Charles Swift III

Charlie Swift, M.D., loving husband and father of six, peace activist, world traveler and mountain hiker, died at the age of 92 in Durango on Friday, September 30, 2011, from complications of pneumonia.

Born in Miles City, Mont., on April 19, 1919, Charlie was the third son of college-educated New Englanders who had come out west as homesteaders. Since the closest school was 15 miles away, the boys were taught at home by their parents.

When Charlie was 10, his family moved to Center, Colo., in the San Luis Valley where his father managed a huge cattle ranch. During the summers, the boys would mount horses to help drive the 3,500 cattle to summer pasture above Creede, where they built a log cabin. Wanting a decent education for Charlie, his parents sent him to Fountain Valley boarding school in Colorado Springs, and then to Yale University in Connecticut. During college, he co-chaired a Christian youth organization with Connecticut College student Mary Lou Sharpless, who he eventually married in 1942.

Charlie left Yale during his senior year because of his deep commitment to pacifism which led him to refuse to register for the draft. He was sent to jail for a year in Danbury, Conn., along with a dozen other war resisters who would become his lifelong friends.

After completing undergraduate education at New York University, Charlie went to Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia, PA and eventually specialized in child psychiatry. From 1953 – 65 he was Medical Director of the Child Guidance Centers in Trenton and Princeton, New Jersey.

With a growing interest in public health policy, he completed a Masters in Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in 1966. Reflecting his humanitarian values, he then took a job as Consultant Psychiatrist with the Ministry of Health in Tanzania, East Africa, and in 1966 moved his family to Dar es Salaam. Charlie eventually became Professor and Head of Psychiatry at the University of Dar es Salaam, where he helped establish clinics throughout the country, co-authored a textbook on mental health issues in Africa, taught medical students, and was a consultant on the island of Zanzibar. The family lived there for eight years, where they traveled extensively, collected Makonde carvings and twice climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro.

The Swifts returned to the States in 1974. Charlie directed mental health programs in New Jersey and advocated for the rights of the underprivileged until 1983. He then decided to return to his geographic roots; he and M’Lou moved to Durango, where they designed and built a passive solar adobe home. He was Medical Director of the Southwest Colorado Mental Health Center from 1983 – 87, when he retired and took up writing. His memoirs of life in Tanzania, Dar Days, was published in 2002. He has also consulted internationally in public mental health fields, and taught English in El Salvador and Poland.

Since retiring, Charlie and M’Lou have been avid hikers and explorers in the San Juan mountains and throughout the States. They worked with the local Peace and Justice coalition and have been dedicated to maintaining the weekly peace vigils on the corner of Main and llth Sts. in Durango.

Charlie is survived by his wife, Mary Lou Swift, of Durango; and children Betsy Janeczek of Durango; Barb Bloomfield of Summertown, Tenn.; Ken Swift of Madison, Wis.; Pat Swift of Menlo Park, Calif.; Steve Swift of Oakland, Calif.; 12 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren. The oldest of their children, Hugh Swift, died in an accident in 1991.

We will all miss Charlie’s wry sense of humor, his playfulness, his caring nature and commitment to world peace and racial equality, and his love of being with family and friends in the great outdoors.

A Celebration of Life is planned for 2 p.m. Saturday, November 12, 2011, at the McPherson Chapel, Fort Lewis College Rim Drive, Durango.