John David Swan ³⁶⁹

  General Notes:

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

John David Swan was born December 12, 1951. He and Merri Lou had their pictures in the Stockton Record when they were just a few days old. Jim and Jerry were holding them. Their claim to fame was that they were the second set of twins born to the Swan family in ten years.

John was in the fifth grade when the family moved to Pima, Arizona. He went to high school in Bisbee. During his teenage years John was enthusiastic about old cars. Daddy bought him an old car when he was in high school. He took the engine apart, piece by piece, fixed it, put it back together again and finally got the car running. He has been fixing and building things every since.

When John was 17 he joined the Marine Corps. Basic training was far more difficult than anyone in our family could imagine. But he stayed with it and ended up in Vietnam for several months where he loaded bombs on combat aircraft. John was the first man in the direct Swan/Robinson lineage to serve in the military since the Civil War.

After Vietnam he returned to Arizona for a while, then he moved to Michigan where he worked in an iron ore mine. He went to college in Michigan and studied engineering. After several years in Michigan he returned to Arizona, working as a millwright in the Phoenix area.

Over the years John has enjoyed many hobbies including, tinkering with old cars, hang gliding, making furniture, wood working, and flying large gasoline powered model airplanes.

When Daddy's cancer got worse in the Summer of 1994, John took a leave of absence from his job and went to Bisbee to help Daddy. He did a lot of carpentry work around the place and generally helped Daddy get through the last few months of his life. John was there with Daddy (Walter Swan) when he died on October 30, 1994.

At the funeral, John read the life story of his father that his twin sister, Merri Lou, wrote for the occasion. This message is included in this book. After the funeral John took over the running of the One Book Bookstore for about a year--selling about as many books as his father did. ³⁶⁹

  Life Events:

1. Military: Vietnam War - US Marines. ³⁶⁹

John married Karen Yvonne Hughes on 18 Jul 1970.³⁶⁹ The marriage ended in divorce. (Karen Yvonne Hughes was born in 1953 ³⁶⁹.)

John next married Elizabeth Dockrell. (Elizabeth Dockrell was born in 1953 ³⁶⁹.)