Lowell Dean Swinney, 89, lifelong Wichitan, longtime banker and trusted friend and associate, died Tuesday, September 29, at Hospice of Wichita Falls.

Memorial services will be at 11 a.m. October 23 at Grace Church Chapel, 5214 Stone Lake Drive.

Dean was born Dec. 25, 1936, in Wichita Falls. He was a graduate of Wichita Falls High School and attended what is now Midwestern State University. He graduated from the Southern Methodist University graduate school of banking.

Dean started working as a teen-ager at an oilfield supply company, where he learned the ins and outs and other hazards and opportunities involved in drilling, pumping and marketing of North Texas, Texas Panhandle and Oklahoma petroleum products. He learned early on he did not want to drive a truck or work on a rig for a living.

Instead, he helped link up demand for the endless amount of money required to find and produce oil and gas with those willing to make that money available through City National Bank and its later iterations as the industry changed throughout his career. He retired as senior vice president after 25 years in that position. His specialty was commercial lending.

Before making other life-altering decisions, though, Dean undertook the one that changed him for the better and for good: he and Emilie Knight were married on August 6, 1954 in Lawton, OK while they were in high school, launching a partnership that navigated the best and worst of times for 72 years.

From that relationship emerged a son, Ted Swinney, a Dallas entrepreneur who preceded Dean in death on August 14, 2014.

As a respected member of his community, Dean served as president of the Wichita Falls Country Club for two terms and was president of the Wichita Club board for two terms. He had been a president of The Mavericks and was secretary/treasurer of that organization for 25 years. He served on the board of the Boys and Girls Club. He attended Grace Church. He was a coach in Little League baseball for 10 years and in Little League football for a decade.

(He would have loved to have played pro golf and pro baseball, to have spent an inordinate amount of time fishing for trout in the cold streams of Colorado and to have spun yarns about good deals gone bad and bad men gone good, but other opportunities

interfered.)

Dean is survived by Emilie; a daughter-in-law, Bonnie Jones of Dallas; and grandchildren, Natalie Hamilton of Fort Worth and Will Swinney of Dallas.

Memorials can be made to Grace Church and Hospice of Wichita Falls.