From the editor
Farewell to the chronicler of Dormansville

Frances Swart spent her entire life in the tiny Helderberg hamlet of Dormansville — and loved it.

She chronicled the life and times of Dormansville residents for over half a century. Miss Swart died on Sunday, having filed her last correspondents column for The Enterprise on June 29.

At 96, she penned her columns with the precision of the schoolteacher she once was. Her columns came in on time, week in and week out, without fail, and without need of editing, either.

That last column started with a description of the weather. The daughter of a dairy farmer, Miss Swart was keenly aware of the weather. When she was born, she told us last year, most of Westerlo was nothing but farms.

As a girl, she walked to the one-room schoolhouse down the road and otherwise — unless she was lucky enough to get a ride with a friend’s father who had a car — traveled by carriage or wagon.

After graduating from New Paltz Normal School in 1930, she taught in the very same schoolhouse she had gone to as a child. Miss Swart had six grades to teach at once.
She lived with her parents until they died. And, after her mother’s death, in 1951, she took up her pen and continued her mother’s practice of writing "items," as she called them, for the local newspapers.
"I’m very pleased when somebody tells me they read my column and they’ve been keeping up with the news here," Miss Swart told us.

She was an integral part of her community; the friends and neighbors she cared and wrote about cared for her.

Her last column is emblematic of a lifetime of paying attention to the details of small-town life.

She wrote about the Dormansville United Methodist Church, which she had attended all her life. Her last column tells us that the altar vases were filled with bouquets of peonies from a bush planted by Clarence Bates and were placed in his memory.
She also wrote of the Hiawatha Grange, of which she was a member for 78 years. She told of the "eat-out dinner" and upcoming elections.

She regularly wrote of social news — the births, and marriages, and deaths that mark our time on earth. Her last column was no exception. She detailed a 25th wedding anniversary celebration and wrote of a graduation.
And what about the weather"
"The rain," Miss Swart wrote in her even-handed way, "has washed away the blossoms on roses and peonies but seems to help the plantings of some annuals."
In the midst of rain and darkness, though, Miss Swart always looked for the proverbial silver lining. "In spite of it all," she wrote, "it has been a joy to have homegrown strawberries. We should be thankful we don’t have the dry weather now in parts of Texas and other states."

Miss Swart was also someone who was thoughtful of others and precise in recording local history. She wrote her own obituary and left it in a sealed envelope. That way, others wouldn’t be troubled with piecing together the events of her life and the record would be accurate. We’re running it on our obituary page just as she wrote it.
Her dear friend Laura Palmer told us the last line would make us laugh. That line, which usually lists an address for making monetary contributions, says instead, "She wished that, in her memory and in lieu of flowers, friends would remember the Dormansville U.M. Church, support it, and attend it."

Miss Swart died as she had lived — thinking of others and of Dormansville. We’ll miss her.