“Snoopy says goodbye,” was Jim McQuaide’s signature sign-off on Zoom at the end of each Gila Friends meeting for worship. He would grin and his eyes would twinkle as he waved at us with a hand puppet of the cartoon character Snoopy.
We will not have the joy of seeing Jim with Snoopy again. Jim died in his sleep on July 5, 2023, from complications of end-stage renal disease. For the last few months, his participation in Gila Friends Meeting had been mostly via Zoom in our hybrid meetings for worship, a blessing that arose from our response to COVID-19.
James P. McQuaide, III, was born in Media, PA, to James McQuaide, II, and Cecelia Barbara Horn McQuaide on August 23, 1936. He had a sister, Cecelia Barbara McQuaide, “Aunt Bobbie” to Jim’s children Michael and Karen. His father was a naval architect who, during WWII, took the family to Cape Elizabeth, Maine, where he worked on Liberty ships.
After attending schools in Barnsboro, New Jersey, and graduating high school in Pitman, New Jersey, in 1954, Jim went to Rutgers University for two years, then got drafted … briefly. After calling him up, the Army medically discharged him because he’d had rheumatic fever.
Jim went to an architectural school in New York City, then worked his way up in architectural firms, usually working on corporate buildings. He was a “mechanical-pencil- in-hand” architect, according to Michael. He also was known for his integrity, in one case having been hung by his feet from a rafter and then fired when he complained that others altered his drawings in ways that Jim felt would make the structure unsafe. Among his projects were several Quaker retirement facilities. Most of his work was in the East - New Jersey, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Maine, except for a brief stint in Yakima, Washington, in the 1990s.
Family meant a lot to Jim. While living in South Jersey, he took the bus to an office in Pennsylvania. Karen recalls running down to meet his bus every afternoon; “I got my Dad for a whole two blocks!” When Michael’s pug Pogo died, Jim helped bury the pet and went to breakfast with him to console him.
Music was a big part of Jim’s life. He played the violin, once performing as “the fiddler on the roof ” in the play of that name by the Spotlighters theater group. He loved Harry Belafonte and the Kingston Trio. He was an avid barber-shopper, singing baritone in groups called “Spare Parts” in both Brunswick, Maine, and Silver City, New Mexico. He took a class on Native American flute-making in Maine and made his own flute.
Ever a staunch progressive, Jim loved to tell the story of when he was working in conservative Yakima. His gray VW bug was bedecked with political bumper stickers and his boss asked him to back into his parking spot at work so the stickers would not be visible to passersby!
Between marriages, Jim found Woodbury Friends Meeting in Woodbury, New Jersey, and became a member. Woodbury, a Meeting dating back to the early 1700s, was threatened by a new parking lot next door on the uphill side … rain runoff began to flood the meeting house and the burial ground. Jim’s negotiations with the owners of the property resulted in a diversion of the deluge, for which the Meeting planted a tree in Jim’s honor! He was action-oriented, calling himself a “militant Quaker!”
Phyllis McQuaide recalled that when she married Jim in December 1990 in Hancock, New Hampshire, they had a Methodist minister perform the ceremony and then the participants were invited to sign a Quaker-style calligraphed wedding certificate. She said Jim sometimes attended Friends meetings in Philadelphia and that they participated in other meetings when in Washington State, including in living rooms and once in a teepee. Returning to Maine, both Jim and Phyllis were members of the Midcoast Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Damariscotta.
Before moving to Silver City, Jim and Phyllis lived in Maine, where Phyllis was circulation manager for the Bowdoin College Library. They became close to two South Korean students at Bowdoin, Namsoo Lee and his sister Miyoung Lee, attending their weddings and graduations and family events.
While in Maine, Jim worked for a yacht design firm and founded the Discovery Boatbuilding Program at the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath. He loved the sea.
When Jim applied for membership in Gila Friends Meeting, we welcomed him into our fellowship in October 2013. He was active on the Peace and Social Concerns Committee and was the Meeting’s liaison with AFSC. At one meeting, he stood in as presiding clerk. Jim told one Friend that part of why he and Phyllis returned to Silver City after a brief sojourn back in Maine to be at a lower altitude was because of his affection for Gila Friends Meeting and its people.
Jim was active with the Silver City Community Theatre, appearing as the guard in last year’s performance of “12 Angry Jurors.” He and Phyllis did a duet reading of “Love Letters” at the First Church of Harmony in 2015. His craft skills continued to give him enjoyment, too; he built another Native American flute and several model airplanes.
While he was able, he participated in barbershop quartet singing and was an avid pickle ball player. He got his fresh air on a bicycle, then an e-bike and finally an electric cart.
In his last few weeks, both Michael and Karen traveled to Silver City from their homes in South Jersey to visit with their father in person. “He waited for us,” Karen said, noting that Jim drew his last breath a week after Karen’s visit. During those weeks, his sheer joy at being with his children again was evident to everyone who saw him!
Mourning Jim’s passing are Phyllis, his wife of 33 years; son Michael McQuaide; and daughter Karen McQuaide and her spouse Dan. He also leaves stepson Andrew Haines and his wife Kristina and stepdaughter Stefanie Haines and her husband Dave. He leaves his beloved grandchildren Evan Bell, Aaron Bell, Sam Haines and Alexandra Haines. Namsoo and Johanna now have three children and Miyoung and David have two, all mourning Jim’s passing. On the East Coast, he leaves his dear nephews Kurt and Karl Strohmeyer and their spouses, along with his brother-in-law Bob Strohmeyer and many cousins.