I wrote this life story for my dad before his 93rd birthday in October 2025. I gave him a choice of three headlines. On his birthday, he chose that one (above). He died 12 days later.
Clarence E. Swingle, Jr., known as Bud, grew up in small bedroom with a sloped ceiling, no closet, and no room for a dresser, so he was allocated one drawer in his sister’s bedroom. A challenging time in his childhood was having to give up his collie dog, Snooks, to a friend’s home, when Bud’s family moved from Ulster, New York, to Sayre, Pennsylvania, which made him so sad that he never wanted a pet again. He graduated from Sayre High in 1950.
A combination of family support, military service and the GI bill, self-advocacy, a mathematical mind, and hard work enabled him to build a comfortable life for himself and his eventual family.
His older sister, June, managed to enroll in nursing training. There wasn’t money for Bud to go to college, so his father, Clarence E. Swingle, Sr., got him a job as an office boy delivering mail among departments at Ingersoll Rand in Athens, Pennsylvania. Ingersoll Rand was also where Bud’s mother, C. Mildred Swingle, worked during World War II, operating a machine. She had started in the workforce as a teen, forced to leave high school as a sophomore to go to work after her father died.
Bud was also a hard worker. “They allowed me to work 9 hours a day, 5 days a week, and then 5 hours on Saturday,” he told his daughter by email in 2020 when she asked about his first job. “My pay was 80 cents an hour before taxes with no overtime pay, so my gross weekly pay was $40. I lived at home, so I was able to purchase a 1947 convertible Studebaker with payments in 1950. After a year, I requested a better paying job, and I ended up running a drill press at IR for $70 a week gross pay for a 40-hour week. I was really living now and still living at home.”
At age 20, facing being drafted, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy Air Force for four years, becoming an electronics technician radar/radioman on a Martin Marlin seaplane, part of squadron VP-48 from San Diego. They flew surveillance patrols off the coasts of Korea and China, out of Iwakuni, Japan, during and after the Korean War. One time, a patrol plane fired big guns at them, but missed, as they flew alongside taking pictures, an encounter written up in stateside newspapers.
On their last flight in November 1956, they crashed during a night landing in Manila Bay in the Philippines due to pilot error. The plane sank in three pieces. Luckily the team survived.
Bud enrolled at Penn State in spring 1957, supported by the GI bill and his flight pay savings. He lived in a Quonset hut, surplus military housing that was needed to accommodate the post-war veteran enrollment surge. He graduated with his accounting degree in June 1960 and was hired at Eastman Kodak Co. in Rochester, NY. He asked to be a computer systems analyst, designing business computer systems, rather than their first offer of an accounting position. This was in the days when data and program instructions were entered on stiff paper punch cards. Through night classes at the University of Rochester over six years, he earned a master’s degree in business, while living in a mobile home park.
Thanks to his annual Kodak bonus, he was able to buy land on Keuka Lake in the 1960s, paid for over six years. He moved his mobile home there and rented a room in Rochester from a coworker, to be closer to Kodak during the workweek.
He met his future wife, Roberta, at a St. Patrick’s Day dance in Rochester. He asked for her phone number but didn’t write it down, so she thought she’d never hear from him. But he’s long had a knack for remembering numbers, and he called. They were married on New Year’s Eve.
Their two children, Christine and Mark, grew up in Rochester and spent summers on Keuka Lake — with no TV and weekly trips to the Penn Yan town library. After high school, Bud and Roberta helped them go to college.
The family also had a mobile home in a senior community in North Port, Florida, where Bud’s parents spent four months each winter. Bud, Roberta, and the kids typically drove to Florida around Easter, including many 26-hour, straight-through drives south in a station wagon.
Bud’s father had long invested in stocks, and Bud did the same, which supported his retirement from Kodak in 1986 at age 54, as part of an early retirement incentive.
His family appreciates the many ways that Bud has been a good supporter of his family.
Retirement has included taking care of his parents, who lived into their 80s and 90s, as well as enjoying cruises, playing bocce and bridge games, and dinners with friends.
His daughter got married at Keuka Lake (above). For the wedding of his son, Bud returned to Japan, with his family (pictured below).
Bud and Roberta have three grandchildren — two in Lawrence, New Jersey, and one in Brooklyn.
These days, proudly wearing a Navy hat most days, he lives with his wife in North Port, FL.
–
Update: Dad died peacefully Oct. 19, 2025, at home, after 20 days of hospice support. He was 93.
He is survived by his wife, Roberta Swingle; his daughter, Christine Farnum (and spouse Timothy) and their son Mark Farnum; as well as his son, Mark Swingle (and spouse Yukiko) and their children Mia and Jion Swingle.
He chose cremation and did not want a service.
Cards may be sent to Roberta Swingle, 6801 Holo Court, North Port, FL 34287
Chris Swingle Farnum is based in Rochester, NY.
Chris Swingle Farnum, writer/editor 