According to the Office of Vital Records Services, Cheyenne, Wyoming I first saw the light of day on August 9, 1939 in Sheridan, Wyoming. My parents are listed as Alice James Marron and Bernard James Marron. It isn’t on record but my best guess is that the place of birth was the old red brick Sheridan Memorial Hospital.

At the time if my folks would have known what they were getting into they may well have considered putting me up for adoption.

For the first few years we took up residence with my grandmother, Ellen James, and her sister, Aunt Mary, in their small house at 117 S Sheridan Ave. They lived right next door to the Thomas family. In later years Bernard Thomas developed into quite a respectable artist and was quite well known in the Sheridan area.

Later on, as our family began to grow, we were forced to relocate. We moved into what was to become our family home at 548 E Loucks Street. Originally, it was just a two bedroom – one bathroom house with a small room that you could put a bunk bed into. My Dad was quite handy with tools so probably in the early 50’s he was able to add on two more bedrooms. That made it a four bedroom – one bathroom house. Now, if you can, try to imagine my Grandmother James who had moved in with us, my parents and the six Marron siblings trying to take turns in the bathroom. On the other hand I guess that I shouldn’t be complaining too much – at least we did have indoor plumbing.

Then, there was the bit of a problem of trying to feed those “hungry mouths.” However, that was taken care of by my mother’s “green thumb.” She always had some nice big vegetable gardens. We did a lot of canning and freezing of the produce which kept food on the table. Then there was my dad’s “eagle eye” with his 30-06. Even though we didn’t have beef all that often, we always managed to have a freezer fill of venison.

You know many folks that I have spoken with claim to have vivid memories of events occurring shortly after birth. That certainly hasn’t been the case with me as I have no memory of the first five or six years of my life. For the most part I’ve had to rely on the memories of others “But Jim, don’t you remember when thus and such happened.” One of the “legends” that always pops up is that, as a small child, “while my next younger sister was zipped up in her PJ’s I got into some jelly and then smeared it on her face to make it look as if she was the guilty party.” Now, who would ever come up with an idea like that? Then there was another “incident” that I have a bit better than a vague memory of. As I recall I had done something that I knew was deserving of a good old fashioned spanking, so I tried to avoid it by squirming into a narrow crawl space behind a chest of drawers located in the bathroom. I really don’t remember the outcome. But I probably got a double spanking for that little stunt. My folks had a special belt that they kept just for that purpose. It was about 1 1/2” wide with a permanent crease at the half way mark. The buckle was broken so there really was only one “useful purpose for it,” and I’m sure you can readily guess what that was.

“Family Ties,” etc. - My folks parented six children over the course of eight years. I was the oldest and Richard was the youngest. According to him the folks were perfectionists. They started with me and then kept having children until they had a “perfect” one – namely Richard. Anyway, being the oldest did have at least one advantage, and that was I did get more new clothing. There was a lot of “passing down” of clothes. On the other hand we did get several very nice home made shirts. My mother was a very accomplished seamstress and she could turn out some very professional looking shirts with her old treadle Singer sewing machine.

On my Dad’s side our ancestry was pretty much all Irish. However, on my Mom’s side it was kind of a “duke’s mixture” with Scotch, Irish and English tossed in. I never could handle Scotch, so that might well account for my having acquired a taste for “fine American blends and brews” over the years.

Regarding my “memory” or lack of – what ever the case may be, it is my best guess that there must be some sort of a psychological reason for it – like maybe trying to block out some unpleasant experiences. You know the old adage “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never harm you” – well don’t believe a word of it. “Names” can be very harmful. To that I can personally attest. I attended the first grade at Central School and was in the process of developing some childhood friendships. Then at the beginning of the second grade my parents transferred me to Holy Name School just a block or so up the street. I think that was where the problems started. As I walked past Central heading for “HN” I got lots of “cat-calls” like “cat licker”, “four eyes,” etc. It certainly didn’t do much to help develop my self esteem. Anyway, time began to heal the scars and over the years things improved..

For the most part my experiences in Holy Name were favorable and I was able to develop many good friendships. The HN was manned by – or I might say “woman-ed” by – Sisters of Charity Leavenworth. They always had access to a ruler and they had the well deserved reputation of not putting up with much horse play. Usually you could be fore warned of their approach by the rattling of their rosary beads. Again I can attest to that as I did have some run ins with my 5th grade teacher as we really didn’t always seem to see eye to eye. (I’ll add an addendum later on.) I really didn’t hear it mentioned in HN. But, I understand that in other Catholic schools there was a warning “the hoods are coming.” My graduation class in 1953 was the first one from the new building. Previously classes were held in the old four room red brick school house on the corner. There were doors between the rooms and often times we would find ourselves with just one sister trying to manage two class rooms at the same time. You would hear things like “OK James Marron you had best behave yourself or you will be cleaning erasers and the chalk board after class.” And I must confess that I found myself with chalk dust all over me on several occasions. Everything considered I think that I came out with a fairly decent education.

“Adolescence” – Hmmm!! Let’s see now. About the only thing that I can say for that stage of my life was that I was pretty much “devoid of sense.” We had developed kind of a “gang” in our neighborhood. One of our “trades” was that of shoplifting which we became fairly adept at. I think that we could very easily have become professionals. Fortunately, before that time came, my conscience came to life and I purposefully made a mistake that brought me face to face with the store manager and most embarrassingly with my parents. What really put the fear of God in me was when they had me pack up my suitcase and we headed down the road towards Worland and the Wyoming Boys School. Enroute and luckily for me the folks decided to change their itinerary and we just made a big circle and headed back to Sheridan. I don’t think that black and white stripes would have done much for me.

Then it was on to good old SHS where I graduated with the class of 1957. At the time I really didn’t have a clue as to what I wanted to do “when I grew up.” Some aptitude tests indicated that Business would be a pretty good field for me to enter, so I focused pretty much on Business and Accounting courses. However, if the truth were to be known, I probably majored in “Golf”/”Snooker”/”8-Ball” and “9-Ball” down at the Ritz. I wasn’t nearly as good as some of the “local pros,” but I did go home with a nice pocket full of change every now and then – just enough to keep me hooked with a cue stick. While at SHS I guess that I was kind of a “wanna be” athlete. I especially enjoyed playing basketball. The problem was that, with my glasses, I really couldn’t play competitively/aggressively enough. In my freshman year I did try out for the Colts, but I only lasted a couple of weeks before “not making the cut.” So much for my HS athletics. However, there was still the intra-mural sports program that I enjoyed immensely.

Right after HS I decided to join the Navy. That in itself really was kind of strange because about the only thing that I could do was to dog paddle. Anyway, at the time I had what I later learned was a case of “white frock syndrome.” That is that my pulse jumps up when ever I’m around doctors. It took me two physicals at the Naval Center in Butte, MT for them to figure that one out. Then I was off to the Naval Training Center in San Diego. I guess that they figured that they could teach me to swim, but they couldn’t do much for my eyesight. With my glasses my vision was corrected enough to meet standards. My tour of duty was probably one of the shortest one on record. I was only an enlisted man for a few weeks when I was offered a medical discharge. My superior discerned that if I lost my glasses while out at sea I would be in a real pickle and that it would probably be best to for me “ship out” and head back to Sheridan. That left me with still trying to figure out what “I wanted to do when I grew up.”

“Education, cont.” - I opted to enroll in Sheridan College which was then housed in the old hospital building and some adjacent temporary buildings. I decided to pick up where I left off in HS and take some more Business Mgmt courses. That didn’t work out all that well either because I didn’t get along all that well with the head of the Department. Then things definitely took a turn for the better. I noticed that a course in Forestry was being offered and it really caught my eye. This time I was able to stick it out and graduated with the class of 1961. We were the first graduating class from the new complex out by Woodland Park. My next step took me to Moscow, ID and the University of Idaho – College of Forestry. Fortunately, I was able to transfer all my credits from SC and was able to complete my course of study in two more years graduating in 1963 with a BS Forest Management degree.

“Employment, etc” – As I recall, besides caddying at the Country Club, my earliest sources of income came from helping my Dad tear and down and salvage lumber from box cars that were scheduled to be scrapped. It seems as if we tore into several of them before we had accumulated more lumber than we needed. Railroading was in our blood for quite a while. Dad’s father was an engineer with the C B & Q and Dad was a welder on the “Repair Track” in Sheridan. I have a sneaking suspicion that Dad always wanted me to follow suit as he kept making connections for me to get a job. For a few summers I did work as a “Gandy dancer” in the Sheridan area and then later on as the Roundhouse clerk. That was the extent of my railroading career. Then during my stint at Sheridan College I pumped gas and washed cars at the Mid Continent station at the foot of Courthouse Hill. So you see I really did jump around some never really finding “what I wanted to do when I grew up” until I finished up my studies at U of I. During my summer vacations I worked in various locations in southern Idaho with the BLM mostly on forest inventory crews. After graduation I was employed by the BLM in Spokane, WA. It was while I was in Spokane in 1964 that I “changed horses in the middle of the stream” and accepted my first permanent job with the Forest Service in Northern California. From 1964 to 1980 I held positions on the Six Rivers, Lassen and Shasta-Trinity National Forests. My first assignment was on the Mad River District of the Six Rivers NF. That assignment started off with a bang. I arrived there right in the middle of the winter of Northern California’s winter of 1964 “1000 Year Flood.” The rivers had all flooded and I couldn’t get to my station for several weeks. Mostly I was involved in Timber Management. However, my last assignment was the Recreation Officer on the Weaverville District of the Shasta – T. Of all my assignments I found that one to be the most rewarding and enjoyable. I was accused by many of getting paid for doing something that many folks had to travel a great distance and pay for. During my career with the FS I developed many very close friendships that have lasted until this day. On the other hand I had problems with some of my superiors during my last assignment. I was told that I had “problems with authority.” That really wasn’t the case at all. But I do admit to “having problems with those abusing authority.” That situation resulted in my opting to resign rather than accepting what I felt to be an undesirable transfer.

“My Vocation, etc” In 1977 All these job related problems kind of helped to precipitate my experiencing a “Mid-Life Crisis.” It was kind of like St Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus. Anyway the Lord definitely did get my attention. Although, I think that he had some help from my brother Richard, my Mother, my sister Marge and a fellow forester from U of I named Roy Doner. All had previously had “religious experiences.” I kept getting “epistles” from all of them suggesting that it was time for me to begin “changing my ways.” Then along came the Lord who ”not so gently pulled the carpet out from under my feet.” Actually I am a “cradle Catholic,” and one would have thought that I would have taken better care of myself spiritually. However, that definitely wasn’t true in my case. I guess the Lord allows those kinds of experiences to happen in order to show His sovereignty in our lives. That “crisis” was the beginning of my own “conversion experience.” Eventually I participated in a “Life in the Spirit” seminar and began attending local Prayer Meetings and Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship functions. It was during these times that I received a “word” regarding “what I was supposed to do when I grew up.” I was being called into the ministry of “service.” The next question to be answered was “where?” That question was answered in 1981 when I first visited the Benedictine Monastery in Pecos, NM. I had come out for a short visit to attend the SW Catholic Charismatic Conference being held in Albuquerque that year and decided to stay over a few days at the Monastery to discern a possible vocation there. As it turned out as soon as I drove through the gate “I knew that I knew that I knew” Pecos was where I belonged. I entered the Postulancy program as soon as I arrived and then began my Novitiate in 1982. The following year I made my Simple Vows which lasted for three years. Finally, in 1986 I made my Perpetual Vows. Last fall in 2008 I celebrated my Silver Anniversary of making my Simple Vows.

It really doesn’t seem possible that I have been here that long. Over the years I have been able to fine tune my call to “service” to what I call my “ministry of logistical support.” I just kind of do whatever needs to be done. Although, my main assignment is to manage our Holy Spirit Bookstore/Dove Publications ministries.

Back to my encounter with my 5th grade teacher – shortly after I arrived here I attended a Community retreat that included a “Healing of Memories” session. During that time that sister’s name came to mind. I got a lead on her where abouts from a couple members of Community who were former SCL’s. I was able to contact my former teacher and made amends for being such an ornery student. She immediately responded and tried to explain why she acted as domineering as she did. I guess she was fresh out of her Novitiate and our class was the first one that she had. She had been fore warned by her superiors that the first thing that she had to do was to let the students “know who was boss.” That certainly did explain a lot of things, and we have been friends to this day. Now, as Paul Harvey may have said you have heard “the rest of the story.”

In the event that you may be interested in learning a little more about who we are and what we do you can check out our web site @ www.pecosmonastery.org