James Stephen Swift, a Lansing resident for 44 years, died on 29 May in Hyattsville, Maryland.  He was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1927. He attended public schools in the city (where his mother was a teacher) and studied at the University of Chicago, from which he graduated in 1947.  He went to New York City to study architecture, where he met and married Rhoda Emma Jean Howd in 1953.  The couple lived in upstate New York, then in the Upper Peninsula, then moved to Lansing in 1962.  James Swift became the principal of Valley Farms School in 1962.  He later became principal of Reo Elementary School, and finally he was principal of Maplewood Elementary School from 1980 until his retirement in 1990.  He earned a doctorate in education from Michigan State University in 1976.  He was an active member of the Episcopal Church, a reader on almost every subject, a self-taught carpenter and handyman, and one of the first to realise the importance of information technology for education.  He bore his long illness and eventual death from normal pressure hydrocephalus with immense courage and fortitude.  His wife Rhoda predeceased him in 2008, and he is survived by his children, Stephen, Jennifer, Carrie and Samuel, and by four grandchildren, Rose and R. J. Mehall, and Elias Swift and his unborn sister.  His memorial service will take place at 2 pm on Monday, 15 June, at St. David's Episcopal Church in west Lansing.  In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Sacred Heart Home, 5805 Queen's Chapel Road, Hyattsville, MD 20782 (please mark cheques 'in memory of James Swift').