In Memory

Jim Skoog



 
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04/05/13 08:13 PM #1    

Kelvin Seifert

Jim lived just a few doors up the street from me during the Paly years--on Mayfield Avenue on the Stanford campus. He always seemed like a likeable, kind fellow--and I remember that my mother liked him, too!

 


06/21/13 01:18 AM #2    

Alan B. Loveless

Jim was a great athlete and a really good guy.  Super football player at Paly and later great tennis player.  I played alot of tennis with  Jim and John Lucy.  Really shocked when he passed suddenly, had to be over 20 yrs ago


08/21/13 12:00 PM #3    

Richard L. (Dick) Barkley

 

I didn't know Jim all that well while at Pally. We had a few classes together and we both were Jocks but I was Track and Jim was everything (almost) else, one of the best all-around athletes (as I later found out) I've known. Fast forward to '69. I'd just taken my first job at TRW in LA (Redondo Beach in the fall of '68) and was living in Manhattan Beach. I think it was in the Spring of '69 and I was shopping in the local discount store, looked up, and there was someone who looked really familiar. He recognized me too and we started talking. Long story short, Jim was really into skiing and so was I and lived a few blocks from me in Manhattan Beach.

 

Funny how a common interest (passion for skiing really) can spark a true friendship. That's what happened with Jim and me. At the time he was working as a chemist at Shell Oil at their refinery in Manhattan Beach.  I can't remember the exact timing, but soon he became involved with Tammy as I did with Linda. To compress a lot of stuff in a little space, we both got married in the early '70s.

We skied a lot together at Mammoth in the early '70s but then we both had kids and Jim, after realizing petro-chemistry was not his thing (so he went back to school for an MBA) an got a job at Ford Aerospace and moved back to Palo Alto. But we still kept in touch and he would join us in Mammoth for an annual ski vacation more often than not.

It was on one of those trips, '86 to be exact (he'd just made it over the passes before the roads were closed): we were skiing the powder at Mammoth (which was epic but really limited because there was too much snow) and decided that we needed to go Heli-Skiing before we got too old! 

So in '87 Jim, I, and 4 other friends ( at the ripe old age of 42, more or less) did a Canadian Mountain Holidays  Heli-ski  trip to Valemont. Great trip, lots of fabulous powder and fun, but boy, was it expensive! So we decided there must be a better (cheaper) way to ski powder. And for the next few years we, and our "team" went to Grand Targhee (in WY) where powder was plentiful and people were few.

Our last trip together to Targhee must have been in Jan. of '91: that summer, in August, while Linda and I were in Mammoth, I got a call from Tammy. Jim had died while abalone diving in Mendicio. I was devastated, how could this have happened to one of the best and most careful athletes I knew. What I didn't know was that Jim's whole life had been lived on borrowed time. He, and this older brother too, had a congenital heart condition that meant is was only a mater of (limited) time. His brother had died while in college.

I can't remember weather I asked to or was asked to speak at Jim's memorial, but I did. It was really tough as he was the first, and only so far, of my close friends to pass. I ended my eulogy with the thought that that he is probably up there somewhere seeing to it that we would get good powder. If my last four years of Heli-Skiing are any indication, his Mojo is still working!


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