Jean,Rosemary and Jim @ Rose Hill Cemetery, Macon, GA , August 2012, at the gravesite of their grandfather, Dr. William B. Burke, Methodist minister who was a missionary to China from 1887 to 1943.
I met Jim back in 1988 when I came down to Washington from upstate New York to look for a job with the government. I was only working temp jobs and didn't know many people, so I joined the Annandale Sport and Health Club and signed up for a tennis clinic. Someone on the other side of the court would yell 'draft dodger' whenever I hit the ball in the group clinic. But I sensed the normally negative comment was not being said maliciously. It was as if he was saying, "I recognize you as a person of the '60s, same as me." That person yelling 'draft dodger' at me was Jim.
We started playing tennis together. In those days, we'd get a court as late as 10 pm and would often play at 9 pm on week day nights. That's youthful energy because both of us had to get up early the next day to go to our jobs. By that time I was working at the Commerce Department. Both us played with a number of different people. Jim worked hard to develop a good game. He hit a two-handed backhand very effectively and was very good at hitting backhand shots at the net. We continued playing tennis until January 2016 and really enjoyed the lessons we got from Kinde Tye, coach of St. Stephens-St. Agnes School, the last 5-6 years.
In the late 1990s, we started going to sports events, mainly Orioles games and also the Washington Tennis Tournament which we went to every year from 1999 to 2015. We saw some of the tennis greats such as Andre Agassi, Andy Roddick, and others. We started going to Navy football games in 2003 and went to at least of couple of Navy games every year through 2015. Jim even went with his poncho in driving rain. We went to an occasional minor league baseball game as well as to college basketball games. We usually saw one Wizards and one Capitals game every year. The last event we went to was a Capitals game in early April 2016. At some point, around 2006, Jim's friend, John Kenney, and Nizar, started coming to some of the games. Going to all these sports events was a lot of fun. The experience consisted of planning for the event, figuring out who was coming, getting the tickets, getting to the game, and then watching the game.
All along the way, I was fascinated with some of Jim's experiences which he shared with me. I was impressed with the fact that he had lived and gone to school in India and Greece. I asked him a lot of questions about what it was like to grow up in these places. He told me at the suggestion of his father, he hitch hiked throughout the Middle East when he was 17 or 18, traveling through countries like Iran and Iraq and possibly Afganistan. That type of adventure wouldn't be possible in today's world. I found out later that Jim lived in Old Greenwich, CT, for a year. Old Greenwich was about 6-7 miles from where I grew up in Cos Cob, CT. Our elementary schools played against each other in baseball, although we were two years apart, so we would not have played in a game against each other. (Usually the sixth grades from the Greenwich elementary schools played against each other in an informal league).
Our interest in journalism was another thing that drew us together. I used to ask Jim a lot of questions about his family's work in journalism which was considerable and entailed much success. I worked for 10 years in newspaper in upstate New York and Connecticut but had to switch to government as it turned out. I recall Jim's story about meeting Willie Mays as an 11 year old. As someone who grew up in the New York area idolizing Willie Mays, I couldn't believe he actually visited the Giants' dugout and got to talk to Willie Mays, but there was the article from the New York Times with a picture of him and Willie Mays in the Giants' dugout and a story of him talking to Willie Mays to prove it. He kept that article and photo forever, I'm sure.
Another thing I admired was that Jim took trips on his own with tour groups to see some of the major tennis tournaments such as the Australian Open which he went to several times and the French Open. He had a way of getting along with people and fitting in well in different situations. He would tell me about the good time he had with the tour group at the matches and the experience he had exploring the city the tournament was in, whether it was Paris or Melbourne.
Jim's passing was very sad. The last time I saw Jim was in late May when we went to dinner and watched the Nationals game on TV at the restaurant. His friendship was truly appreciated and he will be greatly missed.
