Jim with his granddaughter Robin from Los Almos, NM. (Photos provided by Pamela Roberts)
When I learned that Jim Roberts passed away, it was like a scene from 23 years ago. I was in my parentsâ kitchen, talking to my mother while digging around their refrigerator for a rod of string cheese. My mother was on the phone with my father doing the thing that women do so well: swinging two conversations at once (me here, him there). There we all were, my father on his way home from work, me standing in front of her saying, âMom, can I have this?â and my mom in the middle of it all. Such is the way of family, no? And such is the circumstance we most often find ourselves in when news of any sort enters our lives.
Jim puts the finishing touches on a wooden toy he made with the Woodchucks.
The reason I started with this story is simple. I think Jim would have appreciated it; a family simply being a family in the most ordinary of ways.
This edition of the Sun Day is dedicated to and in memory of James âJimâ L. Roberts because he was a unanimous friend, a local mentor known for his good council, and a community leader. But rather than going the normal route and covering Jimâs passing with a feature story, I wanted to focus more on his life and what he meant to his friends, community, and peers in their own words. On the pages that follow, you will find just this: letters written by some of Jimâs relations within the Sun City Community.
When I consider the many things that Jim was in life, a caring family man, a dear friend, the Communityâs Governing Board President, a former Woodchucksâ President and constant member, and the former head of the Boy Scouts of America, among so many others, I see one underlying theme: he was a man of establishment, or, more actually, he was an establisher, which, if I were in a position to bestow honor on anyone (something I feel I am not qualified to do by any stretch), it would be the highest honor I could give because anyone who helps someone or something stand on its own is a fine person indeed. Fish for a man, and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he will eat for a lifetime, so the proverb goes. This is what Jim did for my wife and me.
At the Celebration of Life held in memory of Jim at Drendel Ballroom a few weeks ago, Sun City Community Association Executive Director Bill Pennock said that Jimâs prints were left all over this community. As this is true for the community, it is also true for the Sun Day.
Not long after I got the idea for the Sun Day, I proposed the idea to Jim. This being a free enterprise, I knew I could just start the paper, and one day it would appear in your mailboxes without anyoneâs blessing. But thatâs not the way I do things. With my own family living in the community, I wanted to make right by the people who lived here, and if there was one person to ask about the paperâs viability in Sun City, it was Jim. I had known Jim for a few years by this pointâfirst through my father (who was a close friend of Jimâs) and then through my own relationsâand knew that as the Governing Board President, he would provide me with the best possible council, of which I held in high enough esteem that if Jim were to have said starting the paper in Sun City was not a good idea, I wouldnât have.
I first proposed the idea to Jim over the phone, and he immediately had a position: The paper was a good idea, but there were things to consider to do it right. When we met for lunch a week later to discuss the idea in detail, Jim came with a list of notes (which I still have in a file labeled SUN DAY PRELIM). This list of notes became my roadmap of sorts, which I followed to the T. It detailed the pros and cons of a newspaper in Sun City, working relations with previous newspapers dedicated to the community, a list of people who should be notified (in order), among several other key points that would ensure the paper would be successful and, most important, beneficial. What I must stress about Jimâs notes and all his council he provided was that first and foremost on his mind was the community and exactly how the Sun Day could benefit it.
On a personal level, through providing that early council, Jim helped establish a better life for my wife and me. He helped us achieve an opportunity. Until the Sun Day, things were rough. They still are, but weâre on the road to something better. Whether that will ultimately come directly through the Sun Day, I donât know, but Iâm happy to say that Jim laid one of the first stones.
