The obituary was a scant five paragraphs. No notice in the news pages. Not a ripple across the public consciousness on a late May day when the toll of 95 years took Bill Swain away.

That's the way he wanted it. He was one of the invisible guys doing the important work that holds it all together. No accolades sought or accepted.

You wouldn't know his name unless you sat across from him at Security Federal Savings and Loan seeking the American Dream: homeownership. He helped hundreds of Durham families from 1945 to 1978; first as the right-hand man of the late Claude Currie, then as president in his own right. Now Security Federal is gone, swallowed up by BB&T.

Also gone is what Bill Swain embodied: small-town banking when a lender's name and character counted. "He was a man of his word. A handshake and the deal was done with him," recalls a retired local banker. "He had the ability to perceive character."

About 50 people bunched up on a hillside in Maplewood Cemetery for a graveside service that was as sparse and unadorned as his life was long and rich. The eulogy was no eulogy. Take your memory of him with you as you leave today, the preacher said.

No fuss. No muss. No show. That was Bill Swain's way.

He knew the bottom line in banking and played by the rules. But for him the rules were there to protect you, not hurt you. More than one loan was approved on sheer belief in the lender's integrity as he nodded right by the letter of the rules.

Greed couldn't touch him.

In the late '70s, three of Durham's four major savings and loans ran into legal problems -- and jail time for some of the people involved -- for bending banking regulations while pursuing the promise of home-run profits.

Security Federal stayed clean. "Bill Swain did not have one iota of greed in his whole life," says one admirer. "He'd rather loan $10,000 to 10 little guys than $100,000 to Mr. Big Shot."

Some depositors from the troubled institutions wandered in his door intent on shifting their savings. He wouldn't take the money. Your money is safe where it is despite the problems, he reassured them.

After several decades of toil, he and wife Betsy had the means to move from their modest one-and-a-half story house on Woodrow Street in Watts Hospital-Hillandale and follow friends across town to the tonier confines of Forest Hills and Hope Valley.

But they stayed put. His explanation: They won't let me live there. They won't let me clean out my own gutters. He stuck with the house where he and Betsy raised two children. Evenings he walked the half-block uphill to visit ailing friends in Watts Hospital.

A bit of contrary irony was in his program. He named one bob-tailed family mutt Robert, apparently out of respect for the dog's doggedness. Even us kids running wild and barefoot in the neighborhood got respect from him. Is there a thread here?

The son of a circuit-riding Baptist preacher, he spent many evenings under a haze of pipe smoke reading history. Will and Ariel Durant's "The Lessons of History" was doled out to friends like fresh summer tomatoes.

In his final years at Hillcrest Convalescent Center after his wife's death, he was still natty, wearing loafers and a sport coat or cardigan as he wheeled himself along on his walker for a smoke on the porch.

I'd drop by and see him to discuss politics, Durham history, the neighborhood. Over time his conversational capacity lagged. We'd sit for a half-hour grabbing at whatever tendrils of mutual consciousness floated by. Mostly there was quiet.

The retired banker: "He was the essence of a Southern gentleman. He took off his hat when he got in an elevator. Who wears a hat anymore?"

Bill Swain wouldn't think much of this column. He didn't care for praise. By his lights you did your job, led your life and were decent about it. And that was that.

And that was Bill Swain. He was a good one.