Jim Bradshaw: Margaret MacMillan lived more than just a full life

By Jim Bradshaw
Margaret McMillan was marked for distinction as an infant, and for all of her long life carried out that promise, as an athlete, student, teacher, entrepreneur, advocate for maritime safety, and role model for women who were unafraid of — in her case quite literally — making waves.
She wasn’t even walking yet when the judges of the Better Baby Contest at the South Louisiana Fair in Donaldsonville named her “the finest baby in twelve parishes.” That was just the beginning of what her niece Robin described upon Margaret’s death Aug. 21 as “beyond a full life,” much of it centered around water.
Her father, John McMillan, was manager of the Colonial Sugars office in Grammercy, the St. James Parish community that was essentially a company town when she was growing up. He and his boss, George Meade, were “very, very interested in swimming,” Margaret said in a 2006 interview. They saw to it that the town had a swimming pool that, she said, “produced some of the greatest swimmers in the South.”
She was one of them. She learned to swim when she was only two years old, and kept paddling all her life.
“Summer time, when I was eight, nine, ten . . . I was at the pool at nine o’clock, came home at twelve to eat, back at the pool at two, came home to eat a tomato sandwich … at night, and went back and stayed in the pool until nine,” Margaret said.
She won her first swimming medal when she was 11 and went on to win scores of medals and trophies as a standout on a swim team that won the Southern AAU championship. And early on she was caught by the idea of teaching water safety.
“I became a certified junior lifeguard (at age 11), and that’s when I started teaching. That was the beginning,” she said. She was still teaching 70 years later.
She said she had no clue how many people she taught, but it numbered in the hundreds over at least three generations.
Margaret matriculated to SLI (now UL-Lafayette) in 1936 and before graduating with honors, was elected a student government officer, was a cheerleader, and was an organizer of the Red Jackets pep squad.
She went on to teach health and PE at SLI, and was still at the university (by then USL) when the oil industry began spreading far into the Gulf, and, in Margaret’s eyes, without much thought to safety.
“In those days the guys that worked on the platforms were taught [in an emergency] to run and jump in the water … even though they didn’t have a life jacket, and didn’t know how to swim,” she said. “It didn’t quite make sense.”
She began a pilot safety program at the school, and that turned out to be a life-changing event for her and for hundreds of offshore workers. When she wanted to apply for a grant to fund her program, “there was a gentleman at the university … who decided a woman should not be in charge. So that’s when I decided to go out and do this on my own.”
The result was McMillan Offshore Survival Training, a business that began in her backyard pool, and grew in size and reputation until she was recognized around the world. Over the years she accumulated a long list of honors — founding member of the International Association of Sea Survival Training, U.S. representative to the International Maritime Organization, leadership awards from national and international maritime and safety groups, consultant to foreign government’s safety organizations (including Russia’s), and dozens more—in practically every instance as the first woman to be so recognized.
I asked her 10 years ago: “Do you regard yourself as a pioneering woman?”
“I do,” she said. “I built (the company) because I loved everything I was doing.” She was slowing down in 2006 and had developed chronic knee and hip problems not uncommon to people in their middle 80s. But Margaret saw opportunity even in that.
“What are you going to do for the next twenty years?” I asked.
“I’m going to sell walking sticks,” she said.
“You think I’m kidding? I talked last night to a guy who makes them.”
That plan didn’t actually get off the ground. But, if it had, I’d have bet she’d be the best walking stick saleswoman ever. That’s just the way she was.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, Cajuns and Other Characters, is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.