Charles Swift ’54

Charlie died July 1, 2020, of complications of Parkinson’s disease.  

He prepared at Belmont (Mass.) Hill School. At Princeton he majored in mathematics and joined Tower Club. A talented pianist, he was active in the Glee Club and the Triangle Club. 

In 1956 he earned a master’s degree in industrial management at MIT. He met Barbara Teare that year during a brief sojourn in Europe and married her in 1957. They raised two children, Lucy ’83 and Charlie Jr. ’88. 

In 1956, Charlie embarked on a highly successful 34-year career with IBM. While living in Paris, London, Japan, Australia, and the U.S., he built lifelong relationships in 97 countries. He said, “I have been all over the world, touched by faces of many people who said ‘thank you,’ when I was the one who owed them so much.” He retired from IBM in 1989. 

Charlie and Barbara moved to Hilton Head Island in 1995. With partner-friend Bob Masteller, he opened a jazz club in 1999,  the Jazz Corner. He and Barbara divorced in 2000. He married Donna Stetler and moved to Charleston, S.C., in 2000 and to Eufala, Ala., in 2005. He and Donna divorced in 2017 and he moved to the Abiitan Retirement Community in Minneapolis to be near Lucy, who died of cancer in 2019. He is survived by son Charles Jr. and two granddaughters.