Marilyn Ruth Cohn Schwartz

1932 - 2021

Marilyn Ruth Cohn Schwartz
1932-2021
Marilyn Ruth Cohn Schwartz, a civic official, businesswoman and wife to former state senator A.R. "Babe" Schwartz, died on Feb. 25 in Houston. She was 89.
She was born on May 27th, 1932 in San Diego, Texas to Julius S. Cohn, an entrepreneur, and the former Dorothy Dell Jacobs, an author of children's books and puzzles. The family lived in Harlingen, in the Rio Grande Valley.
Marilyn Cohn attended The University of Texas at Austin, where she majored in art and was named a finalist in the university's "Bluebonnet Belles" pageant.
She fell in love with A.R. "Babe" Schwartz, a Galveston native who was attending law school at UT after his Navy service in the Pacific in World War II. He had attended Texas A&M University as an undergraduate.
They had first met a few years before, when Marilyn was just 16, at a mutual friend's home; Babe Schwartz would later tell the Galveston County Daily News that she was "radiantly beautiful," and remembered that she was wearing a Dutch girl peasant blouse and a skirt.
In Austin, they met again at a fraternity dance. He asked her to dance, but abruptly walked away in the middle of the song, saying, "you don't dance worth a damn." He saw her again a while later at an intramural football game, when she walked up to say hello. He told her that her feet were dirty. "I was very upset," she recalled, "because I was fairly popular in college and was usually treated very nicely."
Babe Schwartz would later recall with some embarrassment that he had been tongue tied and that his insults were a "typical Aggie comment." When he asked her out, she initially refused. But one night, she would tell The Daily News of Galveston, he called her and she told him she was feeling "very homesick." He told her he would be there in 15 minutes, and he drove her to Harlingen, a seven-hour trip each way, in the Studebaker convertible that he'd bought with the college savings account his mother had handed him when he went off to school. Before long, they were engaged.
She would later tell her children that her family did not approve of the engagement; her father told her, "That young man has bamboozled you!" She replied, "Of course he's bamboozled me, Daddy. I love him."
Paulie Gaido, a family friend, once said of Babe Schwartz, "Although he possessed a well-deserved reputation as a phenomenal orator, the most compelling evidence of his power of persuasion was the ability to persuade Marilyn to be his wife."
They married on July 14, 1951, and were married for 67 years. She never finished her college degree, but often worked outside the home as a substitute school teacher, secretary, insurance agent and more.
In politics, her profound organizational skills and personal discipline benefitted campaigns and helped keep the family running smoothly while her husband spent most of the week in Austin. "Without her, I could never have stayed in politics," Babe Schwartz has said.
She was also the softening presence to her husband's feisty, bare-knuckled ways. It was not uncommon for Babe Schwartz's political foes, when introduced to a Schwartz son, to glower briefly and mumble something about having had disagreements with Babe Schwartz, but then they would brighten and ask, "How's your mother? I love your mother."
As a political spouse, she served for decades in the Senate Ladies' organization, as president, secretary, and historian, even long after Babe Schwartz lost the seat in the 1980 election. Among her duties were organizing the biennial Easter Egg hunt on the grounds of the Governor's Mansion with military precision. She enlisted her grown grandchildren to wear the Easter Bunny and chicken costumes in the often sweltering heat of an Austin spring.
She also served as a docent at the Governor's mansion, giving rigorously researched tours and standing by at receptions to describe the objects and art. Few of the people spoke with in those duties knew that she had briefly been a first lady of Texas herself: In February 1966, when State Senator Babe Schwartz was named Governor For A Day, a Texas tradition for senate presidents pro tempore, the family dined at the mansion.
She was active in organizations in Galveston, including serving on the board of Bank of the West, running the Temple B'nai Israel gift shop and serving on the Beach and Parks board of Trustees. She was also an artist of considerable talent who illustrated her mother's books and created paintings treasured by her family.
She also served as a second mom to a sprawling extended family of cousins and her children's friends, whose names and place on the family tree she could pull from memory effortlessly.
In later years, as she was afflicted with dementia, she never lost her sense of humor or her steely determination. Though her memory was damaged, she remained sharp in the present, and very much herself to the end.
Marilyn Schwartz is survived by her four sons: Bob and Dick Schwartz, both of whom live in Houston, John Schwartz, who lives in New Jersey, and Tom Schwartz, who lives in Sarasota, Florida, as well as Bob's wife Monya, Dick's wife Tina, John's wife Jeanne and Tom's wife Barb. Babe and Marilyn Schwartz had 12 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.