| Graduation Year | Class of 1944 |
| Date of Birth | Sep 26, 1926 |
| Date of Passing | Oct 14, 2023 |
| About | Wilma (née Webster) Schwada, a Hickman High School graduate (’44) and the wife of John Schwada, the first Chancellor of the University of Missouri, passed away after a brief illness in Medford, Oregon, near the home of her daughter. She was 97-years-old at the time of her death. During her high school years in Columbia, Wilma was a budding violinist, a cheerleader, the queen of the Junior Jamboree and a math whiz. She was also a key witness – as a 9-year-old! - in the gun-shot death of the wife of Charles Northcutt, the superintendent of Boone County schools; who fired the fatal shot in 1935 at the Northcutt home on West Boulevard remains a mystery to this day. Having grown up in Columbia with many neighbors who were academics, Wilma dreamed of marrying a professor. That dream started to bloom in 1946 when she met John, a World War II U.S. Army Air Forces veteran who was getting his master’s degree in international politics at MU. Wilma, who had just graduated with an AA at Stephens College and was studying economics and finance at MU, met John at Kreski’s, a soda fountain/coffee shop at the corner of Locust and Ninth Streets, now the home of a yoghurt store. As Wilma once wrote: “We talked. We flirted. And on our fourth ‘accidental’ coffee shop encounter, Johnny asked me out on a date. That began a whirlwind courtship. Six months later we eloped and got married in Kansas City.” And, what Wilma failed to mention here was that John, ever the romantic, proposed to her in the shadow of the MU Columns on Francis Quadrangle. Wilma’s dream of marrying a professor came true in the early 1950s when John, now with a PhD. under his belt from the University of Texas, joined the MU faculty. By the 1950s, the couple had two children, and John had taken a leave of absence as a professor at MU to become Missouri state’s Comptroller and Budget Director, a job he held as an appointee of Gov. James T. Blair from 1958 to 1961. In 1964, John became the first chancellor of the University of Missouri, heading the Columbia campus of a growing university system. In 1970, John was named president of Arizona State University, a position he held until his retirement in 1981. Being the wife of a prominent public education official meant lots of socializing, faculty teas and banquets with alumni, faculty, students and state legislators, and Wilma played the role of a lovely and gracious hostess at hundreds of events that included once getting a bear hug from President Lyndon Johnson (“he actually lifted me off my feet”) and keeping playwright Tennessee Williams halfway sober before he was awarded an honorary degree at a graduation ceremony. One of the Wilma’s notable accomplishments was restoring the Chancellor’s Residence, an Italianate Villa-style building on the MU campus. The residence, on Ninth Street, was built in 1867 and is the oldest structure on the oldest public university campus west of the Mississippi River. Under Wilma’s supervision, the residence – where she and her husband and children lived for several years - was given a fresh and vital life. Fittingly, the house is adjacent to the famous MU Columns where, in 1947, John proposed to Wilma. “I could look out our bedroom window at the Chancellor’s Residence and literally see where Johnny asked me to marry him,” she said. And behind the scenes, Wilma was more than a hostess, wife and mother – she was also a reliable and important sounding board and advisor for John. This couple, married “til death do us part,” sat at the kitchen table daily discussing the issues confronting John during his exciting and challenging life as a public official. After John’s retirement from ASU, the couple returned to one of their favorite hobbies – designing and overseeing the construction of houses. During their 43 years of marriage, John and Wilma built six homes, including three in Columbia and three in Arizona. Home building was in Wilma’s blood. She grew up as the daughter of a home-builder, James Seymour Webster, and Neville Baker Webster, a librarian. Wilma was decades-long member and officer in the P.E.O. Sisterhood, a non-profit organization founded in 1869 that has provided over $415 million to support educational opportunities and goals for more than 122,000 young women world-wide. Wilma was a particular friend and supporter of Cottey College, a fully-accredited liberal arts and sciences women’s college in Nevada, Missouri. Wilma served for many years on the Board of Directors of Arizona Public Service. She was especially proud of being part of the APS leadership team that supported construction of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Facility, one of the largest plants of its kind in the world that continues to provide carbon emission-free electricity to millions of Central Arizona residents. Not the least of Wilma’s accomplishments was bearing and raising her children, John “Jay” Webster Schwada of Los Angeles, a retired journalist, and Ruth Ann Schwada of Medford, Oregon, a former teacher. Wilma is survived by her two children, four grandchildren, Jason and Nicholas Caplan (the children of Ruth Ann and her husband, Carl Caplan, now deceased) and Alex and Jack Schwada (the children of John and his wife, Tima) and two great-grandchildren, Colleen and Callan Caplan, the children of Jason Caplan and his wife, Kim. Wilma’s husband died in 1990. |
