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Note: James was born on 449 Elmira Ave., Algiers, LA. His parents had a rooming house which he had to clean before going to school (St. Joseph's Grammar School) every day. He was an altar boy, played the drums and the saxophone. The nuns at his school were very strict and when he didn't have 25 cents to go to a play, the nun gave him punish work to do. He refused to do the punish work and his father had to come get him from school. He later attended Warren Easton High School in New Orleans and played "B" football. He quit high school after his sophomore year and went to work for Dearie's Typewriter and Adding Machine Service, where he had to repair and service typewriters until1942. At that time, World War II had already begun, so he went to work at Todd Johnson Drydocks as an apprentice welder, welding gun emplacements on merchant ships. When the government started drafting men into the service, he joined the U.S. Navy on 2/7/1943 and served in the Naval Armed Guard as a gunner on a merchant ship. He was torpedoed off Bizerte (Tunisia) in 1943, aboard the Richmond P. Hobson, a liberty ship. He received shore duty in Algiers, LA. at the Armed Guard Center at the 8th Naval District Print Shop, where he eventually ran the shop as a 2 PRTRM. During this period, he met Dorothy L. Vince at a sorority picnic at Lake Pontchartrain. They were married on November 11th of that year. He served in the Navy until 4/25/1946 (21 years old), and then joined the Naval Reserves. He started work at Falstaff Brewing Corp. as Plant Traffic Manager, took his GED test in 1948, and got his high school diploma from Warren Easton H.S. He built a home on Bonnabel Blvd. in Metairie, LA in 1949. He was transferred to San Jose, CA, then later to St. Louis, MO in 1961. In 1965, he left Falstaff and returned to New Orleans. He built a home on 2179 Euclid St. in Terrytown, LA where he lived until his death. He worked for sears, Virginia Pulp & Paper, and Falstaff again as Traffic Manager in 1967 until it closed in 1979. He later worked for Jefferson Parish Sheriff's office as Prison Warehouse Manager for 9 years. In 1988 he transferred to Court Security for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. He retired in 1991 as Sargeant for the JPSO. He died from prostate cancer 5/2/1997 and donated his body to LSU School of Medicine for 2 1/2 years.
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