Calvin Swartz

OBITUARY FOR COL (RET.) CALVIN SWARTZ (January 8, 1936 – March 11, 2025)

Calvin Swartz was first and foremost, a gentleman. That’s what everyone still says about him.

An old soul from the start, a deep-thinking scholar, a stalwart soldier, a loving patriarch, a gifted teacher and facilitator, a devoted follower of Jesus Christ, Deacon Chair and choir director … and always … a gentleman.

Calvin Swartz was born January 8, 1936, son of Eva (Moore) and Choice Swartz in Whigham, GA, where his father was a sharecropper on a rural farm. Cal learned early the value of hard work and education. He told the story of how, after a season of toiling in the fields, when the time came to be paid for the crops, the landowner scribbled some figures in the dirt that didn’t add up correctly. Cal looked into the landowner’s eyes and knew his father was being cheated, deliberately, out of a substantial amount of money, money the family needed to live on. He was young, and his father didn’t want to make trouble, but Cal spoke up anyway. The landowner got angry and told them since they were smart enough to question him, they were smart enough to go work somewhere else.

Cal never forgot that and determined to learn all he could so neither he nor anyone he loved would ever be cheated again. He walked to school every morning with his teacher, Miss Suzie Scott, who lived down the road. She taught him valuable lessons about life and encouraged him to never stop learning, that education would be the key to his future success.

There was no high school in his area, at least not one he was allowed to attend, so his mother arranged for him to move to Thomasville where he would stay with a pastor’s widow that she knew. He managed the chores for the widow while attending high school and found various jobs – doing carpentry and other building contractor work – learning skills to earn his keep. He graduated from high school early, having skipped at least one grade along the way, and earned the nickname “95” from his peers – the score he usually got on his exams. He was valedictorian of his high school graduating class.

There was no question that Cal would go on to college. He enrolled at Tuskegee University, then known as Tuskegee Institute, and declared a major in chemistry. His parents’ hope was that he would become a doctor and return to serve their community but Cal soon saw other possibilities. While at Tuskegee, he joined the ROTC and the Pershing Rifles military fraternity and was captain of their performance drill team. He worked various jobs on campus, of which the dearest to his heart, was serving as the assistant to the music director, William L. Dawson, a prolific writer of sacred music and spirituals. As Dawson’s assistant, Cal learned to read music and would teach the class and direct the choir in Dawson’s absence. An exciting highlight was that Cal got to travel with the Tuskegee Choir to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show. His role in the music department led to a succession of rewarding opportunities to direct choirs at many churches he attended over the years. Choir direction was a true passion for him. He could bring amazing and joyful sound from choirs that they never knew they could produce.

While at Tuskegee, a classy young lady strutted by and caught his eye. Cal set out to win her heart. Aileen Mims had become a new member of the Tuskegee choir, and one day while passing out music in the soprano section, he handed her the sheet but didn’t let go when she reached for it, meeting her eyes with an intentional gaze that sent a murmuring ripple through the choir members. He won. They fell in love.

Cal graduated from Tuskegee in 1955, the year before Aileen did, and went to Chicago where his parents had relocated. Cal worked there as a lab chemist. His parents hoped that he would stay there, but Cal was seeing a different future. One that would include a career in the US Army and a wife named Aileen.

Meanwhile, Aileen completed her final year at Tuskegee and that summer they were married in her hometown of Columbus, GA, on August 18, 1956.

Calvin Swartz was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant into the US Army and he and his new bride set off in a two-toned Chevrolet that leaked oil. His first duty station was at Ft. Bliss in El Paso, TX, where daughter Rosalind was born, and next served in the Signal Corp’s 440th Battalion as Company B Commander in Kaiserslautern, Germany, where daughter Karen was born. Travelling was challenging for African Americans in those days, with few places they were allowed to rest for meals or overnight stays on the long highways between destinations. The Grace of God and Cal’s Army Officer’s uniform hanging in the back car window deterred many stops – for meals, for rest, by law enforcement, or to refill the car oil – from turning into incidents.

Cal’s Army experience took him from the dust storms of Texas to the jungles of Vietnam, to exotic Bangkok, Thailand, to Kaiserslautern and Frankfurt, Germany, to  The Netherlands, to the halls of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon, and many other U.S. duty stations in between, finally moving for the last time to Fairfax, VA, in 1978. During his Army career, Cal was an expert sharpshooter and earned many prestigious military awards including the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, Meritorious Service Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, Joint Service Commendation Medal, Overseas Service Bars, and numerous other awards, accolades, and commendations. He successfully commanded 102nd Signal Battalion of 750+ personnel in Frankfurt, Germany. After an accomplished military career of 24 years, Cal retired from the US Army in January 1980 having achieved the rank of COLONEL.

But he wasn’t ready to quit working. Cal then took a program management position with a defense contractor but knew what he really wanted to do was to start a business of his own. He launched the Calvin Swartz Management Advisory which later morphed into Teleview, Inc., and finally rebranded as Progressive Success Corporation. His goal for PSC was to train aspiring managers in leadership and communication skills, and he delivered countless hours of training to more than 28,000 individuals in federal agency regional offices across the United States over the next 40+ years. He wrote all his own training materials and tailored content to each agency’s  needs. He loved the teaching and the travel, meeting people at their level of competence and taking them higher, helping them resolve their management leadership challenges and preparing them to climb their career ladders with confidence. His favorite training exercise was his “Ask Cal” challenge where participants got to present him with a real-time management problem they were facing. No one ever left a course without a viable plan of action and many would contact him later to thank him for his sage advice. He consistently garnered 5 out of 5 evaluation ratings throughout his years on the platform. When the travel wasn’t quite so easy anymore, he mastered Microsoft Teams and continued delivering training from the comfort of his home office. Another great goal of his was to write a book on leadership success skills for new supervisors, which he completed and published in 2021.

There was still so much more he wanted to do.

Cal, “The Colonel,” affectionately known as “Pop,” was a true family man who deeply loved his wife and all their children. He maintained a special relationship with each of his grandsons, all of whom he was immensely proud. To keep in touch, he texted them all every Wednesday, for the last seven years, enjoying so much hearing about what was going on in their lives and sharing his own words of wisdom. Cal was a gentle, quiet, calming spirit, and beneath that steadfast surface, a strong, determined, no-nonsense leader. In his 89 years here on earth, he touched so many lives, did so much good in the world.

Surely The Lord has told him, Well Done.

The Lord called Calvin home on March 11, 2025. He is survived by his loving wife Aileen – they would have celebrated 69 blessed years of marriage on August 18 – and daughters  Roz Williams and Karen Harris, grandsons Jason Williams (Katie), Bryan Williams (Angie), Brandon Swartz, and Damon Harris (Candyce), and great-granddaughter Rylie Gray Williams, and sister Matilda Simmons. He was predeceased by sisters Margaret Curry and Geneva Vaught, and brothers James Schwartz and Choyce Schwartz.  Many, many more relatives and dear friends, near and far, too numerous to name, cherish with us the memory of Cal.

We know that you’re resting in power, Pop.

Resting in love and well-earned peace.