Lifestyle

A Marine Wounded in Vietnam Spent Decades in Business. Then, at 70, He Became a Priest: “Ordained at the Tender Age of 70”

By Mike Harper · November 5, 2026

Father Bob Swick sat down with the Don’t Do Nothing podcast (@DontDoNothingPod) to talk about a life that kept changing shape. The host introduced him as an “8-year Marine veteran.” Swick himself described being wounded in Vietnam. “I got medevac’d out of Vietnam 5 days before,” he said, when he was due to rotate home.

After the Marine Corps, he built a different kind of career. “I went through a business career,” he said, working “as a consultant over a course of many years.” The second calling came much later.

He tells that arc in the podcast episode on YouTube.

The turn that surprised even the hosts was his age at ordination. He “was ordained at the tender age of 70,” he said, and has been “active now for 14 years.” He serves as a priest in the Old Catholic tradition, with parish work in the Dunedin and Clearwater area of Florida. He also described service “as a volunteer chaplain, senior chaplain,” work he spoke about with clear pride after years of showing up for people in hard moments.

The interview runs long and covers many chapters. The heart of the story for older readers is simpler. A Marine who left Vietnam on a medical evacuation spent decades in business, then answered a late call to ministry and was ordained at 70. He is still active more than a decade later. The episode is a first-person account of service that did not end when one uniform came off.

He talks about the Florida communities where he has served, and about the ordinary work of a parish priest who also put in years as a volunteer chaplain. The podcast keeps the focus on how those roles fit together for him, rather than on church debates. Listeners looking for a conversion manifesto will not find one. What they get is a veteran describing a second vocation that arrived late and stuck.

A few notes for context, without turning his faith into an argument:

Late ordination is uncommon in many traditions, which is why his “tender age of 70” line lands. His point is that the call arrived when many people are already deep into retirement planning, not seminary catalogs.

Volunteer chaplaincy is one way clergy and lay leaders serve outside a parish sanctuary, including with first responders and neighbors in crisis. Swick framed that role as another form of showing up, continuous with the service ethic he carried out of the Marine Corps and through his consulting years.

Vietnam veterans are now mostly in their late 60s, 70s and 80s. Stories like his tend to be less about battlefield detail and more about what comes after: careers, family, and, for some, a second vocation that still asks something of them every week.

He does not present the priesthood as a prize or a brand. In the conversation, it sounds like the next assignment after the Marines and after business, taken seriously enough that he is still at it 14 years on. The host’s “8-year Marine veteran” introduction and Swick’s own calm account of the medevac sit beside that later chapter without cancelling it.

If you watch the episode, you will hear a man who can laugh at himself, name the wound that sent him home, and still describe showing up for other people as the through line. Ordained at 70 is the headline. Steady service afterward is the rest of the story.

This article is for general information and is not financial or legal advice. This article was produced with the assistance of AI and fact-checked against the sources cited by LightWave Reports.