Remembering Mack Swift: Teacher, mentor, storyteller

By Lynn R. Mitchell

Mack Swift spanned the generations during his years working with young people. At no time was that more evident than this week when on Wednesday a flurry of phone calls connected some generational dots when news of his death began circulating in the Staunton area. He died in Tennessee, where he was born, while visiting his sister because their birthdays were close together (he had just turned 73).

I knew Mr. Swift from his years teaching and coaching football while I was a student at Huguenot High School in Richmond, Virginia, in the 1970s, as did Bob Stuart, a fellow Huguenot alumnus and political reporter at the News-Virginian. Both of us grew up in the Bon Air area of Chesterfield County outside Richmond and graduated together from Huguenot, and we both lived out of state for a number of years before eventually returning home to Virginia and settling in the Shenandoah Valley.