This is my memorial site for one of my most memorable friends in life, a distant cousin, an Air Force veteran, and an adopted family member by the name of James Daniel Arthur, a fella almost everyone called Jim. While I referred to him as Jim in public and work environments, for me he will always be remembered as “Pops”. Born on January 3, 1940, Jim was the only son of Mildred Mae Forman Arthur (1908-1995) and Daniel Westfall Arthur (1898-1988). He had one sister. Named Shirley, she was 10 years older than Jim. She married a fella named John, and they had two children, Scott and Anne. John died from Cancer during the G.W. Bush inaugural and Shirley passed away from a ruptured aorta in 2000. Pops lost his battle with Cancer on May 24, 2019.
My favorite photo of Jim was this one taken in 2015 by his last girlfriend. Albeit their girlfriend/boyfriend relationship was short-lived, they remained close friends until he passed. It was for his 75th birthday in 2015 that I arranged for Pops and her to visit the Troll Haven castle at Troll Haven Bandy Farms in Sequim Washington. He had talked about the Troll Haven property for years, trying to get me to buy it for our family retirement. It had long been his dream to spend his final years in Sequim, and while he had a place there, he decided he was happier living the resort life in Central Oregon and spent most of his final years there. Ironically, his last girlfriend passed away only four months after he did.
Jim graduated in 1957 from Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Upon graduating from high school, Jim enlisted in the United States Air Force. It wasn’t long before he mysteriously dropped off the records during his tour of duty in Southeast Asia. It was not until 2011 that I learned he had been in the areas later monitored by The Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observations Group (MACVSOG), a highly-classified, U.S. joint-service organization that consisted of personnel from Army Special Forces, the Air Force, Navy SEALs, Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance units, and the CIA. For more information on MACVSOG, I suggest you read this article published in the Military Times on August 2023. Pops was one of many who struggled throughout his lifetime with post-traumatic stress disorder.