Richard Kerwin Swicker ’52
Richard Kerwin Swicker ’52 of Westfield, New Jersey, died on January 28 in Rahway, New Jersey, after a long illness. “Rit” was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1930 and grew up in Ridgewood and Bernardsville, New Jersey. Rit graduated from Bernards High School in Bernardsville in 1948 and from Dartmouth in 1952. Rit was a member of Phi Sigma Kappa and an active leader at WDBS. He served in the Army from 1952 to 1954. He started his long career in broadcast television with NBC. Later he worked for all the major networks, including PBS. His assignments took him all over the world, the most special of which was the year he spent with one of the units filming an ABC documentary called Africa. It was televised in 1966 as a four-hour broadcast without interruption, a first at that time. At NBC he was proud to have been involved in the Kraft Theatre production of Walter Lord’s A Night To Remember, about the sinking of the Titanic. In his last years before retirement, after returning to NBC, he worked on The Cosby Show. After retirement he went to England to train in the art of woodturning, and later opened a workshop in Westfield specializing in that art. Rit is survived by his wife of 55 years, Laura; son Charles “Chip” and his wife, Gayle; son Bruce; son Peter and his wife, Violy; daughter Laura; and two grandchildren.
