S. Donovan Swann Jr. ’34

Don Swann, a summer theater impresario and etcher following his father, Don Sr., and mother, Rita, died of heart failure Feb. 22, 1998, in Baltimore, where he was born. He was 87 on Feb. 6.

In his vocation since 1960 at the Etchcrafters Art Guild in Baltimore, he oversaw the publication, exhibition, and sale of original etchings by about a dozen artists, more than 100 of them by himself and many more by his father, who died in 1954.

Don's Hilltop Theater, Maryland's first professional summer-stock company, of which he had been a founder in 1938, brought to Baltimore such stars as Charles Coburn, Joan Blondell, and Edward Everett Horton. Don featured many of them on a TV program he hosted each week.

A neighbor and playwright who began working with Don in the 1940s said of him after his death, "He was a kind of golden child who remained throughout his life a big, happy kid."

Don is survived by his wife of 10 years, Kay Sutley; a stepson and two stepdaughters; a sister, Evelyn S. Keller, and two nieces. A brother, Francis E. '35, died in 1983. To Don's family we offer our sincere sympathies.

The Class of 1934