He knows there is more to firefighting than “putting the wet stuff on the red stuff,” as he calls it.

And in a career that has spanned five decades, he has learned that there are lots of ways to battle the flames that don’t involve big red trucks.

Swingley, who’ll be 75 soon, retired in December 2021 after 51 years of fire service, and he’s left a legacy of both fighting and preventing fires.

A lifelong Great Falls resident, Swingley was in the first graduating class at C.M. Russell High School. He has three kids, two of whom still live in Great Falls, seven grandkids and three great-grandkids.

Swingley’s dad worked as a city building inspector for many years, and two of Swingley’s children also serve Great Falls. His daughter is a risk manager for the city, and his son is a firefighter with Great Falls Fire Rescue.

After high school, Swingley spent some time working at the Smelter, on missile sites in Montana and in commercial construction. He was a baker at Albertson’s when a friend suggested firefighting.

“It never even crossed my mind before, and I said, ‘Sure, why not?’” Swingley said.

This was 1970, when the city was hiring firefighters left and right through a federally funded program. Swingley remembers being a rookie at a time when safety practices were changing.

As self-contained breathing apparatuses (SCBAs) became more common, Swingley recalled coming up alongside older “smoke-eater” firefighters who he said were too “tough guy” to wear the breathing equipment.

He laughed as he recalled them leaving a fire hacking and coughing and then immediately lighting up a cigarette.

“I made the mistake of saying, ‘You guys didn’t get enough smoke, yet?’” Swingley said. “They yelled and screamed at me and called me certain names, and it was just kind of funny—ironic—that they would do that.”

There are a few fires that have stuck with Swingley after all these years.

He said one happened during such bitter cold that the firefighters were standing on sheets of ice, and the hose had an extra-long nozzle thanks to a rim of frozen water surrounding the spray.

After working on the suppression crew for 17 years, Swingley had moved up through GFFR’s ranks. He got on as the City of Great Falls Fire Marshal in 1987, where he was able to work in fire investigations. Even those, he said, could be devastating.

“One of the worst memories I have on a fire investigation, the fire happened on my birthday,” he said. “I was here with my family and my grandkids, and I got called out. It was a fire in the Highwood Mountains in a cabin, and it hit home really hard because it was a grandfather and a granddaughter that perished in the fire, and I’d just left mine. That one always sticks with me.”

Swingley had always been interested in code enforcement, “which is the other side of the fire service that most people don’t understand and don’t even think about much,” he said.

In the early part of his career, Swingley said they had three to four major fires a year. Today, one major fire per year is a lot. Swingley attributes the drop in fires to better fire codes and code enforcement.

He said inspectors are not always liked, but he always tried to work with people to address violations, starting with the most hazardous and working their way through. He said he took the time to sit and explain why the changes were needed.

“You can’t go in there and slam your fist down and say, ‘You’ll have this corrected by tomorrow’…you just work with people to get the mission accomplished of correcting the violations,” Swingley said.

From 1987 to 2000, Swingley said one of his major accomplishments as City Fire Marshal was improving the program that goes into schools and talks to kids about fire safety.

Before his tenure, he said firefighters had trouble keeping children’s attention.

“We’d start talking…and you had their attention for about two minutes, and then they were bored,” he said.

So Swingley implemented characters. His first was Rusty Red, a clown that was eight feet tall because the firefighter who played him walked on drywall stilts.

Next, they started putting on a puppet show, which was also successful. In the program that is still going on today, firefighters dress up as popular characters to impart their knowledge in a way that’s fun and entertaining for kids, teachers and the firefighters.

“It was just such a positive way to not only entertain but get the message across,” Swingley said, “and I’m very proud of that.”

Swingley retired from the city in 2000 after 29 years. Instead of going home and putting his feet up, he moved up to Deputy Montana State Fire Marshal. The state fire marshal’s office was similar to what he did with the city, except it included the rural areas. Rural fire departments are made up of volunteers who do not enforce codes or conduct fire investigations.

Swingley did that job for 16 more years when he had the opportunity to be the top of the heap: the Montana State Fire Marshal.

Through it all, Swingley said he loved the code enforcement side of firefighting. It may not be as glamorous as pulling people out of burning buildings, but Swingley said statistics prove that it prevents fires from happening.

Swingley said his years in firefighting have gone by in a blink.

“I’ve been blessed,” he said. “Helping people is very satisfying.”