Maureen Marks has always been
surrounded. She’s the oldest of seven kids. She has five of her own, and six grandkids. She’s in a book club. She takes community college classes at night. She’s going to France this summer with nine friends she’s known for decades. And for the past six years, she’s been a doctor – seeing streams of patients into the evenings at her family practice in eastern San Diego.
But at dawn, when Marks jumps in the pool to swim, she has only one person to listen to. It’s the same voice she’s listened to as long as she’s lived. Her own. It’s what pushed her to learn several European languages, what inspired her to swim from Alcatraz to Fisherman’s Wharf five times. It’s the voice that didn’t let her forget, decades later, five kids later, that the chemistry degree she earned at Mary Washington College in 1975 was really a pre-med major. She dreamed of being a doctor.
A love letter barrage Maureen Argo came to Mary Washington College when it was just shedding the tradition of a women’s school. She competed in backstroke and 200-yard freestyle on the college team and swam with the Terrapins synchronized swim club. She majored in chemistry and minored in German. To help put herself through college, she was a lifeguard at the Fort Belvoir Army post. There was another lifeguard, a
Maureen Marks reaches across her desk to a memento of one of five Alcatraz swims she completed in the San Francisco Bay. Other photos are of family and friends. 16
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