Margaret Swanson Lacy
April 25, 1923 - October 14, 2014

Madison - Margaret S. Lacy, 91, of Madison, died October 14, 2014 at St. Mary's Hospital after a brief illness.

Born Margaret Swanson on April 25, 1923 in Stanton, Iowa, she loved her small town roots. After graduating from Augustana College in 1945, she returned to teach at her high school in Stanton. She went on to receive her M.A. in American literature from Washington State University in 1948, and her Ph.D, in English literature from the University of Wisconsin, in 1956. At the University of Wisconsin, Margaret met the love of her life, Edgar Lacy, whom she married in 1952. After his death in 1981, she taught for a number of years in the English department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where Edgar had been a professor. Before returning to teaching, she raised a family and was active in her church, the PTA, her Nakoma neighborhood, and the Dickens Fellowship. In the 1970s, Margaret went back to school to study Swedish, a language she grew up hearing, learning it so well that she translated two novels from that language into English.

Margaret embraced life with passion. She did not merely study literature; she loved it. She read the literary canon from Shakespeare through Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, and T.S. Eliot, but also enjoyed mysteries and children's authors like Beatrix Potter. Her love of reading infused her teaching. She loved music, especially classical music and opera, and she loved to sing. Of the other arts, painting was her favorite. Margaret retained her curiosity and mental acuity until the end, and always enjoyed a good argument, especially about politics; although her father was a stalwart Republican, she grew up an FDR Democrat, and she retained those beliefs until her death. She hated injustice; to give an example, when the Stanton school board reneged on a promise to hold open a job for a serviceman returning from WWII, she threatened to lead a strike, and got the board to back down. Although the life of the mind was most important to her, she enjoyed physical activities like dancing and walking. In her fifties, she learned to swim and took up cross country skiing and running, leading Edgar to quip that he hadn't realized that he had "married a jock." Even in her seventies and eighties she loved to travel, exploring the hills of Tuscany and canals of Venice, the beaches of Mexico, and the museums and restaurants of Washington, D.C and Chicago, where she had season tickets to the Lyric Opera.

More than anything else, Margaret believed that the most important thing in life was love--a belief she lived, and one which made her a beloved teacher, mother, and friend. She loved her homes, her garden, her pets, her Eastside Madison neighborhood (where she moved in 1990), cooking, baking, entertaining, and red wine. Most of all, Margaret loved her friends and family, especially her children, whom she called her "three treasures," and her adored grandchildren. Adapting a line from "Thanks for the Memory," Margaret liked to say that she "might have been a headache but never was a bore." All who knew her would attest to her generosity and largeness of spirit and declare that there was no pettiness about her.

Margaret was preceded in death by her husband Edgar Lacy, her parents, Dr. P.O. Swanson and Adina Swanson (née Sand), her sister Marie, her brothers Phil and Allan, and their spouses. She is survived by her three children, Martha (David) Frank, Ann (Steve Klafka) and Mark (Karen Loebel), her grandchildren Katarina Klafka and Josef Klafka, and numerous other relatives.

There will be a Memorial Service for Margaret at Grace Episcopal Church at 11:00 a.m. on November 22, 2014, with funeral arrangements by Cress Funeral and Cremation Service. In lieu of flowers, Margaret requested that donations be made to Friends of UW Madison Libraries, or another charity with personal significance.


Cress Funeral and Cremation Service
3610 Speedway Road Madison
608-238-3434

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