from the Memorial Service at First Parish in Wayland, Massachusetts (Unitarian Universalist)

officiated by Stephen A. Landale, ministerial intern

on October 15, 1999

James Leonard Dionne was the first child born to Ruth and Leonard Dionne on April 22, 1948 right here in Cambridge and grew up in Westwood. After Jim came two more children, Mark and Jeanne.

Jimmy’s childhood was often very difficult. He was beset with serious health problems, becoming a kidney patient at the tender age of two. He and over a dozen other young children were participants in a study to determine the most effective means of treating kidney patients at a time when medical knowledge in this area was very limited. Unlike all of the other children in this group, Jimmy lived to become an adult. He survived because of his good fortune in being the recipient of the treatments that worked the best -- and because of his strong character. As his mother puts it, "He coped."

Jim’s childhood was partly the life of a child with special health needs, partly the life of a "normal" child, and mostly the explosive life of a spirited human being who liked to squeeze all he could out of life. Jimmy had fifteen operations as a child, and his condition sometimes left him looking swollen. Some children shunned or teased him, but many befriended him, less out of compassion than out of respect for his character and a fondness for his personality.

Early on, Leonard and Ruth could see that their son was an exceptionally intelligent boy. They had him skip a grade, and that same year his condition kept him out of school for over a month. Still, Jimmy as always persevered and did not indulge in self-pity. Despite his condition and his being younger than his classmates, Jimmy made friends and was admired for his spunk. He liked skateboarding and many of the things that other kids his age liked. He was nicknamed "Dio" and "hotshot."

Jim had an especial fondness for science projects of the homemade variety. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Imagine you are Jimmy’s mother driving home in your car, and on the sidewalk ahead you see somebody with their head wrapped in medical bandages, and your gut twists and turns and tells you that this person is your own son! It was indeed Jimmy, walking home after a little visit to the doctor that followed a little scientific experiment involving setting model planes on fire – things got out of hand and he set himself on fire! This is what I mean by "explosive" personality!

And yet this same personality handled the crises calmly: he rolled around to get the flames out and walked to the doctor. As a boy and as a man, Jim was wild in some ways and calm and steady in others. Sometimes both at the same time.

Jim’s father was fascinated with his son. Beginning to notice an unusual capacity for memory, Leonard asked Jimmy to give a book report. When Jimmy had finished the book and was ready, his father took the book and said, "Now tell me about this book." Jimmy proceeded not to offer a summary or a critique of the book, but a nearly verbatim retelling of its contents. Leonard listened with amazement as Jimmy spoke aloud the words Leonard saw on the page. Page after page.

Jim’s extraordinary memory was to prove extremely useful to his lifelong passion, discovered at the age of eight: ham radio. Leonard made a very good educated guess when he hoped that his curious and intelligent son would like the gift of a Radio Shack radio. But how could Len have foreseen his son appearing in the newspaper and becoming a LICENSED ham radio operator within three years -- and then going on to become a member of an elite group of ham radio operators setting out for new countries and new islands as if they were astronauts going to the moon?! With the world of licensed ham radio operators watching – or, rather, listening – Jimmy boldly went where no ham had gone before, skillfully establishing new radio towers in remote lands. And it all started with his father’s gift!

Be careful what you give your children!

Ham radio was more than a hobby for Jim, it was a way of life. His sister Jeanne remembers falling asleep to the deep-deep-deep of Jim’s late-night radio communication. It’s a good thing Jim didn’t turn out to be a Russian spy, because the Cold War might have gone very differently. He loved using his mind, and he loved to communicate with others. To many he was not "Jim" but "K 1 Mike Easy Mike," his ham radio "handle." If he inherited his father’s self-taught scientific skills, he also inherited his mother’s love of conversation. As a young adult working at a hardware store, "old ladies loved him." He could be very pleasant and outgoing.

Not too surprisingly, Jim’s brother and sister knew a different Jim than his parents knew. Or those little old ladies bamboozled by his charm. Jeanne recalls her wonderful times going out "for a spin" with her big brother Jim. The vehicle was a two-seater dune buggy with no seat belts and no roll bar. The terrain was windy. The speed was fast. The driver was Jim, who looked in those days like "a young Sean Penn." You might think of these as "hold on to your hat" kinds of rides, but if you had a hat, you’d have to let go of it when you put your hands underneath your seat just to stay in! Jeanne remembers her brother’s driving as very fast but also very controlled. Believe what you will.

Jeanne also went to Woodstock with Jim when she was 16 and he was 21. They forgot to tell their parents that they were also bringing their respective "significant others." They were too far away to hear the music. Jim looked nothing like a hippie. When they woke up in the morning, the ground their tent rested upon had become a swamp in the night’s rains. They had a wonderful time. Jeanne saved her ticket.

When I asked Mark about his big brother, Mark flashed a knowing smile and said, "He taught me a thing or two." We can only wonder what Jim taught Mark. Maybe it’s how to get a girl, take her to a remote area to park, get stuck in the snow, and burn your car up trying to start it. There you go, little brother. See this model plane set?…

Jimmy wasn’t always so rambunctious as a youth and teenager. He liked to play trumpet – I guess that’s not the most subtle instrument. Musically, what he liked to do best was listen to it. Jim always had lots of music – Everly Brothers, Tom Rush, Arlo Guthrie, and more. He also liked to play pretend DJ. Back in the days of 45’s that required those big yellow plastic things to attach the 45 to the spindle, Jim helped anyone within earshot to rock on.

He had a tender side as well. Jim had a close relationship with his grandmother, Helen Sweet, who read to him when he was a small child. He loved nature throughout his life. He fed birds, and he loved his cat, Crystal.

His father tells a story, one of those seemingly insignificant events that stick in your craw for years. While busy at a worktable together, Jimmy and his dad noticed a spider hanging down from his web. Jimmy looked closely at the spider and said, "What are those things beneath its eyes?" Len couldn’t even see the small spots Jimmy was talking about. Len tells this story to relate Jimmy’s acute vision, which, along with his sense of hearing and his phenomenal memory, helped him so much with ham radio and his other projects. I think this story also tells us about Jim’s character, as a child and as an adult: when he saw something new, he studied it to learn more. His interest in the world was perhaps strongest for things mechanical, but even something as small and insignificant as a spider could hold his attention.

Jimmy was fascinated with fire stations. The family could not drive past a fire station without stopping to check it out. I’m no psychologist, but I can’t help but juxtapose Jim’s love of fire stations and his experience of setting himself on fire.

In the breadth of his interests, his curiosity, his intensity, and his taste for mischief, Jim resembles the American hero responsible for our having fire stations, Ben Franklin.

And also like Ben Franklin, Jim loved the sensual pleasures of life. For breakfast, it had to be pizza and soda. For his mother, who tried to make him all sorts of delicious breakfasts, he was impossible to please in this regard. But from Jim’s perspective, he was not difficult to please at all. Just give me pizza and soda, he said. Later his tastes evolved into pizza and beer. But at some point he became a lover of gourmet foods, and he took to the kitchen himself, making pesto pasta dishes and much more.

Jim was an industrious worker. At the age of ten, he took up a paper route to pay for radio equipment. At the age of fifteen, he ran a gas station by himself. He was independent, self-sufficient, and trustworthy. His college years were a confusing time, however. He went to the University of Massachusetts to study engineering, transferred to accounting, at which he excelled. But he wasn’t happy with that, either, so he dropped out of school. It was then that he worked for a hardware store, but I guess charming little old ladies lost its charm, because he returned to college to study Russian History. He fell in love with Russian writers like Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.

His Russian History degree qualified Jim to work on as assembly line at Polaroid. But, once again, Jim’s natural abilities and industriousness helped him move up at Polaroid. He maintained the company’s central computer until he went on disability ten years ago. He was a dedicated worker whose intelligence and character earned the trust of his company.

But there is no denying the fact that his true vocation, the work of his heart, was ham radio. He was in an elite group at the top of his field. His skills with Morse code were unrivalled. Jim loved many things about ham radio, including the mental challenge, the friendships he made through it, and the competition. Just as the world watched the superpowers race to the moon, a much smaller but more enthusiastic group watched ham radio pioneers race to construct new towers on remote islands. The competition was friendly, however. When a new tower was constructed, one of the first things the ham radio pioneer did was notify his comrades. Jim was always there when it happened, regardless of the time here in the Eastern Time Zone. Geneviève did not say, but I am sure that she, like Jeanne, has often fallen asleep to the comforting sound of the beep-beep-beep of Jim’s radio.

Ham radio meant an excuse to travel around the world, and people to stay with wherever he and Geneviève went. It also meant an excuse to go to conventions and drink himself under the table. Moderation may be a virtue, but it was not Jim’s virtue.

Geneviève came into Jim’s life when he was 33 or 34. They met at Mark and Cyndi’s engagement party; Geneviève was and is a close friend of Cyndi. Jim was taken with her. He said to Cyndi, "Set me up with her."

Geneviève says that she was, and I quote, "totally unimpressed with him at first."

But the opinion that really counts in these matters is usually the boy’s sister. Jeanne knew from the start, even before they got together, that Geneviève was the right kind of woman for Jim.

Mark and Cyndi had Geneviève and Jim over for dinner a few times in an obvious set-up. Geneviève began to like Jim, but he was actually shy around her. Maybe he was playing hard to get; we’ll never know. Whatever the case, Geneviève knew how to proceed. She asked him over to install a radio in her car, and then she took him out to dinner in Cambridge. Later, they danced at Mark and Cyndi’s wedding.

Soon, they got married themselves by the Reverend Ken Sawyer of this church at the Wayside Inn. Geneviève’s Swiss relatives brought those long horns that reach the ground, and they let the Americans blow them.

Jeanne’s instincts proved to be correct. Geneviève turned out to be a perfect companion and soul-mate for Jim. She even, without his knowing it, taught herself Ham radio skills. They traveled together, cooked and ate together, they laughed together. She was a grounding presence for him. The best testimony came from Jim himself. Not long ago Jim told members of his family that he literally could not have lived such a long time without Geneviève, who cared for him in so many ways.

Many people cared for Jim. Jim’s father donated his kidney for a life-saving transplant operation in 1975. Jim’s family all supported and admired him. But his health in recent years became much worse. While he received some of the best treatment available in his time, these treatments contributed to other health problems. Kidney patients today are very fortunate for recent advances in medicine. Jim needed two hip replacements about two years ago and had been declining for the past few years, although recently his health had improved. It is a relief to know that some of his last days were good ones.

James Dionne lived what in some ways was a very difficult and painful life. He had well over twenty operations. He went on disability at a young age. But the one thing that I have heard everyone say about James Dionne was that he never felt sorry for himself.

Jim could be very hard on himself, a perfectionist to the "tee." And, unknown to many, he carried doubts and fears, even the fear of going to Hell. But he never let these fears get the best of him.

James Dionne was a man who noticed things, and appreciated them. He was curious about the world. He wanted machines and systems to work better, to serve human needs like communication and putting out fires. He was an energetic, optimistic man who always strove to put his skills to good use.

Dealt a very difficult hand in life, Jim played it as best he could. He enjoyed life. He explored and studied life. Despite an earlier wound in his heart, he reached out and found, with the encouragement of his family, a perfect partner for himself. He never stopped trying. He took the high road in life.

Jim touched those around them. He inspired courage in others. I would like to close with the words of his mother, reflecting on what she learned from Jim. Ruth says, "We learned to hope! Don’t give up!"

The music you are about to hear is a favorite of Jim’s, and of his family.

It is Phil Ochs’ "When I Am Gone."