He grew up tri-lingual in Russian, English and German and early on, displayed an unusual musical talent which he likely got from his Russo-Finnish mother Sophie Lorentzen, an excellent pianist.
In that time, he became friends with Lawrance Collingwood, Harry Ore and a large number of musicians and composers, with whom he would stay in touch throughout his life.
At the start of World War I and the ensuing Russian revolution and various civil wars raging within Russia, Swan and his fiancee, and subsequent wife, Catherine became involved with the American Red Cross' attempts to organize and shelter the so-called "Children's Colonies"—nearly one thousand orphaned, dislocated or abandoned children who had been shipped out of St. Petersburg to avoid the famine associated with the Revolution, invading forces and general chaos.
In 1918, under the auspices of The Red Cross and the assistance of the YMCA, he and Catherine located and organized groups of children spread throughout the Ukraine and along the Volga River.
Over the next two years, plans were laid and executed to bring the colonies together and transport the children and their teachers eastward across Russia, Siberia and finally to the port city of Vladivostok.
There the Red Cross had chartered a Japanese freighter, the 'Yomei Maru' to take them across the Pacific to San Francisco, CA., then through the Panama Canal to New York.
Many of them remained in touch with Swan over the decades and among them were two Haverford undergraduates named John Davison and Truman Bullard.
Bullard became Chairman of the Music Department at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA. During the late 1950s and 1960s, he and his wife would travel most summers back to Europe where he would meet life-long colleagues and collaborators.
His son Alexis had been sent to boarding school in England in 1962 and they would meet him during his summer holidays and stay 5–6 weeks each year in the South of France where Swan taught a course in composition at Aix-Marseille University in Nice.