Spartan Daily - Serving San Jose State University since 1934

Issue date: 2/20/08 Section: Features

In his softly lit bedroom, former SJSU photojournalism professor Joe Swan looked down at the nonexistent bump in the bed sheet where his legs should be.

"I'm pretty well bedridden," Swan said in his slow Texas twang. "If I keep getting healthier - if you can use that term for somebody fatally ill - I might try to convert to a wheelchair."

Within the last year, Swan, 78, has had both legs amputated and has been on dialysis, a process of filtration used when the kidneys stop working, because of complications from diabetes.

He stopped dialysis almost one month ago.

According to the Kidney End-of-Life Coalition, most patients who stop dialysis die within eight to 12 days, although some do live weeks or months.

"'Brave' just comes to mind when you're doing something that will probably actually take your life," said Debbie Gorman, Swan's daughter.

Gorman said it was hard for her family to accept her father's decision to stop dialysis, but they understood his need to "come home."

"I just try to look at what's ahead as maybe an adventure," Swan said, "but I wish I had my feet back."

***

As a soldier, when Swan went to Korea during that Forgotten War with his newly acquired 35 mm camera, he should have gotten some great shots.

According to Swan, the camera didn't have a light meter, so he couldn't get anything exposed properly because he didn't understand the technical side of photography well enough to figure it out. And he couldn't get any technical help because no one spoke English.

"Here was my chance to shoot the Korean War," Swan said, "and I had a good camera to do it - a Canon - but I didn't shoot very many good pictures."

He later traded the 35 mm for a Speed Graphic, a camera which he said everyone in the business was using then.

"You just shot everything at f-16 with a flash, and you didn't have to worry about anything else," he said.

Swan grew up in Texas and became a pilot when he was a teenager.

"I was the youngest guy to solo an airplane in my home county," Swan said. "'I didn't even know how to drive a car, but I learned how to fly."

According to Swan, he didn't learn how to drive until he was working for an Army newspaper and had to take news releases to Portland, Ore. in an Army Jeep.

The vehicle had a stick shift, but Swan said he made it all the way to Portland in second gear.

"They had me drive a tank once," he said. "I'm glad I never had to do that again."

Swan joined the Army after two years of college at Howard Payne University to get into a journalism program where he worked for army newspapers at different bases.

After almost four years of military service, Swan went back to Howard Payne where he majored and graduated in English and met his future wife, Laura.

He and his wife moved to San Jose, and he was hired at SJSU in 1962.

***

"When Dwight Bentel was looking for someone to replace the photojournalism guy he had just fired," Swan said, "he contacted me."

Bentel had him teach reporting and editing, photojournalism, advise the yearbook staff and, later, advise the Spartan Daily staff.

"He really loaded me down," Swan said.

Though it was Bentel who taught the university's first course in press photography in 1949, Swan was given credit for starting the photojournalism program at its 40th anniversary reunion.

"I just had to show up," Swan said. "That's what gave people the impression that I started the program, but I didn't."

He said his students were always amazed at how fast he could type.

"With the Texas drawl, people think he's as slow-thinking as he is slow-talking." Jim Noah said, Swan's best friend and SJSU professor emeritus of public relations.

When Swan was in college in Texas, however, he changed his major to business.

"(My students) didn't know I had to type 70 words per minute to pass the course," he said, laughing.

In 1970, one of Swan's graduates, Steve Starr, won the Pulitzer Prize for news photography at the age of 25, and in 1973 another student, Preston Fox, was a cinematographer for the Oscar-winning documentary "The Great American Cowboy."

"Those two things were very important to me when it came time for my promotion to full professor," Swan said.

Clyde Lawrence, a professor of advertising at SJSU, started working with Swan when he came to the university in 1967.

"He always had a smile and always had a funny story, usually involving Texas," Lawrence said.

Swan often told tales of his mortician-friend who happened to be named Groner Pitts.

Lawrence never believed him until Swan brought a newspaper article from Texas to prove it.

***

"There was nothing he wouldn't do to further the program so that his students got the best possible," Lawrence said.

After Starr, two more of Swan's former students - Doug Parker and Kim Komenich - went on to win Pulitzers.

Starr, who covered the Vietnam War for the Associated Press and wrote for Newsweek, recalled Swan as a soft-spoken Texan with horn-rimmed glasses.

"Joe gave me that foundation to do all that," Starr said, "and I thank him for it."

Gary Fong, a former Swan student, said Swan's unconventional teaching methods made his teaching that much more effective.

On one occasion when Fong was still attending SJSU and living in the dorms, Swan telephoned him at 7 a.m. because he was sick, and wanted Fong to teach two of his classes that day.

Later, Fong wondered why Swan had asked him - Joe simply responded, "Because I knew you could do it."

Parker, whose team at the Times-Picayune received the Pulitzer for Public Service in 1997 for its series about the world's fisheries, and again in 2006 for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina's destruction, credits his smooth transition into his first real job to Swan.

"He always was up to speed on what was happening in the profession," Parker said. "He always seemed to have his thumb on the pulse of the photojournalism community."

According to Parker, Swan knew everybody in the Bay Area and tapped them to enrich his students' education.

"I'll forever be in his debt," Parker said. "I'll never forget what he did for me."

His decision to stop dialysis has brought many friends like Parker, fans and former students and colleagues out of the woodwork.

"Since I've been ill, I've heard from more of my grads than when I was retiring," Swan joked.

Gorman said people her father hasn't seen in 30 years sent cards and fruit baskets, telephoned and visited - all testaments to his impact on everyone with whom he's come into contact.

"I'm not so certain I would have had the courage to do that," Noah said, referring to Swan's decision. "You don't want to lose somebody who's so close to you. I'm really going to miss him."

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