WHAT HE SAID…
July 8, 2015
PLAYER OF THE WEEK
July 8, 2015
REMEMBERING ROBERT MICHELL
Jim Swiler had a voice made for radio.
Jim’s voice was deep and confident, and if you listened in the mornings to The Real Robert Mitchell Show on WTIX-AM “The Mighty 690” between late 1967 and 1972, then you’d recognize his voice as the one which read the news and traffic, and enjoyed some on-air hijinks with Mitchell.
But believe it or not, when he first started in radio at Tulane University’s WTUL-FM, somebody told him he wasn’t going to make it in the radio business, his wife, Bonnie said. “My husband had the self-determination that in spite of being told that, he was going to show someone that he [could] accomplish it.”
Jim grew up in New Orleans, born in 1939 to James Wagner and Mary Gladys Swiler. His father was a talented sheet metal worker and mother a homemaker.
After graduating high school from Alcee Fortier High School in Uptown, Jim studied for his bachelor’s degree at Tulane and worked in broadcast regardless of those discouraging words, going on to broadcast at WJBW-AM1230 in New Orleans after graduating.
He later started at WTIX-FM on Oct. 24, 1967, the same day that Bob Walker started his afternoon show. Walker is somewhat of the historian for WTIX-FM. Back then, the station was one of a handful of FM radio stations.
Jim became the news director for WTIX-FM, a position that he held until 1973.
“We were just a bunch of fun-loving, radio-enthusiastic rascals,” Walker said.
He also had the opportunity to cover some shocking news stories like the trial of Clay Shaw, a New Orleans businessman charged in connection to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He also covered the Howard Johnson’s hotel shooting rampage by Mark Essex that killed seven people.
Jim left WTIX-FM for a job managing KTIB-AM 640, in Thibodaux. While working in Thibodaux, a mutual friend of theirs suggested they meet. Bonnie lived in New Orleans at the time, so they first spoke over the phone, and Bonnie was, of course, smitten by his smooth voice.
“I fell in love with his beautiful voice,” Bonnie said. “He had a very melodious voice.”
The two began dating, traveling back and forth from New Orleans to Thibodaux, and in six months, they were married. Their courtship between cities would resemble their marriage, as they moved back and forth over the years between cities. Together, they raised four children.
Many years later, on December 30, 1987, the day after Pope John Paul II performed his papal mass for 130,000 people at the New Orleans Lakefront, Bob Walker, Jim’s old colleague at WTIX-FM, was reading the Times-Picayune and surprised to see a familiar face sitting next to the pope.
“And on the altar right next to him is Jim Swiler,” Walker exclaimed. “What is Jim doing up there right next to the Pope? Then I read it a little more and it said ‘Deacon Jim Swiler,’ and I understood. That was the first time I ever knew that he was a deacon. I was just floored when I opened up the paper.”
As it turned out, Jim had made a career change. Archbishop Philip Hannan of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans asked Jim to create a radio station for the diocese. That never got off the ground, Bonnie said, but Jim was instrumental in the creation of the Archdiocese’s television station, WLAE-TV, which would grow into a staple for public television broadcasting in New Orleans.
But, during this period in his life, he decided to become a deacon. He was ordained in 1979, and became the first Deacon Director for the Office of the Permanent Diaconate for the Archdiocese of New Orleans, an office he held for the next 30 years. Over the course of his career with the Archdiocese of New Orleans, he earned several accolades. He was awarded the Monsignor William Philpin Award, the Bart O’Leary Award, and the Director’s Award.
Jim’s son, Matthew, served as a U.S. Marine during Operation Desert Storm. Jim was helping military families during that time cope with having their loved ones in harm’s way overseas.
“I think that was his healing,” Bonnie said. “It was his way [for] an emotional release in dealing with the fact that our son was over there.”
So, he was appointed as the Catholic Church’s liaison to the military. After the war, Jim Swiler was named one of President George H. W. Bush’s Thousand Points of Light, an award that brought him into the White House “within arm’s reach of the President,” Bonnie said.
In 1999, he was awarded the Pro Ecclesia Et Pontifice Award and medal by Pope John Paul II for outstanding service to the church.
Jim retired in 2010, but just couldn’t stay at home. Locals would know Deacon Jim for his service as the Chancellor for the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux for the past seven years. He worked until he died.
“Anything that Jim put his hands to, he did 500 percent, not 100 percent,” Bonnie said. “That’s the kind of person he was.”
‘What is Jim doing up there right next to the Pope?’
Bob Walker
Longtime friend of Robert Mitchell
Robert Mitchell, left, and Jim Swiler, right, share a laugh in the WTIX-AM studio. Swiler, who started out as a radio personality in the 1960s, later became an accomplished deacon in both New Orleans and Thibodaux.
