Scott Michael Swafford's Obituary
On the 7th of December, Scott passed away suddenly at the age of 57. He was many things in his time—a father, a lover, a hiker, a thinker, a footballer (striker), a beacon of generosity and camaraderie disguised as a man.
Scott was raised by his mother and her parents on Harper Street in Tampa, FL. In high school, he practiced chess for hours at a time and sharpened his wit in debate club, back when public schools still had those. After graduation, he studied international relations at the University of Miami on a full ride, but his time there was cut short by a debacle involving academic dishonesty (and purportedly a gun.) He experienced a short stint of homelessness, working at Spaghetti Warehouse in Ybor City, a town whose Cuban scene kindled his lifelong love for cigars, deviled crabs, and guayabera shirts. After that, he did the safe thing and enlisted in the US Air Force.
Scott’s military career brought him from his home state of Florida to the Royal Air Force base in Lakenheath, England. There, he learned to call an apartment a flat and a toilet a loo and gained friends he’d never lose. He always said his favorite job of all time was pouring drinks behind the bar in the Officers’ Club at RAF Mildenhall, and he was a enthusiastic bartender forever after: once, to keep a holiday party going when the ice ran low, he went outside and collected snow and icicles, telling no one.
During his time at RAF Lakenheath he finished his undergraduate studies at Webster University, driving nearly two hours each way in a run-down roofless Mini (not to be confused with a convertible Mini) in all kinds of weather. It was also during this time that he met Tara, his eventual wife and ex-wife and the mother of his three children.
His later assignments took him to the Middle East, where he was an avionics specialist in Saudi Arabia and Turkey during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. In September 1989, he was distinguished as the 548th Aircraft Generation Squadron Airman of the Month. After the Gulf War, Scott retrained for intelligence analysis (always poking fun at the oxymoron of ‘military intelligence’) and worked for several years at RAF Molesworth in the Joint Analytic Center before being offered a position with NATO’s Partnership for Peace program, where he put his intellect to use pursuing political stability in post-Soviet nations and memorizing how to say cheers in as many languages as possible.
His time with the PfP program brought him back to Western Europe, where he had extended stays in Belgium and Germany. Isabella Sarah was born in 1996 in Mons, Belgium, while Scott and Tara were living in Naast, a provincial village located near the SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe) NATO Airfield where he worked. Madeleine Louisa was born in 1999 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the Alpine ski town in Bavaria. That town, nestled in a snowy mountain valley, was one place neither parents nor children wanted to leave, but the course of life took them back to the States, where they settled in Bowie, MD. In 2002, their son Leonardo Scott was born in Silver Spring.
In Maryland, Scott worked for NOAA and the National Defense University before sitting the bar exam and becoming an attorney. He spent some time with the D.C. law firm Arnold & Porter, but in recent years he’d settled in Annapolis as a solo practicing lawyer doing far more pro bono work than anyone could have asked. It was there that he met the woman he spent the last several years of his life with, Gayle-Ann.
To his credit, he cheated death more than once. Playing with his grandfather ‘s handgun as a young kid, he accidentally pulled the trigger and narrowly avoided putting a hole in himself; again in middle age, his zipline harness failed and left him hanging fifty feet off the ground by a tangled shoestring. But in the end, as much as he liked to talk, he left us with an Irish goodbye.
Scott’s favorite way to spend an evening was the way he spent this past Friendsgiving: in the kitchen, exercising his mostly reliable but sometimes dangerous cooking skills, his house full of hungry people. He is survived by his daughters Madeleine and Isabella; his son Leonardo; his partner Gayle-Ann Lehmann; his ex-wife Tara; his ever constant friends Ken Mowry, Dave Jensen, Stacy Garrett, and Lynne Grant; and his biggest fan in the world, Atlas the dog.
A celebration of life will be held at Galway Bay Irish Pub in Annapolis on the 20th of January, 2-4pm. Hawaiian shirts are strongly recommended.
What’s your fondest memory of Scott?
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Share a story where Scott's kindness touched your heart.
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