Marilyn Swayze Calhoun's Obituary
Marilyn Swayze Calhoun was born on Dec. 9, 1937, in Dallas Texas, and died on April 13, 2026, in Austin Texas. Marilyn was buried at the Restland Cemetery in Dallas, along side of her mother and father, Fred and Lois Swayze.
Marilyn had a somewhat complicated early life that included living from time to time with two aunts and her grandmother in Dallas. But that didn’t keep her from making good grades in school, graduating with honors from Sunset High School in Oak Cliff, Dallas at age 16.
Her mother and father had moved to Albuquerque, N.M., where Marilyn lived and worked for a short time after graduation before moving back to Texas, to Lubbock, to do secretarial work for an oil company.
She also went to evening classes at Texas Tech, determined to get a college degree. She met her husband-to-be Ron Calhoun in 1960 through her roommate who had known Ron in their hometown, Stamford, Texas. Ron was on the verge of graduating from Tech with a degree in journalism, afterward working for newspapers both as a writer and editor.
They married in1961when Marilyn was secretary to the vice president of the Lubbock First National Bank and Ron was taking his last classes at Tech toward getting a degree while working parttime on a weekly newspaper in a nearby town. He then changed their lives forever by accepting a job offer by a former journalism professor at Tech who had become editor of a Philadelphia suburban newspaper.
They loaded a U-Haul trailer attached to Ron’s 1951 Chevrolet and headed toward Dallas to stay with her aunt and uncle before going on to Pennsylvania. It was in Dallas that she told Ron, “I’m not going to Pennsylvania in that car,” after it heated up and stalled on their way to Fort Worth where they were to dine with one of his Stamford golfing buddies who worked for the Associated Press.
Ron was able to get the Chevy started after it cooled down. The next day he went to see his Uncle Bill Calhoun who owned a Chevy dealership in downtown Dallas. He made a deal for a 1957 air-conditioned Chevrolet, and he and Marilyn happily headed the next day to Pennsylvania, seeing many sights along the way, including Washington, D.C.
Their feelings dimmed somewhat when they crossed over into Pennsylvania along the Delaware River where they saw refineries, chemical plants and other industries related to river and ocean transit. The newspaper Ron was to work for the next two years, the Delaware County Daily Times, was located in Chester, reputed to be the oldest town in Pennsylvania, 12 miles from Philadelphia.
Marilyn and Ron were to stay in his Tech teacher’s apartment for three weeks while his Tech teacher was on his honeymoon after marrying one of his students at Tech.
After Ron started his new career, Marilyn started checking out her new circumstances, which turned out to be “new” everything, including difficulty in finding a place to live. She and Ron came into contact with a man in the real estate business who not only handled home sales, but also rentals of homes owned by persons who spent a great deal of time living out of the country.
One such home was in a well-settled neighborhood, the abode of a naval officer, his wife and young daughter. In back there was a separate structure called a mother-in-law quarters, which was empty but dirty. It had a big rear window with a view of a glorious backyard, with big trees and lots of grass. Marilyn quickly accepted the rental cost and she and Ron started moving in and cleaning the place, which was eight miles from the newspaper.
It took them a while to get used to their new circumstances, but soon were spending time seeing the historical places in Philadelphia related to the founding of the nation. They went to New York by train and drove to many attractions in nearby states, including across New Jersey to Atlantic City on the Atlantic Ocean.
In the meantime, Ron learned that a Stamford girlfriend and her husband were living in Baltimore where he was working on the heat shield for a moonshot rocket, and that two other Stamford girls he had known, and their husbands, were in the Washington, D.C. area. They had a get-together in Baltimore.
Marilyn found a great job, making almost as much pay a Ron. She went to work for Vertol Helicopters, a division of Boeing Aircraft, as a secretary for test pilots in development of a new helicopter to move troops in the Vietnam conflict. Her job location was at Philadelphia International Airport.
Then, in 1962, another important event occurred. Marilyn became pregnant with son Brian. And lo and behold, Ron was invited by her doctor to watch the delivery. This blessed event of course meant Marilyn had to give up her job.
Ron, in the meantime, was making headway in his job, winning an award from the Pennsylvania Newspaper Publisher’s Association on a crime story he wrote, and helping on deadline with editing copy and writing headlines. But after he fulfilled his commitment to stay with the newspaper for at least two years, he accepted a job back in Lubbock with the newspaper there as a copy editor.
And then, another blessed event occurred – the birth of son John in 1966. Helping financially, Ron got a parttime job at Tech teaching a lab to train journalism students to write stories, including for the college newspaper.
After four years back in Lubbock, Ron sent out letters to the six major daily newspapers in Texas, inquiring about job opportunities. This led to his hiring by the Dallas Times Herald, first as a general assignments reporter, then for city hall and the city council coverage, and finally as the political writer, covering national, state and local politics.
Marilyn frequently found herself alone with two young, adventurous boys while Ron was working late, sometimes on weekends and out of town, covering statewide candidate campaigns, political conventions and the state legislature. Marilyn was still determined, however, to get her college degree and make her way in a profession of her own.
And she did, starting in the Dallas community college by studying to become a law firm secretary. And finally by attending the new University of Texas at Dallas where she graduated summa cum laude, and getting hired by one of Dallas’s most prestigious law firms where she became involved in complex litigation.
In 1989, Ron was hired by the Texas General Land Office in Austin to be public information director. After their move, Marilyn worked for an Austin law office for a couple of years, and then for Texas Health and Human Services serving as a legislative liaison to keep doctors who worked for the state agency aware of changes in state and federal law that affected their efforts.
Both Ron and Marilyn retired after working for the state for 10 years and have since enjoyed being with their sons and their families, traveling to many places in the country, including Alaska and Hawaii, ranging from Boston to San Francisco, and abroad to England, Ireland, Scotland (ancient home of the Calhoun family) and France.
Marilyn had many interests. Her family always came first. It grew from having two sons, both graduating from college and succeeding in their professions, to having four grandchildren, all of whom were college graduates, and two great-grandchildren. Her other interests ranged from reading books to playing bridge to politics and travel.
She tried to play golf with Ron but gave it up, deciding it was “the stupidest game ever invented”.
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