When Marilyn Alaimo took a job with Northern Trust Co. in Chicago in 1954, it wasn’t to answer phone calls.
Mrs. Alaimo, a product of Harvard University’s Harvard-Radcliffe Program in Business Administration, was the one making the calls, “one of the few women in the country trading bonds right alongside her male counterparts,” her daughter Katherine Andersen said.
According to a March 1957 article in Mademoiselle magazine, Mrs. Alaimo was the first female bond trader at Northern Trust and part of a “growing number of exceptions” — young women with a postgraduate degree or training breaking through in the industry.
When Northern Trust’s officers decided to buy or sell municipal bonds for trust accounts, they would give the order to Mrs. Alaimo, who would contact traders at other firms looking to get the best price. Because those bonds had no set price on the exchange, she had to have sufficient knowledge of the market to make decisions on the fly and get the best price, the Mademoiselle article said.
“Even with all the training she had received, it was a real challenge,” her daughter said. “She had to teach herself a lot.”
Mrs. Alaimo, 83, who later became a well-known Chicago-area horticulturist and one of the longest-serving volunteers at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe, died of complications from cancer Friday, Dec. 26, in her Lake Forest home.
From 1974 to 2014, Mrs. Alaimo volunteered at the Chicago Botanic Garden, working for many years with the school programs team supporting youth education classes and as a walking tour guide for groups visiting the garden.
“Whenever I would see Marilyn, she’d greet me with a friendly smile and share some gardening conversation that included questions and things she had observed in the plant world,” said Tim Johnson, director of horticulture at the Chicago Botanic Garden. “She had so many gardening friends who looked to her for advice. Teaching and sharing and learning were at her core.”
In more recent years, she volunteered at the garden’s Regenstein Center information desk, welcoming countless visitors, and served on the committee for the Bloomin’ Capital Campaign fundraiser.
“Marilyn shared 8,000 hours of dedicated volunteer service with us,” said Judy Cashen, the garden’s director of volunteers.
Born Marilyn Kearns in Urbana, Ill., Mrs. Alaimo was in her teens when she moved with her family to a farm in Carmel, Ind.
She received a bachelor’s degree in sociology and psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, before completing her postgraduate studies in Boston through the Harvard-Radcliffe Program.
While working at Northern Trust, she married Joseph Alaimo, whom she met in college. After leaving the bank in 1958, the couple began raising a family and in the 1960s bought a home on three-quarters of an acre in Lake Forest, where she became a stay-at-home mom.
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“When she wasn’t in her garden, she’d be involved in all our activities,” her daughter said. “Her favorite event as a Girl Scout troop leader was planting trees for Arbor Day.”
In 1980, Mrs. Alaimo received an associate degree in horticulture from the College of Lake County and became a landscape designer for public, commercial and residential properties. She was a Master Flower Show judge and past president of the Ravinia Garden Club and Garden Clubs of Illinois, editing its GardenGlories magazine.
Mrs. Alaimo was the editor and a contributing author of “Stewards of the Land: A Survey of Landscape Architecture and Design in America,” published in 1999 and the author of “Trees & Large Shrubs for Home Gardens & Community Arboreta,” published in 2000. She also wrote numerous book reviews on horticulture for various publications.
“She was a wonderful resource for anything having to do with the science of horticulture,” said Gerry Ford, a past president of the Garden Clubs of Illinois.
From 1992 to 2000, Mrs. Alaimo was chairwoman of the Lake Forest Cemetery Commission.
“I became interested in (cemeteries) when I studied landscape design,” she told the Tribune in 1998. “I feel they are a wonderful educational experience. We forget how important they were in our past.”
Last year, Mrs. Alaimo was honored by the Chicago Botanic Garden for her four decades of volunteer service.
“Her face was full of pride and joy as she walked up to receive her award,” said Johnson, who attended the event. “She was very dedicated to the garden.”
Other survivors include a son, John; another daughter, Laura; a brother, Robert E. Kearns; and eight grandchildren.
Services were held.