Dolores M. Schwinn

Obituary for Dolores Mary Schwinn (nee Costello)

5/22/1928 - 4/27/24

Schwinn, Dolores Mary, passed away on April 27, 2024, at the age of 95. 

Private services were held. 

Born in Saskatchewan, Canada, Dolores moved to Wisconsin in 1933, living on a farm in Randolph, WI, with her parents and two younger sisters before the family moved to the Milwaukee area, with Dolores becoming a naturalized citizen in 1945. Pursuing her undergraduate degree in education at Marquette University, she met Larry Schwinn when they both were in the CYO choir. They married in July of 1949, and lived in the greater Milwaukee area for the first fourteen years of their marriage. In the early 1960s, they moved to Brookfield, WI, where she became a member of the Brookfield Women’s Club. She would go on to teach geometry, trigonometry, and Latin at the Brookfield Academy, before eventually transferring to the Elmbrook School System to teach math at Pilgrim Park, Brookfield East, and Brookfield Central, where she also became advisor to the BCHS yearbook.

A lifelong learner, Dolores received her undergraduate degree in Education and certification for teaching kindergarten through 12th grade from Marquette University. In the late 1970s, she received her Masters in Counseling from the University of WI - Whitewater. After retiring from teaching in the 1990s, Dolores moved to West Allis to be closer to her sister, ultimately moving to Racine to live with her daughter for her final years.

Dolores is survived by her two younger sisters, Helen Costello Hintz and Maureen Costello Dloughy, her four children, Douglas (Jean) Schwinn, Teresa (Jeff) Smigielski, Patricia Schwinn, Kay (Kevin) Potucek, twelve grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren.  She is preceded in death by her husband, Larry Schwinn, and grandson Bryan Smigielski.

We remember Dolores as a loving sister, wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, godmother, aunt, and beloved teacher; she was a woman with a wonderful laugh and vibrant sense of humor who volunteered to help senior citizens complete their tax returns, donated to charities, supported food pantries, loved to collect art and keepsakes featuring chickens, enjoyed time playing bridge with her college sorority friends, and spoke weekly with her younger sisters and fostered a good-natured competition on who had the most grandchildren between the three of them. Dolores enjoyed a cold beer on a hot day, found numbers and their patterns fascinating, loved reading mystery novels and watching NCIS, and enjoyed seeing curling become an Olympic sport.  

She shared many of her signature dishes freely over her lifetime, including an amazing BBQ Beef, crumb cake, and pineapple torte.  She had a deep and abiding love for her Irish heritage, and enjoyed what she considered the trip of her lifetime going to Ireland with her daughter and son-in-law, working on the family genealogy, tracing family roots to County Mayo, and seeing the headstones from Costello's long past. 

In Dolores’s final years, she became a fierce advocate for democracy and asked, in remembrance of her, for people to protect the democracy we currently enjoy by exercising the right to vote, to donate to help others, to keep food pantries stocked year-long, and to always act charitably toward others. Her family thanks you for your condolences.