Leo Swan will long be remembered as a generous personality, a pioneering archaeologist and as encouraging teacher. He was also an airman. His energy, personality and humour illuminated whatever lecture theatre, classroom or social gathering he graced, always leaving those he encountered enriched and entertained as well as better off for having met a really great character. Born in 1930, the son of teachers in Lobanstown, north Meath, he trained as a primary teacher and returned to work in the local school; but he wasn't fulfilled. He tried hotel management, and then something that was to have a lasting effect on his whole life: aircraft maintenance and navigation. This led to a stint overseas with the US Flying Tigers, exposure to the exciting world of the airborne Cold War, and an empathy with aeroplanes. He persisted with flying as a hobby, later turning it to the advantage of archaeology over decades of engagement with the settlement history of early medieval Ireland. Aerial photography had been used in archaeology before, but Leo's name will always be associated with its widespread and, literally, first focused use in Ireland. He not only discovered monuments new to the record, he defined new types.
He equipped himself to do this after his return from the Us air force by studying early Irish history and archaeology at UCD. Here he came under the influence of Professor Ruaidhri de Valera to whom he submitted a first class master's thesis and to whom he was to remain devoted in his subsequent interests and approaches. He remained teaching and was principal of the Loreto school in Tallaght throughout the 1980s and 1980s. At the same time he continued to lecture the Bolton Street architectural students, as well as to give archaeology courses at the DIT in Rathmines, St Patrick's, Drumcondra and Saor Ollscoil, and to give conference papers, extra-mural classes and adult education and teachers' courses. He will be remembered for the generous input of his guiding hand at the Rathmichael Summer School, a milieu in which both schoolchildren and adults were introduced to archaeology, many later graduating to the professional ranks thanks to Leo's encouragement.
Although Leo was involved for decades in the promotion of archaeology and in the excavation of an important site at Kilpatrick, Co Westmeath, it was about 10 years ago that he finally took the plunge, retired from his headmastership and set up a company, Arch Tech, which specialised in archaeological assessments of threatened sites. In partnership with Frank and later Tim Foley he built up a strong team anchored around his secretary, Mary Harkin, and himself, an achievement of which he was justly very proud. He also produced a steady stream of learned articles which ranged from the discovery of new sites at Tara, to the report on his excavations at Usher's Quay and a cluster of articles on his beloved Kilpatrick. Even his annual Christmas cards, personally made with a glued-on print of one of his stock of aerial photographs (now all happily added to the archive of the National Museum of Ireland), bear witness to his uniquely gentle proselytising gifts.
Leo was always the instantly recognisable modern man, the anti-hero who made an unforgettable impression on those with whom he came into contact. The modern touch was evident in his dress (a penchant for khaki civvies, polo-necks, desert-fox caps, metal-framed sunglasses and a wrist watch that seemed set on Ankara), in his accent, in the mixture of the sulphuric allure of the Cold War airman and the north Meath storyteller he brought to any one of a number of locations, among which Doheny and Nesbitts became the common room of a multi-strand school of culture and comment of which he was the undisputed dean. Sadly, we have lost our dean, our storyteller and raconteur. Irish archaeology has lost its greatest character, tales of whose escapades will deservedly outlive the lot of us. But for all the humour, entertainment, stories, encouragement and personality there was another Leo. In the last months, when he knew he was fatally stricken, he exhibited a dignity and spiritual resignation characterised by his celebration of life itself. So let us rejoice that we were accorded the rare privilege of knowing such a character and friend. Ni fheicimid a leitheid in ar measc aris.