Jim Wildey 1943 - 2015

I am sitting here in shock and disbelief.  I received a call this afternoon from Jim's wife Barb, and she said that last night Jim died of cardiac arrest.  They have just returned from a three month tour around the United States, in their RV, stopping to visit friends in a number of states, including New York and Pennsylvania and Florida.  In a number of places that they stopped Jim helped people with projects because that's the kind of guy that he was.  By the time they returned home, he was not feeling well.  I don't know any more details but I am in shock because Jim has always been in excellent physical condition.  I loved it when we got together and he reminded me he could crush me with his thumb!  He always loved projects involving dragging concrete blocks around, or in our case, ripping out all the lath and plaster in our bathroom years ago, when he and Barb came for a weekend visit.  I first met Jim when we roomed together one summer after I had graduated from RIT.  He was a business major, and we and our families have been dear friends ever since.  You could not find a more generous guy anywhere. This photograph is from around 1970 when I was doing a cross country flight for my private pilot's license, and landed at a small airport in Binghamton.  Jim, who worked for IBM at the time, came out to meet me at the airport, all suited up.  But do not be misled - he soon left IBM to become a dairy farmer, and then after a number of years, began buying and refurbing homes and selling them, before becoming a building inspector in Fresno, California.  And that's only the half of it.  This all seems so unbelievable, that it has not sunk in yet.