Janiel Brown Swore
May 30, 1951 – March 5, 2024
Janiel Brown Swore, 72, passed away on March 5, 2024.
Janiel was born on May 30, 1951 in Malad, Idaho to Leo H. and Leora Ipsen Brown. She grew up about five miles west of Malad in Pleasantview, Idaho. An only daughter, she was raised with four older brothers on the family farm. She graduated from Malad High School in 1969. She was honored her senior year as “Miss Mirror” and was a runner up in the Miss Malad Pageant. In 1971 she graduated from Ricks College with an Associate Degree in Business.
After graduating from Ricks College Janiel moved to Pocatello to continue her education at Idaho State University. It was there when she met the love of her life, Jerry Swore, in the spring of 1972 and shortly thereafter started the greatest work of her life as a wife, mother, and grandmother. Janiel and Jerry were married in Pleasantview, Idaho on September 16, 1972. Jerry had already accepted a position from the Department of Energy to transfer to Knolls Atomic Power Plant in upstate New York when they became engaged and so they married and immediately moved to Ballston Spa, NY. While there, they welcomed their first son, Michael, in 1973. Their time in Ballston Spa, which felt like an extended honeymoon, lasted for twenty months, when they decided to move back to Pocatello the summer of 1974 to be closer to both of their families. While in New York they had some great adventures going to New York City with a newborn, Niagara Falls, and exploring the Adirondack Mountains! They returned to the area where they lived in New York to visit in 1997 with their daughter.
Over the years, they welcomed three more children: Christie, Scott, and Jeffery. Janiel was blessed to be able to stay at home raising her children when they were young. She loved her family fiercely and during the last 25 years she welcomed each of her 17 grandchildren with great joy!
She delighted in sharing her hobbies and talents with everyone she loved. Homemade food and treats, puzzles, good books, sewing or quilting, and bargain hunting from the DI or yard sales. She LOVED to shop and frequented her favorite stores often. She always knew where to find the best deals and blessed her children, grandchildren, and friends and neighbors with her bargain finds! She also loved gathering activities to keep the grands busy at family dinners and camping trips: crafts, coloring, board games, there was always something to do to keep them entertained.
Janiel had many occupations in her life: She worked on the family farm in her youth, everywhere from cleaning chicken gizzards to making homemade potato chips and donuts they sold on a cart. In college she worked as a seamstress in a coat factory sewing linings into coats, and for a magazine company where she had to strip the covers off of unsold issues. She often joked with people that she once was a stripper as that is what the position was referred to as, and that always got a shock out of her audience! She also worked for JB’s as a waitress, and for Stores at ISU. After marriage, she sewed and sold many doll clothes for various dolls at craft fairs to help supplement her family’s income to go towards making Christmas or other occasions extra special. In the 1990’s she went to work for Gate City Elementary School as a library assistant and worked there for over 20 years. Janiel retired from Gate City 2016, but then was called back to work and asked to please work in the Fort Hall Elementary library for an additional two school years from 2016-2018.
Janiel was multi-talented as a skilled seamstress, an exceptional cook, a hard worker, and was patient and kind to everyone she loved. During the pandemic she sewed and donated hundreds of cloth masks to family members and friends. Janiel was always in the service of others. She was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and served in many auxiliaries in the wards she lived in over the years including the primary: teacher, pianist, chorister, Cubmaster (and other Cub Scout positions), and primary president. Other positions held were ward music leader, Relief Society President, and various positions in compassionate service committees. Janiel served in cub scouts for decades with Jerry, volunteered extensively at Tyhee Elementary and with the PTA, and was heavily involved in 4-H with her first two children. She also volunteered for the Bannock County Fair for many years manning booths checking in and out entries and judging sewing and quilting entries for fairs in Bannock, Franklin, Oneida Counties and the Eastern Idaho State Fair. She was passionate about sharing her love of stories with children and frequently thrift-shopped to help children obtain copies of their own books.
A farm girl at heart, she was a fixture at Swore Farms, owned by her oldest son. You could find Janiel selling or cooking sweet corn at the farmers market, decorating the fairy forest at the corn maze, feeding everyone a hearty meal when they were out planting or harvesting or working through their busy fall fun time with the corn maze, pumpkin patch, and hay rides, and the last two years welcoming Trafalgar tour groups nearly every week in the summer with participants from all over the world who stop to tour the farm. She was capable, talented, and exceptional in all she did.
Janiel had many lifelong friends she stayed in touch with, including family members from Malad and Pleasantview, college, and her places of employment, volunteering, and church. She frequently ran into colleagues and students who loved her from Gate City and Fort Hall Elementaries and it made her day! It often took her an hour to go into Smith’s just to buy a gallon of milk because she always ran into a familiar face and would take time to catch up and visit with them.
Janiel unexpectedly passed away on Tuesday, March 5, 2024 at Portneuf Medical Center in Pocatello. She spent the last five weeks of her life valiantly fighting an infection that developed multiple complications during that time. She was surrounded by many of her family members when she slipped into her Heavenly Fathers arms, and reunited with her parents and other dear family members. She was loved and treasured and will be dearly missed.
Janiel is survived by her husband, Jerry Swore. Her children: Michael (Wendy) Swore, Christie (Moses) Collier, Scott (Rashell) Swore, Jeffery (Courtney) Swore. Her grandchildren: Deanna (Parker), Thomas, Matthew, Mary, William, Sam, Zoe, Jacie, Caimbree, Ellie, Scott Jr., Emily, Shelby, Steven, Alaina, Annie, Everly. Her brothers and sisters-in-law: James (Dawn) Brown, Boyd (Shirlene) Brown, Jeanne Brown, and Brenda Swore.
She is preceded in death by her parents, Leo and Leora Brown, and two brothers and a sister-in-law: Dennis (Laurie) Brown and Roy (Jeanne) Brown. And brother-in-law Steven (Brenda) Swore.
Viewings will take place on Thursday, March 14, 2024 from 6:00-8:00 pm at Wilks Funeral Home, 211 W. Chubbuck Rd., Chubbuck, Idaho, and on Friday, March 15, 2024 starting at 9:30 am at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: 333 S Treaty Hwy US 91 (between Reservation and Ballard Roads), Pocatello, Idaho. Care is under the direction of Wilks Funeral Home.
If desired, donations in lieu of flowers can be made to her mother’s foundation founded in 2013 by her cousins, Terri and Toni Brown, at Oneida County Long Term Care: Leora’s Lovely Lady Fund. This fund was established to supplement Medicaid’s Personal Needs Allowance (PNA), which is intended to cover a resident’s personal expenses (which in the state of Idaho is only $40 per month) for things such as haircuts, toiletries, makeup, vitamins, clothing, shoes, books, magazines, personal snacks, etc. Funds may be transferred online, designating “other” under program and filling in “Leora’s Lovely Lady Fund” for the program or need, and may be dedicated in the name of Leora Brown and in memory of Janiel Brown Swore or by mailing a check payable to Oneida County Hospital c/o Kathy Hubbard at Oneida Hospital 150 N 200 W, Malad, ID 83202 designating the same information above.
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