WES Biography

By Andrew Swift

Willard Everett Swift was always called Everett, mainly because his father’s name was also Willard. He was born into a Quaker family on January 6 in 1907. He was born in the east side of Worcester, Massachusetts, in his father’s house. Everett was always interested in explosives and made them his hobby. In college he blew up rocks. In the army he shot bombs. Afterwards he blew up just about anything. Everett always liked children and did many things with his boys.

Everett grew up in a family of five. Besides his parents he had one brother, younger than he, and one sister, older than he. His brother’s name was Arthur Henry, and his sister was Chrystella Alice, born on May 17, 1911, and May 7, 1905, respectively. His parents were Alice Metcalf Swift and Willard Everett Swift. This was a fairly small family for the early 1900’s.

The Swift family was quite well off while Everett grew up. His grandfather had been one of the founding fathers of the US Envelope Company, and his father worked as an engineer and ultimately became president. The Swift family always had maids and people to l00k after the children. The children went to private schools. The Swifts, a Quaker family, lived in Worcester, but every summer they visited the Cape. Some of Everett’s earliest memories are of going to the Cape.

The Swift family being fairly well off. were one of the first families around the neighborhood to have a motor car. As Everett grew up his father was a remote, stiff figure of authority. His mother was much closer to him. Besides going to Cape Cod, the Swift family never travelled very far.

Everett remembers many things from his childhood. His earliest memories are of being bundled up, presumably to go outside. Another early memory is of learning to spin a top, probably on the tray of a high chair and looking out a second story window. He remembers eating dinner with Chrystella in the same room. Occasionally he had supper downstairs; it was a big event. He remembers too, his grandfather eating with them. He was about five then. He broke his collarbone at three. He recalls going to Cape Cod by train, unpacking trunks, and getting ice for the ice chest. Everett learned to row in a big flat- bottomed boat. He caught fiddler crabs to use for fishing for a friend of his father’s too. One rainy afternoon Everett was playing baseball with his grandfather. He slipped and broke his arm. A local doctor set it. It was his first encounter with ether, and he didn’t like it. At Worcester he remembers seeing horse-drawn fire engines with smoke curling out of their stacks. He also remembers fondly hanging May baskets with candy in them on the doorknobs of neighbors. While Everett was on Cape Cod, his uncle looked after him some. He remembers having his skin nearly scrubbed off during a toweling after a swim.

Everett always had an inquisitive and mischievous mind. When he was about five, he and Chrystella had a wooden dagger. They managed to enlarge a hole in the mesh of a street vendor’s cart. They got a couple of bananas this way, but later Chrystella was conscience stricken and told their parents. She had to pay for the bananas. Everett’s father two or three times had to replace a wire to some sort of a socket· under the kitchen table, which Everett had repeatedly broken and pulled out. His father lectured him. and told him not to do it again. It was not long before the wires dangled loose again. Everett was called to his father and asked if he had done it. He replied “Oh no Dad, but how did you get it back in again so tight?”. This happened while Everett was about four or five. At about the same time Chrystella got hold of some peanuts. She and Everett thought it would be a good idea to raise some. They got an old window box and some dirt from the back yard. They had heard that fertilizer was necessary, so they collected manure from the streets. The peanuts which were probably roasted anyway never grew in the dark cellar, where Everett and Chrystella kept them. Everett always wanted to what made things work, often to the point of pulling them apart completely.

Everett spent all of his childhood in Worcester except for a few small trips and going to the Cape every summer. One of the times the Swifts moved was in 1908, but that was only three blocks north. They moved again in 1914, but they were still in Worcester. Everett went to Bancroft School from kindergarten through sixth grade. He had to take a streetcar to school every day. While Everett was about kindergarten age, he was out for a trip in the car, a 1911 Maxwell runabout. The car rounded a corner too fast, “About 10 mph” and Everett who was sitting in the open door, slid out and landed on the road unhurt. A passing van picked him up. When he was ten, in 1917 he saw baskets in the parks in which people were supposed to deposit peach pits to be made into charcoal for gas masks.

Everett went to Worcester Academy for seventh and eighth grades and to Moses Brown School in Providence Rhode Island for grades nine through twelve. His junior high years were fairly uneventful, but at Moses Brown, he was involved in several “happenings.” One day Everett was awakened by a commotion in the school courtyard. He went to the window and saw smoke pouring out of a first floor chemistry lab window, and a fire truck parked nearby. Pretty soon a fireman came out of the lab carrying a blazing tin can and set it on the ground. The smoke eventually cleared and that was it. The only thing was that the blazing stuff was phosphorus which had ignited spontaneously. It turned out that Everett and one of his friends had been playing with it, and neglected to put oil on the water when they were done. The water evaporated, uncovered the phosphorus, and it burned. Fortunately no damage was done. Another year Everett noticed some ice in a gutter outside his window. He picked up a piece and sailed it out a window. He looked out just in time to see it land on the head of a teacher. She went “Whooo” Everett, scared to death, raced down three flights of stairs to see if she was okay. Luckily she was. Another time from the same room he planned another event. He got two flat rocks, put one on the ground and put about a teaspoonful of gunpowder (2) on it. He put the other rock on top. Then when no one was passing, he dropped a stone out of his window, making a good loud bang. No disciplinary action was ever taken for any of the above; however, the headmaster called Everett to his desk after the last one. He said “Everett, I wish that in the future you would conduct any experiments out in the back lot.” Everett didn’t do any there, but did occasionally put some gunpowder on the streetcar tracks. One of the high points of his school career was when his father took him to the Army-Navy football game. He really enjoyed that. Everett was quite bright, but not the scholarly type in school.

Many exciting things happened to Everett during the summers of the years he was at Moses Brown. At one point he was given an iron cannon. He and Web Ramsey (3), his best friend, had a lot of fun with it. They did many experiments and discovered that at eight feet, with a blank charge, it blew a six inch hole in a galvanized bucket. One day Everett had it all set up between his house and the next to salute a visitor that was expected. When the car appeared his mother told him to move it to the front yard. He picked it up and ran towards the front yard. Somehow he stepped on the firing lanyard. The cannon went off with a deafening boom. Everett was deaf for three days. It was extremely lucky that he was carrying the cannon the way he was because if it was pointed towards him, his career would have ended right there. One fourth of July they strapped the cannon to the hood of the car and brought the firing lanyard back inside the car. “One time we were driving behind a line of cars, fired it, and a car, three cars ahead, stopped and the driver got out and inspected all his tires.” A few years later the cannon disappeared. Everett thinks his mother ordered it lost permanently. One Saturday afternoon, Everett and Web decided to go for a sail in their fourteen foot Catboat, the Judge. After picking up a bunch of scallops they went sailing across to the other side of the bay, they sailed back, but couldn’t make it to their own harbor before the wind died. They called home and were told by a maid that everyone was out looking for them. Everett managed to flag down his father in their big Packard. Everett’s father was pretty mad after that one. One year Everett went to a summer tutoring camp. His French was giving him problems. Everett quickly made friends with the owner’s son who had a twenty foot motorboat. The bottom of the boat needed repainting; so Everett and Ned decided to paint it. First, it was necessary to remove the old paint. They had a torch but it wouldn’t run on the alcohol they had. They decided to pour the alcohol on the boat and light it, but Ned was running out of matches so Everett would pour the next strip while one was still burning. After the third strip something went FUNK! The can exploded blowing burning alcohol allover Ned and Everett. Everett ran down and dove into the water. but Ned started running looking like an Olympic torch. Then Ned lay down and Everett rolled over him, putting out the fire. Ned was immobile for several days. Ned’s father owner of the camp blamed Everett, saying he should have known that Ned didn’t have much sense. Everett had several exciting summers.

Everett went to Haverford College for two years and to MIT for four. He says the years at Haverford were “reasonably enjoyable, but not very eventful.” Everett made some lifelong friends there. He went to many Haverford dances. At one time, after taking a date to the theater in Philadelphia he and his date went around to the garage where his car was. It was a low slung, red Ford roadster, with the top down. There was a crowd standing around watching the swanky cars coming down the ramp. His date thought she didn’t want to climb into the car with those short skirts on in front of all those people, but when a roar went up from the crowd upon arrival of the Ford, “She changed her mind and like a good sport climbed in over the door and we roared away accompanied by laughing cheers of the crowd.” Everett calls MIT “A four year struggle” He didn’t enjoy it very much. He took ROTC while he was there. It was required. During the summer he went to Aberdeen Proving Ground for six weeks at summer camp. He didn’t learn much there. While he was at MIT he had an interesting fraternity brother. This man had suffered a leg amputation as a result of a childhood accident-that was not properly cared for. He like to give rocks a mighty kick while someone who did not know about his false leg was watching. It would make you wince to see it. One day, he tried it on a brick that was frozen down and his foot sailed off. He found out that by giving it the right twist, he could make it pop off.

Jobs were pretty scarce in 1931. Everett went to work for free at a hydraulic laboratory in Holden for about eight months. After that he worked at the US Envelop Company where he had the problem of being the boss’s son.7 It was at the Envelope Company that he met John Reynders, and through him Helen Reynders whom he later married. Occasi0nally on a summer evening he would invite a girl along and go to the town dump to shoot rats for sport. Everett says “We sometimes bagged up to half a dozen an evening.” He married Helen on December 1, 1933. Then he and Helen went on a United Fruit Company cruise to the Caribbean for their honeymoon. While they were away, prohibition came to an end. For a while they lived in apartments in Worcester, then in a rented house of their own. They lived in that house for less than a year before Everett was called up to active duty in the Army at Camp Edwards on Cape Cod. He stayed there for a few months and then was transferred to Aberdeen Proving Rounds for thirteen months. Then he was again transferred, this time to Detroit, where he helped design tanks. These were some of the happiest years of his life. Everett stayed in Detroit for four years. While he was in Detroit, Everett did some important work. He discovered that when a bullet hits armor, it splatters backwards as well as forwards. No one believed this so he suspended a piece of paper in front of some armor and then shot through it. The ripped up paper proved his theory. Everett designed tank windows. While he was still in Detroit, Everett designed a cannon for tanks, fired electrically from the interior. It was designed to kill guerillas that would run up to the tank. It shot a projectile about ten feet out which then exploded. He was very proud of this project. The war was over before it could be put into production, but Everett guesses that it was used in the Korean war. Everett really enjoyed this part of his life.

Everett had three children. Daniel was born in 1935, Arthur born in 1938, and Steven born in 1944. Everett moved to Cape Cod right after the war. He stayed there for two winters and then moved to Sharon, Massachusetts where he lived until 1972. When the Korean War started Everett was called up into active duty from the reserves. At this point he had 191⁄2 years of service. When he took his physical exam, he failed due to a hearing problem caused by the childhood accident with the cannon. He was retired from the army with the rank of captain half a year short of the twenty years needed to receive a pension. While Everett lived in Sharon, he worked for the Foxboro Company as a sales engineer. This took him all over New England on business. From the time their boys were nearly grown until the present, Everett and Helen have taken many trips. They have trave11ed all over the world on vacation trips. In fact, it is easier to say where they haven’t gone than where they have.

Everett always enjoyed doing things with children, especially his own. He was a cub scout committee chairman and organ1zed some pretty exciting pack meetings. He had flash powder displays and electrical equipment. He greatly emphasized science in all his demonstrations. Outside of pack meetings he organized shooting matches for the cub scouts. He built many toys for his children, including electric boxes which had a var1ety of sw1tches performing various functions. Everett really loved children.

Everett has always liked explosions and flame, sometimes to the point of near deafness. After he got out of the Army, he had several cans of gun powder. One of his favorite activities was to pack an old outboard motor gas tank with gun powder and set it off. It made a nice bang. One time, he had gotten hold of some dynamite and wanted to use it up. He buried it 1n some mud near some train tracks. Then he put on a long fuse and lit it. After it was lit up a train came by. The dynamite went off about ten feet behind the train. Everett also liked fires. He would often use kerosene to help burn branches and other debris. One time, he got a can of kerosene and poured it on some branches and lit it. The only thing was that the kerosene was gasoline. It flared up and burned Everett’s £ace and hair. Luckily he was wearing glasses, and his eyes were protected. Near where Everett lived at Cape Cod, there was a fairly vast expanse of sand, and one day he felt like burning some old gasoline. So he poured it out on the sand and lit it. It made quite a blaze and required the help of the 10ca1 fire department to put it out. In about 1936, Helen and Everett and their next door neighbors went fishing. They rented a boat but their neighbors’ motor on it, got some spare gas and left. At first they went out in Buzzards Bay, but didn’t catch anything. So they headed into the Cape Cod Canal. After putting down anchor to wait for the tide to change, they watched a freighter go by. The waves from the freighter rocked the boat and knocked the gas can over, spilling gas around the 1antern. The gas ignited and they got in the water. Everyone began taking off clothes for swimming and put up a yell for help. Finally a rescuer rowed out from the shore, and at about the same time a Coast Guard patrol boat showed up. Helen still regrets losing a silver pin that was pinned to a skirt that she slipped off.

Everett has been involved in many fires and explosions.

Throughout his life, Everett has invented many things. He invented or copied over forty playthings for his children.*

*See list of inventions by W. E. Swift at end of paper. While he lived in Sharon, in his garage he had a complete machine shop. He made a great variety of things there. Not all of his 1nventions were successful. He invented a kind of machine screw with hooks, so that you could screw it in around wires more easily than normal. This invention was a total flop. It didn’t work at all. Another invention was elastic shoelaces, which meant you didn’t have to untie your shoes. Everett has about six patents in his house. His greatest and most profitable inventi0n was the coupon clipper. It is used in banks to cut out coupons. Everett designed the original in 1939. and then forgot about it until the-fifties when a bank contacted him and asked if he could build them one. After that he formed the Willard Everett Swift Coupon Clipper Company. He has made several hundred clippers since contacted by the first bank, and continues to make more. Everett buys the parts and then constructs them in his home work shop. After they are constructed he sells them for about six to eight thousand dollars each and makes an enormous profit.

Nobody could call Everett Swift’s life dull, even if he wished it were more exciting. From breaking his arm at three to explosions for his grandchildren at seventy he has had a lot of excitement.

Notes added by Daniel Swift July 19, 2016

1. The remembrances were compiled by his grandson, Andrew from a series of letters he received from Everett. This was done as an assignment in the 8th grade. The present tract is an OCR scan from a photocopy of the typescript. The only changes are corrections of typographical errors.

2. It was likely a mixture of sulfur and potassium chlorate. This mixture will explode when hit with a hard object like a hammer. Gunpowder will not explode that way.

3. Web Ramsey, then an MIT student, came into the family when he was hired by his Dad to do maintenance work on the yacht, Osprey. Everett’s mother, Alice, encouraged the relationship and eventual marriage of Web and Chrystella. It is unlikely that Everett knew Web in his high school years.