James Jeffrey Girard
Corpus Christi, TX

James Jeffrey Girard died on Friday, April 19, 2013 four months after being diagnosed with kidney cancer. He was only 69 years old.

Jim Girard was born August 18, 1943 in Ishpeming, Michigan but grew up in Kooskia, Idaho as the second child of Gerald Arthur Girard and Alice Tousignant Girard. After four years as a paratrooper and then SAC Headquarters communications expert in the Air Force, he met my mom while she was a senior at Bellevue High School in Nebraska. They married the summer of 1965 - one day after her graduation - then moved to Lewiston, Idaho where my brother and I were born. He began his career with UPS there as a courier and tractor-trailer driver. In 1972 he transferred to mom's home state of Texas where he became a division manager for UPS in Houston. Fifteen years later and now a station operations manager with FedEx they moved to the Coastal bay area.

He called his marriage a love story and his life a pretty damn good one. Always together my parents found happiness living on the gulf shore spending nearly 20 years in a little blue house - nothing more than a fishing shack really - on Copano Bay in Rockport. That's where Mom pampered the geese and my Dad would wake to a cup of coffee and the first cast of the day off his pier.

In 2005 they moved to Greenbriar Apartments in Corpus Christi. There they found good neighbors, the unforgettably remarkable HEB on Alameda, and the very best of friends in Erdal & Marcy of Cafe Calypso. They knew him so well that his daily usual, a double vanilla latte, was pretty much made before the car was completely in park. He found solace this past year with the dinnertime crew of regulars and staff at Denny's on SPID. In January he moved to Homewood Residence. Through the support of their staff he lived independently until April 8th. The final days of his life were spent in the greatest of comfort and care with the Odyssey Hospice nurses at Trinity Towers, his daughter, and her mother-in-law by his side.

Never far from the water, Dad's favorite memories were catching the limits for red with the best of guides & guys from Houston - Scotty Allan, George Knighten, and Richard Abuzalef as well as sharing the enjoyment of fishing after midnight on Bob Hall Pier with his grandchildren Grace and Andrew.

My father was loved and is dearly missed by all those who knew him. He was preceded in death by his wife of 46 years Linda Nell Philips Girard at the age of 64 on February 20, 2012 and son Jeffrey Arthur Girard (Don Henri Molineaux to SCA) at the age of 41 on November 26, 2009.

A memorial service will be held at 3pm on Saturday, May 4, 2013 at Homewood

Residence located at 6410 Meadowvista Drive, Corpus Christi, TX 78414.

Donations in remembrance of my parents Jim & Linda Girard can be made to Texas State Parks and Coastal Fisheries of theTexas Parks & Wildlife Foundation (http://www.tpwf.org/index.php/ways-to-give). Other than each other, those were their greatest of passions.

Originally published Friday, May 03, 2013