James H. Meiklejohn Jr., of Randolph, NH, and Brunswick, ME, died in Brunswick on Dec. 14, 2014. He was 87 years old. Jim and his wife Meg had been spending winters at the Thornton Oaks retirement community in Brunswick since 2010.
Jim was born on Oct. 25, 1927, in Pawtucket, RI, to James H. and Willie A. Meiklejohn. He graduated from Pawtucket High School in 1945 and Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1950, following a year in the U.S. Army.
He then began a long career in the life insurance industry, eventually leading the management training operations at the Connecticut General Life Insurance Co., now known as Cigna.
In 1951, he married Margaret Tatum Hilles in Randolph, NH, where her family had a summer home. Jim and Meg first lived near Philadelphia and near Syracuse, NY, and in 1961 moved with their three young boys to Simsbury, CT, where they would stay for 27 years, always returning to New Hampshire in the summers. In 1966, they bought the inn that had hosted their wedding reception 15 years earlier and gradually renovated it into a four-season residence, to which they moved at Jim’s retirement in 1988.
His family and community life was centered on the outdoors, especially outdoor sports: hiking, downhill skiing, cross-country skiing, tennis, and platform tennis. In later years, his love of the outdoors found a new outlet in local land protection, through his work with the Randolph Community Forest Commission and the Randolph Conservation Commission, which he chaired. He and Meg traveled often, particularly to mountainous destinations including Switzerland, Norway, New Zealand, Scotland, Morocco, Alaska and, twice in the 1990s, to Nepal, where they trekked to above 18,000 feet near Mt. Everest.
Jim could lay a dry stone wall and sweat copper plumbing pipe, and also cared about using words well. He was an avid reader, a succinct speaker and a thoughtful critic, and his advice came wrapped in gentle questions rather than directives. He often made fun of himself (“frequently wrong, but never in doubt!”), and enjoyed unhorsing verbal obfuscators as much as he enjoyed a good riddle, pun or crossword puzzle.
He leaves Meg, his wife of 63 years, and his three sons: Brad of Eagle River, AK, Randy (Diane Sokal) of Brookline, MA, and Scott (Ellen Hayward) of Harpswell, ME, and grandchildren Henry and Elizabeth Meiklejohn.
A memorial gathering will be held in Randolph, NH, in summer 2015. In lieu of flowers, Jim’s family welcomes contributions in his memory to the Randolph Foundation (P.O. Box 283, Gorham, NH 03581) or the Randolph Mountain Club (P.O. Box 279, Gorham).
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