Bill had held his position in the maintenance department’s carpenter shop since 1985, and Tracey had served as administrative assistant to the Dean of Nursing since 1991.
“Retirement’s going to be great; of course I’m going to miss everybody here … Widener’s treated us so good,” Bill said during an interview on campus. “Everyone has to take each day and make the best of it. You never know if you have tomorrow, so you take today and hold onto it and be blessed,” said Tracey.
The university recognized each of the Swansons as outstanding support staff with the William David Eckard Jr. Award for Distinguished Service, with Tracey receiving the award in 2009 and Bill in 2018.
“To be in the same department for (34 years) shows her commitment to the School of Nursing and to Widener,” said Anne M. Krouse, Ph.D., dean of the university School of Nursing. “It’s a significant loss for us, but she’s put us in a place that will ensure our continued success.”
“The Swansons are great people,” said Carmen Lex, university director of maintenance, by phone. “Billy’s pretty self-motivated as a worker, you didn’t have to worry about what he was doing … he knew the buildings he was responsible for.” Among Swanson’s buildings was the university’s Old Main, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
After spending periods of their youth in the neighboring Sun Village neighborhood, the couple moved to Sun Hill across from the PMC campus following their December 1969 wedding, and they still reside there today. The changing economic climate of the city would lead Bill to take the grounds crew position in 1981.
“I worked at Sun Ship for 12 years before,” said Bill, who was laid off from his position in the carpenter shop during the leadup to the 1982 sale of the shipyard. Providing volunteer carpentry at St. Robert’s Parish (today St. Katherine Drexel) and its school building on Providence Avenue while out of work, he received a call from his sister in Widener’s bursar’s office that the university was hiring.
“I said, ‘wow, your kids get a free education,’” said Bill. “I started at $2.95 an hour (on the grounds crew), but in the long term my kids are going to get free college. I said ‘I’ll take it.’”
Tracey would join her husband on campus four years later. “We had children at home and I was working retail. I wanted to be home on nights and weekends,” she said. She would serve under five deans of nursing during her time as administrative assistant. “They’ve all been excellent to work with. I don’t say ‘for’ because they always worked with you. It never felt like you were having to work for them,” she said.
“She provided a lot of balance to the school; always there to listen to faculty or staff when they had concerns or needed someone to talk to,” said Krouse, who served as a faculty member from 2000 to 2016, returning to the school as dean in 2018. “She just was kind of like everybody’s mother, including students.”
During the visit to campus to speak with the Times, Swanson was greeted by a doctoral student she first met as a student worker about 25 years earlier.
“One of my main things was to watch the freshmen come in excited about their education and the new things they’re going to experience,” said Tracey. “Seeing them when they’re seniors … how they matured, what they learned and ready be a professional – that was always gratifying to me.”
Swanson worked in the School of Nursing through extensive growth in its undergraduate and graduate programs, and a move from the Old Main to a new purpose-built facility in Founders Hall eight years ago.
“Whenever … things are in motion, she always knew exactly what needed to be done before any of the rest of us; she knew how to get it done, and it was always right,” said Krouse.
Among the changes Swanson witnessed were advancements in patient mannequin technology.
“When I came, you had mannequins that just laid there … (now) they talk to you, they can have heart attacks. We have one in there that can give birth,” she said.
When the time came around 2000 to build simulation labs in Old Main for the advancing mannequins, Bill received the job. Creating the large lab rooms meant breaking down walls with three feet of red brick topped by two-by-eights and covered in horsehair plaster.
“I found stuff in the walls from 1896,” he said. “I found a picture of a cadet – he was last in his class – and a cigarette and train tickets … the cigarette still had the tobacco smell, it was amazing.” The items were then donated to the newly founded Pennsylvania Military College Museum. “I wanted to tear more walls down and see that I could find,” he said.
Swanson said the work for the carpenter shop was “never boring,” with his assignments ranging from the 18th-century built Old Main to the Widener Courts apartments – built in the 1970s by the city as public housing before being acquired by the university – and the 2010s-built Founders Hall and Harris Hall. The assignments grew to include 40 off-campus houses in Sun Hill and along Walnut Street.
Along with spending time with their two children and eight grandchildren – which includes two generations of Widener graduates – retirement will include travel for Bill’s lifelong commitment to men’s league softball.
“Billy still plays a lot of softball … they’ve won a lot of championships,” said Lex. “He’d come in different times with a big ring or something like that after they won. I played against him years back – he’s kept his arm in shape; he’s a speedster as far as running.”
“He’s in a 70-and-over league now. You’d be surprised how competitive they are,” said Tracey. The couple was preparing to leave for an International Senior Softball Association tournament in Richmond, Va., the day following the interview with the Times.