- Date Of Birth: August 29, 1925
- Date Of Death: September 4, 2016
- State: Colorado
Mildred (Swanzy) Longtain died at the age of 91, on September 4, 2016. She was born in Sidon, a small town in the Mississippi Delta region, in 1925, to Lula Pickett Swanzy and Robert H.(Bob) Swanzy. At the age of 19 she left home to live in nearby Greenwood where she rented an apartment with friends and took her first job working at the Greenwood Cotton Exchange. It was there, at a community dance, that she met Donald Longtain, a handsome young Air Force Lieutenant who was stationed at Greenwood Army Airfield for Pilot training. Soon after meeting they were married, and shortly after their marriage Donald was deployed to Clark Airfield in the Philippines. As a military family, they were stationed in Japan twice, as well as Texas, Alabama and Oklahoma. In 1963, for the benefit of his children who were tired of the tumble weed life of a military family, he reluctantly retired as a Lt. Col. and accepted a job at Martin Marietta in Denver, Colorado.
Millie called Littleton Colorado her home for the next 53 years. In 1989, after her husband’s death in 1985, she took her second job at Ace Hardware, where her daughter Carol worked as a bookkeeper. Millie worked in the small Post Office there and made many friends over the next 15 years. Being a Mississippi girl, her charming southern accent and engaging smile endeared her to her regular customers who would sometimes just stop by for a chat or to say hello. “Oh no, you mean Millie’s not working today?” they would sometimes lament. Over the years, several of her regulars made her their confidant – they shared their joys and their sorrow, she listened, and wove their stories into the fabric of her life. After 15 years, when winter travel to and from the store became challenging, she decided to retire.
Millie loved her home, where she spent her remaining years. Her life was enriched with the loving attention and companionship of her daughter, Carol, who had become her next-door neighbor in 1987. Together they took weekly shopping outings followed by a restaurant lunch and were sometimes accompanied by her seven year old great granddaughter, Sophie, who entertained them with her stories and great granddaughter perspectives. In recent years, when away from the house, Carol served as her mother’s advocate and interpreter and was never far from her side.
Over the years Millie had many interests. She was an expert seamstress and as a young mom liked to make clothes for her family. She took classes in handwriting analysis and jewelry making, enjoyed collecting art prints and learned how to mat and frame them as gifts for her children. She was a master gardener and in recent years enjoyed collecting Talavera pottery. She said she could never have “too much” which was colorfully evident on her decks and hanging on the outer walls of her home. She was an avid reader and kept up with current events. She loved her I-pad and had an insatiable curiosity and appreciation for the advances of science, medicine, and technology and enjoyed speculating about what inventions and future technologies were in the pipeline. She wanted to bear witness to it all.
Millie often said her greatest life blessing was to have seven adult children who were independent, healthy and happy and were all living to usher her out of this world.
She is survived by her older sister, Marsh (Chenault), and her younger brother, Bud Swanzy. Preceding her in death were her mother, Lula P. Swanzy and her older sisters, Pickett (Lea) and Floyce (Hathcock). She is survived by all of her 7 children, 4 sons and 3 daughters: Don and wife, Helen, Michael and wife, Donna, Will and wife, Ann, James and wife, Shinobu; Ginny and husband John Zuboy, Carol and husband Marty Brzeczek, and Melinda (husband, Larry Bond, deceased). Also surviving are 11 grandchildren and 9 great grandchildren.
She was beloved by her family and will be sorely missed.
