Margaret Swabey Bebee, age 87, died Sunday 25 October at her home at Island Elder Care. A native of Washington State, and an Islander since 2003, Margaret was active throughout her life in promoting family-centered maternity care, natural childbirth and breastfeeding, focusing on the empowerment of women in their families and in the world. An organic gardener and healthy eating advocate when such people were called “health food nuts,” she and husband Bob Bebee were early members of local coops Group Health, PCC and REI.
A founding member of the Childbirth Education Association, which taught generations of women to birth their babies naturally, and active in La Leche League, which promoted breastfeeding during the era of “better living through chemistry,” Margaret’s work as a labor & delivery registered nurse provided gentle support for birthing mothers at Northwest, Swedish and Group Health Hospitals. Local notables such as former Seahawk Steve Largent and garden writer Valerie Easton were among those whose babies entered the world with Margaret’s skilled help. Not a sports fan, Margaret did not recognize Steve Largent and, making conversation in a quiet moment during his wife’s labor, reportedly asked him “And what do you do for a living?”
Born in the lumber town of Snohomish to Laurence A.W. Swabey and Katherine Randall Swabey on 7 March 1922, Margaret was orphaned at age two when her mother died suddenly, leaving her British-born husband with three young children.
Margaret and her brothers were soon sent to the Good Shepherd Home in Seattle, now the Good Shepherd Center, and later Margaret moved to the Sacred Heart Orphanage, now the home of the Villa Academy in Laurelhurst. Her widowed father’s regular visits were the highlight of those orphanage years. Since orphans were segregated by sex, those visits also meant she could see her beloved brothers as well.
At age ten she moved to the first of several foster homes in Seattle, where she was reunited with her older brother. Their younger brother had died in the orphanage. A subsequent foster family spent summers at Port Madison on Bainbridge Is., where Margaret first discovered her love for Puget Sound and began her lifelong skills in organic vegetable gardening, canning and food preservation.
Her father remarried when Margaret was about 14, and she and her surviving brother were thrilled to rejoin their father, now working for the Pope & Talbot lumber mill in Port Gamble. She attended North Kitsap High School in Poulsbo, Garfield in Seattle, and after her family moved to a 7-acre dairy and chicken farm in Juanita, she graduated from Kirkland High School in 1940.
Margaret attended the University of Washington, where she made several lifelong friends, and then transferred to the diploma nursing program at Virginia Mason Hospital, living in a student nurses residence at the Sorrento Hotel. She served in the Cadet Nurse Corps during World War II.
She met her husband of 56 years, Bob Bebee (who predeceased her), on a blind date in 1944, and they married in 1945. Their first jobs after Bob was discharged from the U.S. Coast Guard at the end of WWII were at Tatoosh Island, off Cape Flattery, releasing weather balloons for the Weather Bureau, now the U.S. Weather Service. Margaret told of getting on and off rocky Tatoosh in a basket suspended from a crane on a Coast Guard vessel which supplied both the weather station and the Coast Guard outpost.
After a stint in Port Angeles, where Bob was a harbor pilot and Margaret worked at the small local hospital, they settled in Shoreline to raise their family. Margaret continued her advocacy for family-centered maternity care, while also taking an active role with the Washington State Nurses Association which was then working to establish retirement plans and pensions for nurses through the hospitals that employed them. Her community activities included the Puget Sound Live Steamers Association and the Puget Sound Historical Society.
An active hiker into her 70s with a circle of hiking buddies gathered from among her hospital colleagues, Margaret also was an avid reader, a devoted thrift store shopper, a member of the Lake Forest Park Garden Club, and a regular adoptive parent for pets needing homes, especially cats, rabbits or chickens. Her grandchildren fondly recall her saving a dead bird in the freezer until they got a chance to marvel at its delicate beauty. For the past seven years Margaret lived on Vashon Island, near her daughter and son-in-law.
Margaret loved being a mother and grandmother and is greatly missed by all those whose lives she touched with her practicality, can-do attitude, sweet nature and generosity of spirit.
She is survived by son Brian (Nick) Bebee and daughter-in-law Deb Bebee, Duvall, WA, daughter Andrea Avni and son-in-law Bart Arenson, Vashon, and grandchildren Nicole Randles, Jordan Bebee, Marisa Alunni, Colin Bebee, Austin Bebee, Yael Kallin, Ben Avni and Isaac Avni; and two great-grandsons. The family is grateful to Vashon Community Care Center, Island Elder Care and Providence Hospice for their affectionate and attentive support.
A memorial gathering to honor Margaret’s amazing life will be held at Havurat Ee-Shalom, 15401 Westside Hwy, Vashon Island, on Sun 29 Nov, 12pm-3pm. Remembrances may be sent to Pasado’s Safe Haven (www.pasadosafehaven.org) or a charity of your choice.
(paid obituary)
