Thinking about Jim
My first few weeks in college were boring. I didn’t have any friends, so I went to class and returned to my dorm room and played solitaire. I had no connection with my roommate.
Then, I saw a one-line ad in the student newspaper announcing a meeting of a science fiction club. I went, and that’s how I met Jim and a bunch of other nerds. Jim was older than I was — he was already in grad school — but he was the center of everything we did. Playing bridge. Going to science fiction conventions in his Ford Pinto (which never blew up!) After one convention in Miami, he got us tickets to watch the launch of Voyager 1 from Cape Canaveral. A highlight of my life, and can you believe that it’s still out there!
Typing what became the Hymnal — a collection of filk songs — into a PDP 11-45, one of the few computers on campus. We even forgave him when he managed to erase the magnetic tape with all our work on it!
Over the years, he kept in touch with everyone, even as we followed our career paths all over the country. He visited me in Seattle with his first wife Martha, when his kids Rose and Richard were very young. I have photos of them at the Burke Museum.
I came to his house in Las Vegas for Richard and Samantha’s wedding. By that time, Martha was very sick, so I ended up vacuuming and cleaning the kitchen. Jim was never big on housekeeping.
Jim would come to the Northwest with a spreadsheet of all the Native American museums he wanted to visit, and I’d go along to places like Neah Bay and Warm Springs. When Jim retired, he decided that he wanted to move out here, so I went along when the real estate broker showed him the possible houses. He’d told her that he needed 38,000 square feet for his books! That’s the house that eventually burned down.
Although we were fairly close by, we didn’t see each other that frequently. One year, we did see the Gilbert and Sullivan “Pirates of Penzance”. My friend Patrick and I were on the Peninsula one weekend, so we called and met Jim and Kimi at a Mexican restaurant in Aberdeen. And around that time, they visited my place in Seattle for a party, along with Richard, Samantha and Malcolm.
But Jim was always there. He will be sorely missed.
Charlie ("Chas") Hamilton