Jim Swisher: I Commemorate The Life Of An Old Friend
On August 20, 2011 I gathered with some friends to swap stories about an imperfect, remarkable, unforgettable personality: Jim Swisher, b.1946 -- d. 2011. For me and several others, it had been almost five decades since we heard his voice or exchanged a written word outside of Facebook or email, and still, in my mind, his voice retained its same tone and rhythm, his laugh the same undercurrent of mischief, and a genuineness that earlier had endeared him to me and others and so remained in our minds decades after our childhood years. He triggered my memory of those characteristics by what he wrote in his posts and comments. Really, it was good stuff, filled with his unique phrasing and remarkable imagination taking us somewhere circuitously in a remarkable vehicle of some kind through twists and turns of logic hard to follow but compelling, nevertheless.
Our little hometown of El Segundo, CA has nurtured and celebrated many such characters during my time there and before and since; Jim is one of the more memorable ones. Humor, mischief, wit, and a friendly, kind spirit are the characteristics most mentioned that day. His wife was there, having flown out from Arizona where they lived. His daughter and at least three grand children were there, so was his big sister, and of course, we were there, those who wished we'd had more contact with him before his death, those who only recently, thanks to Facebook, had reconnected with him, those who experienced his wit and writing skills.
I am rather certain that in memory we make some unremarkable people more extraordinary, some friendships closer than they were, some feats more noteworthy than they deserve to be; perhaps because we want our life histories to be more significant. That is not the case with Jim. No, he qualified as extraordinary without caveat, without doubt, without reservation. He earned the label "character". We felt better because of our effort to salute him in this way. It helped us to know that we did something for Jim and his surviving family. Thanks to his closest friend, Paul Giannini, who organized the event, and Paul's brother Frank, who hosted it, we came together as he would have liked with wine and beer and chicken and pasta and dip and laughs, lots of laughs.