Lynn Thompson Remembers Georgina Schwartz

Lifetime TOS member Georgina Schwartz passed away following a brief illness, on May 16, 2026, in San Antonio. She was 5 months shy of her 96th birthday. Her membership in the Texas Ornithological Society dates to the 1990's; she attended her last meeting at Lake Jackson in 2022. She served on the TOS board as Region 5 director from 2005-2008, later promoting the organization by encouraging membership and selling TOS merchandise at annual meetings and other events around Texas.

Born in Nebraska on October 27, 1930, Georgina Noble Rankin Schwartz was named after her grandmother, who emigrated to Kansas from Scotland. She was proud of her Scottish ancestry. Her father, William Rankin, Jr., was working for a railroad in Omaha when he got a job with the Public Buildings Administration (now the General Services Administration) and was sent around the country to oversee the building of post offices and public buildings. One such building was the United States Merchant Marine Hospital in New Orleans.

Georgina recalled moving fourteen separate times before she graduated high school. Her mother, Bernice, moved their household goods, Georgina and her younger sister, Martha, to different cities in Oklahoma, Louisiana, Omaha, Kentucky, and Texas, while her dad went ahead to begin work on the next building. One of her fondest memories was roller skating to flute lessons when they lived in Flemingsburg, Kentucky. Due to moving so often, Georgina asked her parents to enroll her as a junior for the second time in Shawnee Mission, Kansas so she could spend her last two high school years in one school.

Upon graduating from Kansas State University in 1952 with a degree in biotechnology, she married Dr. Willard Schwartz, Jr., in 1953, and had two sons, Charles and Bob. The family moved to Pittsburgh and lived there for 13 years. In July 1973, they settled in San Antonio where Georgina resided for fifty-three years in the same house. She began birding in earnest after moving to Texas; although son Charles says she birded in Pennsylvania as well.

Georgina joined the San Antonio Audubon Society (SAAS) in 1973 and soon was in the thick of the group. Field trip committee member, Education committee chair, Christmas Bird Count section leader, Bexar County bird checklist committee, and President from 1987-1988 were just some of her volunteer activities with SAAS. Her name is on the “Birds of Bexar County Texas” checklist.

Many birders knew Georgina from beginning bird walks at the Judson Nature Trails in Alamo Heights. Betty Walters, as the official historian for San Antonio Audubon Society, looked up records for those beginner walks. Georgina led them monthly for an astonishing 36 years, from 1983 until 2019!

One of the biggest initiatives of SAAS began in earnest at the Mitchell Lake Wildlife Refuge. The Junior League of San Antonio had members who were interested in environmental projects, so in 1994, as the Junior League Wetlands Group, they organized the Mitchell Lake Wetlands Society (MLWS). Initial members were from
SAAS and Bexar Audubon, among other organizations. Another SAAS member, Ernie Roney, led bird walks prior to when the MLWS was created, from 1984 till about 1998. All people had to do was sign a log and release form.

After heavy rain damaged some of the roads in October 1998, birders had to sign a SAWS/MLWS liability release and rescue contract. Georgina recruited and coordinated the schedule of bird tour leaders and led tours as well for five years; multiple tour leaders were covered by the contract.

In 2002, she developed a project called "Basic Skills for Observing Birds of the Mitchell Lake Refuge". SAWS gave her a grant which provided binoculars, field guides, and reference books for young birders to experience the joys of birding. In 2004, National Audubon took over the refuge known as MLWS, as its partners could not afford the liability insurance required by the San Antonio Water System (SAWS), who had the state permit for the refuge. The property is now known as Mitchell Lake Audubon Center (MLAC). She continued to bird at MLAC, though she was annoyed during COVID when birders were required to make an online reservation for timed entry.

Georgina worked as a medical technologist in hematology at the old Santa Rosa City Centre hospital in San Antonio from 1975 until she took early retirement in 1993. Work was cutting into her birding! From 1993 until 2022, she birded regularly at Government Canyon SNA, Phil Hardberger Park, Castroville Regional Park.

The Texas Century Club intrigued her. For years she kept pocket-sized notebooks with her bird trips and sightings in them. When she entered many of the paper lists into eBird, she discovered she had 18 counties over 100! She was a big chaser with SAAS friends in the 1980’s-1990’s, often going out the day after a rare bird had been found. She was there the next day when a Black-vented Oriole was found in Kingsville, when an Aztec Thrush landed on North Padre Island, and when a Masked Tityra showed up at Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley SP, Georgina saw it!

Georgina joined the Comal County Birders, a small group which came together in 1999 to create a bird list for the county and to get some of its parks on the Great Texas Birding Trail map. Those goals were achieved, so she helped coordinate monthly bird walks in the Comal County area. When David Sarkozi suggested in 2000 that Comal Birders restart the Christmas Bird Count that lapsed in the 1980's, Georgina said a date would have to be selected that did not conflict with her days for the San Antonio, Boerne, Comstock, Del Rio, and Uvalde CBC's.

In June 2022, Georgina fell while picking up her newspaper. She fractured several cervical vertebrae and her right wrist. Recovery was slow; at times she said she was not sure she would get better. After 5 months in a rehabilitation hospital, she went home. We had lunch on her 92nd birthday that October. In 2023, SAAS celebrated her 93rd birthday early at the Judson Nature Trails to coincide with the Oct. 14 midday eclipse. Cake, potluck lunch, friends, family, and eclipse glasses – what a fun time! Getting out for that occasion, lunches with friends, drives through local birding areas, attending church and classical concerts kept her active and engaged, though she relied on others to drive her.

She fell again in 2024 and spent several months in a different rehabilitation hospital. I called or visited her in the two rehab places as often as I could. We spoke of many things, recent bird sightings, birding trips we took together, and the state of the world. I asked her questions about her life and family, jotting the answers down in a small notebook. Once I used Ancestry to locate, print, and take her pictures from her Kansas State college yearbooks.

For our mutual October birthday in 2024, we ate at a Mexican place near her house, where they gave her a big sombrero to wear. She said, "I didn't know there would be party hats!" We liked the Las Palapas in Castle Hills, where we celebrated her 95th and my 71st birthday last year. Friends for close to 25 years. Our last lunch was April 7, again at Las Palapas. To the end, she asked about bird sightings, current events, and whose turn it was to pick up the check.

Sources: Georgina Schwartz, eBird, Texas Birds Record Committee, TOS records, San Antonio Audubon members Deb Engler, Betty Walters, Sandi Wheeler, Leslie Linehan, and Christine Turnbull. Also Ancestry.com and Mitchell Lake Wildlife Refuge: An Illustrated History First Edition, by Dwight Henderson and Ruth Lofgren.