Jim Thomas

Jim Thomas passed away on 3/21/2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada

Jim and I were acquaintances late in high school, but we became good friends afterward. Jim was a real character. We were roommates a couple of different times. We shared a house in downtown Littleton in the fall of ’72 or ’73 with Mike Coleman and Craig Boatwright. We were roommates again for the first eight months of 1977 in New Berlin, WI. We worked together at the Victoria Station Restaurant in Wauwatosa, WI. George Hearne and friend of George’s and mine from our CU days were also up there. I left Wisconsin in September of 1977 and moved back to the Denver area. Jim stayed on for a while in Wisconsin, and then he transferred to the Victoria Station in Miami, Florida. Somewhere along the line, Jim moved from Miami to Las Vegas. Despite numerous attempts to communicate with Jim by myself, George Hearne, Jim Fullenwider, Sheryl Emery, and others, Jim never responded. He would not even communicate with his own family. It’s hard to know why, but I guess he had his reasons.

I still have a few good Spook stories, but decorum prevents me from repeating them here.

RK (Ken) Rowland

I miss Jim. That sounds crazy, as we had been out of touch for decades. Even before our reunion committee started locating classmates for our 50th reunion, I had tried to find Jim. And there are a LOT of Jim Thomases out there, let me tell you! I know that he was in Las Vegas, and even got an address for him there once, but a letter to that address came back undelivered.

I recently came across a copy of the Isaac Newton Free Lance from 1966 (a ‘literary magazine’ from our junior high years.) Jim had written a story and I had done the illustration. I am sure that he gave me a load of grief about that at the time! (OK, it WAS a pretty bad illustration.) He was smart, funny (snarky). We were in English classes together at AHS and became friends. When we were both working at restaurants during our college years, we traded dinners (taking advantage of each other’s employee discounts).

I don’t even remember that last time that we connected, but he never made it to our class reunions. I was so saddened to learn of his death, and also to know that he had been out of touch with all of his AHS buddies and even with his family. I am sad that we will never have the chance to reminisce about the ‘old days’. I hope that he knew that there were many of us who wanted to reconnect and tried to find him!

Sheryl Emery Ogden