John Michael Swanson's Obituary
John Swanson, aged 72, of San Mateo, CA, died at his home on March 13, 2018, at 7 a.m. of pancreatic cancer.He was born April 21, 1945, in Chicago, IL, to Rose and Gunnard Swanson. He attended Northern Illinois University attaining a BS in business and an MBA with an emphasis on computer programming and systems management. John served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, working on Nike missile systems in Germany. He and his life partner, Laurel Hale, have been together since the late 1990’s.At the beginning of his career, John programmed COBAL for a large utility company in Chicago for 15 years. Then, he moved out west to the San Francisco Bay Area and settled. He worked here as a consultant, deploying and developing solutions that enabled large, distributed, heterogeneous applications to work in sync. During his career, he helped develop and sell a white-listing solution for email here in the Bay Area, and also spent several years working behind the scenes to manage large data centers at Microsoft’s Redmond, WA campus. In 2012, he and Laurel decided to return to the Bay Area because they realized it is truly home to them.One of John’s favorite pass-times was going to art museums. He was especially fond of late 19th and early 20th C. European art— Impressionism, Cubism, Fauvism, and others. Some of his favorite artists were Pablo Picasso and Vincent Van Gogh. He also was passionate about the Bay Area Figurative Movement and Abstract Expressionism—some of his favorite American artists were Wayne Thiebaud, Mark Rothko, Richard Diebenkorn, and Frank Lobdell. Another passion was European history and France, where he traveled many times with Laurel. And he was passionate about cooking—he especially enjoyed the French chef Jacques Pépin.John is survived by his partner, Laurel Hale, who lives in San Mateo, CA. He is also survived by his sons, David Swanson and Timothy Swanson, and by his grandchildren, Andrew Swanson and Madelyn Swanson. All live in Clarkston, MI.A memorial service will be held at 1:00 p.m., Tuesday, March 20, at Skylawn Memorial Park in San Mateo, CA.In lieu of flowers, please donate funds to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network at www.pancan.org.
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