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After four decades as voice teacher, he’s ready for a move

Arthur Swan and his wife, Gulo, at home in Greenport. (Credit: Barbaraellen Koch)
Arthur Swan and his wife, Gulo, at home in Greenport. (Credit: Barbaraellen Koch)

As evidenced by his past work experience, that wasn’t really true. Mr. Swan soon got a job teaching at a nursery school on Riverside Drive, near Columbia University, where he became fast friends with fellow teacher Elsa Barnouw. They even wrote a 1959 child-rearing book called “Adventures with Children in Nursery School and Kindergarten.” Later, Mr. Swan worked as a third-grade teacher and principal at various Manhattan schools, including the experimental New Lincoln School and Professional Children’s School. His tenure as an educator also included a stint in London, at the Froebel Institute Demonstration School and the London County Council school for “delinquent and maladjusted” children.

He discovered the North Fork through his friend Ms. Barnouw, who maintained a cottage on Shelter Island that had no electricity or running water. The area quickly became one of Mr. Swan’s favorite places.

“It was heaven,” he recalled. “Nobody knew we were there.”

It was around this time that Mr. Swan began devising “Wit Twisters,” a rather difficult game of anagrams that appeared for two decades in the Saturday Review of Literature and, during the 1980s, in The Suffolk Times and Riverhead News-Review.

Mr. Swan bought his Greenport house in 1973 for $18,000, a sum he said “nearly ruined me.” Around 1981, he began teaching what he referred to as “enrichment classes” to local children whose parents were familiar with his background as an educator.

During these classes, held in his home, Mr. Swan said he was “able to encourage the children, who were already just bursting with intellect.” He read every single word of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” aloud with one girl and helped an 8-year-old boy research facts for a novel he was writing about the Revolutionary War.

“I’ve just been enriched by working with children,” he said.

In recent years, Mr. Swan’s livelihood has been giving voice lessons to students of all ages, including Priscilla Lewis of Mattituck, a mezzo-soprano who was warming up at his living room piano last week while Mr. Swan played.

“I’ve made progress with Arthur that I was not able to make with earlier teachers,” Ms. Lewis said. “He has an ability to give one confidence without abandoning standards.”

Clearly, Mr. Swan has had a positive impact on his students. But the person who has perhaps benefited most from his teaching is his 63-year-old wife.

A vivacious woman with a distinct talent for baking and gardening, Ms. Tsirekidze is a Georgian citizen who moved to the United States in 2003 and began working as Mr. Swan’s caregiver in 2007. Their relationship became romantic several years ago, nurtured largely by their mutual interest in literature. In fact, she credits her husband with helping her learn English in an unconventional manner.

“I came here and took care of him and I saw these books and I said, ‘You know my dream when I was a child? I was dreaming to know English so well to read Shakespeare,’ ” she said. “And he said, ‘Really?’ ”

They began reading “Macbeth” aloud, word by word. It was a painstaking process, Ms. Tsirekidze said, but she eventually learned the play, and several other Shakespeare works, by heart. The pair has now read “Macbeth” together 15 times and “Hamlet” four.

On Monday, Sept. 15, the couple will leave the North Fork permanently for Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital. Ms. Tsirekidze’s son and extended family still live there and she hasn’t visited for more than a decade.

“That’s what love will do,” Mr. Swan said of his decision to make the move.

“Darling,” his wife replied tenderly.

Incredibly, Mr. Swan already has six students lined up for voice lessons in Georgia. And he’s thinking of introducing the people there to “Wit Twisters.”

“They all want to learn English and I can make that game very easy,” he said.

Back home, Ms. Lewis and Mr. Swan’s seven other pupils will miss their teacher, a man they adore so much they plan to keep in touch with him via Skype video software.

“It makes me teary to think of Arthur and Gulo leaving,” Ms. Lewis said. “But I’m so impressed by your spirit of adventure,” she told Mr. Swan.

“Well, I think I’m adventurous in meeting people like you,” he responded. “Half my joy is meeting people.”

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