A Christmas Story
Two Red Pillows May Be 'Gift from an Angel'
By Ryan Schlehuber

Victor and Mary Swiderski of St. Ignace hold pillows Mrs. Swiderski found at the St. Ignace Hope Chest thrift store, which she learned later were made by Mr. Swiderski's mother 18 years ago, and sold at a rummage sale in Alpena 10 years ago. (Swiderski family photograph)

Mary Swiderski was looking for red pillows to accent her St. Ignace home for Christmas. What she found was a "gift from an angel," she said.

Red pillows would be the perfect complement to the Christmas blanket and three white pillows she had on her sofa, but Mrs. Swiderski said she looked for them in stores throughout the area without success.

"There were all different colors, shapes, and sizes of pillows," she noted, "but not quite what I was looking for."

One day at the St. Ignace charity resale store, Hope Chest, she spotted two red pillows adorned with white lace doilies that had been placed on one of the couches in the store.

"How perfect, I thought," Mrs. Swiderski remembers. "I snatched them up and, for a 50¢ donation, I had the two red pillows I was looking for!"

Marie Swiderski

Back home, her husband, Vic, recognized them as pillows made 18 years earlier by his mother, Marie Regina Swiderski. What caught his eye were the doilies he had purchased at an auction about 18 years ago, when he was an antique dealer.

"He showed me a flaw in one of the pillows his mother had made while sewing them, and he told me he remembered her complaining about how she had added an extra seam by mistake and then had to remove it," said Mrs. Swiderski. "The seam flaw was still there!"

So is the sewing machine she used to make the pillows, which is now in the couple's bedroom.

Marie Swiderski died in 1999 and Vic sold the pillows the next year at a rummage sale in Alpena. He didn't meet his future wife, Mary Pemble, for another three years.

The couple doesn't have any idea how the red pillows made it from an Alpena rummage sale to the Hope Chest in St. Ignace.

Mrs. Swiderski said her husband thinks it is fate.

"I believe there is a special angel named Marie who is closely watching over us," he told her.