Tuble Delmar Swindle; Retired School Custodian

Tuble Delmar Swindle, a Simi Valley resident for more than 30 years and former custodian for the Simi Valley school district, died Friday, surrounded by his family. He was 80.

Swindle was born Aug. 19, 1915, in Missouri, the son of farmers. His father died of pneumonia when Swindle was 5, and his mother remarried several years later. The family moved throughout the Midwest, to Arkansas and elsewhere before settling again in Missouri.

After the eighth grade, Swindle went to work chopping cotton in the fields of Missouri. He married Mary Hogan in 1937 and the couple moved to Chicago, where he landed a job with a maker of steel springs for automobiles.

They lived in Chicago 10 years before settling back in Missouri, where Swindle worked numerous jobs, including at a butcher shop and grocery store.

Swindle moved to Simi Valley in the early 1960s after learning from a relative that there was good work to be found in California. He was hired at a machinery manufacturer before becoming a school custodian in Simi Valley in 1966.

Swindle retired from the district in 1980 at 65 and began to devote more time to hobbies: Camping and fixing things, said his son Raymond.

He is survived by his wife, Mary; two sons, Raymond of Missouri and Ronald of Thousand Oaks, and a daughter, Margaret Smith of Missouri.

Services will be held in El Dorado Springs, Mo. Local arrangements are under the care of Guardian Memorial Funeral Directors of Ventura County.