James R. Thomas (Jim) died peacefully on May 4, 2010, at Birchwood Terrace Health Care with his daughter by his side, after a long struggle with Alzheimer’s disease. Jim was born on July 21, 1925, to Marjorie (Post) and Bradley A. Thomas in Johnson. The youngest of three children, he is predeceased by his parents; sister, Helen; and brother, Brad Jr. Jim spent his formative years in Enosburg, which provided many good friends, a lifelong love for milk and cottage cheese (which he sold door-to-door) and maple syrup (which he produced from his own improvised sugar shack as a teenager). A veteran of the Army Air Corps in WWII, Jim graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Babson College in 1949, and began working in the accounting office of Rutland Hospital. There he met Dorothy Kelly, a surgical nurse who asked him to a dance when her previous date cancelled. "Yo-yo eyes" as she called him, quickly agreed and they married in 1950. Jim went on to earn a master’s degree in hospital administration from Washington University in 1953. Jim took his first job as a hospital administrator at Wickenburg, Ariz., Community Hospital. He fell in love with the west and made it his home as a bona fide "desert rat" for 50 years. After Dot’s death in 1976, Jim worked for the state of Arizona, where mutual friends introduced him to Fran LaJoie, whom he married in 1978. They enjoyed 14 years of marriage until Fran’s passing in 1993. After a stroke in 2006, Jim moved back to Vermont, where he lived with his daughter and her husband, Perry Rianhard, in Shelburne, before moving to the Converse Home in Burlington. Among his survivors is his daughter, Kelly of Shelburne. Jim’s life will be celebrated on June 20, Father’s Day, in the Morgan Room of Aiken Hall at Champlain College. Donations in Jim’s memory may be made to the Salvation Army or the Alzheimer’s Research Institute.