In Memory

James Flowers

Age at Death: 20 Jim passed away on February 28th 1978
Cause of Death: Cancer
Classmate City: Rochester
Classmate State: NY
Survived by: Sisters: Cheryl Flowers Lamme, Penfield, NY, Cathy Flowers Major, East Bloomfield, NY Brother: David A. Flowers, Cedarburg, WI Mother: Ruth L. Flowers, Webster, NY


Jim was a great guy and athlete. He played football for IHS and also was an avid skier and lacrosse player. He left us too soon!



 
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01/23/09 04:34 AM #1    

Robert Connors

I can remember Jim Flowers from Iroquois. He was a big guy, and very friendly. I can also recall he was one of the few who had a mustache at an early age.

02/16/09 12:08 PM #2    

Peter McGrain

It was a huge bummer losing Jim so early, and enough positive stuff could not have been said about him at that sad time. Jimbo and I were best friends since Kindergarten, Jim had that amazing trait which made everyone feel like they were his best friend. He liked to play the big brother role by generously taking you under his wing. For a kid, he was high minded, ethically grounded and totally ahead of the curve. He had the coolest mini-bike around and would let us all take turns riding it down at the flats. He was the first kid to see a UFO. And one time he got in the Irondequoit Press for tracking down and capturing a deranged Rhesus monkey who had escaped from the zoo and was terrorizing all of West Irondequoit. His birthday was June 25th, the last day of school, the best day of the year! Jim was a natural leader. He could romanticize any situation into seeming like a mission of personal honor. His greatest attribute was a righteous sense of organized adventure. He would infect his buddies with the notion that there should never be any doubt about whether or not to seek out a wider worldview, usually via trips, outings, and other extreme excursions. To Jim, preparing and envisioning any undertaking was equally as important as actually doing it. The “psych factor” he called it. We learned to ski and camp out, joined boy scouts, played sports, got driver’s licenses, skipped school, partied, got part time jobs, split for college. Youth was not wasted on Jim. The guy truly deserved a long life. What a solid force he could have become (if only he hadn’t been totally gypped out of it by cancer). When I visited Jim a week before he died he talked about wanting to head out to Colorado to do some ski bumming for awhile. Even at the end, against all odds, he was cooking up new adventures. It was a shocking reality-check when he passed. But I think the handful of us who really knew him well have all managed to nurture and preserve that core part of us which was initially molded by Jim’s powerful outgoing spirit. It has been 32 years and we can still feel his presence, especially when off on adventures of our own, striving to carry on with as much compassion and enthusiasm as Jim might have… imagining Jim’s friendly approval when pushing the limits… Always pulling for the underdog, and, especially, remembering to offer a helping hand, whether asked to or not! In this sense he remains a terrific guide, a good guy to have on your side, still ALIVE and hanging around within all of us who are lucky enough to have had him as our best friend.



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