Big Jim

A story about Jim McDowell:

Dozens of people milled in the middle of the gym at Laura Wilder Elementary School. Among them were the 12-year-old boys who only minutes before had finished playing a YMCA basketball game. Faces flushed, their hair matted in sweat, half the boys were spilling into each other, laughing, their eyes lit while the other half stared at the wooden floor, occasionally stealing looks at the jubilation across from them. Beside the boys were their coaches. At the edges forming a ragged circle around the boys and the coaches stood the parents and grandparents of the boys. The mothers clutched cameras while the fathers nodded approvingly at their sons. At the center of them all was Jim.

For three decades Jim McDowell devoted himself to YMCA youth basketball in Sioux Falls – first as a coach and then a referee. On this March night he was the gym supervisor, and besides keeping the referees in cold water, it was his job to present the trophies to the players of the championship game. The responsibility never failed to thrill him. Jim made certain to announce the name of every player loud enough so everyone could hear. But before he read those names, he thanked the parents and the coaches for all they did. He thanked the referees, too.

"Jim always had a smile on his face," says retired YMCA Youth Director Don Arend

A story about Jim McDowell:

Every Sunday morning for eight years – without fail – Jim telephoned his oldest son Matt to tell him what a lousy football team the University of Kansas had. The calls started after Jim, his wife Jean and Matt went to a KU football game on a cloudless September day in 1999. Matt was a junior at KU and finally had convinced his Dad to drive the 450 miles to Lawrence to watch a Jayhawks football game. For the game Jim wore a KU hat and a KU shirt. On the front of the shirt was the Jayhawks logo. Next to the logo were the words THE GOOD. Below that was the Kansas State Wildcats logo next to the words THE BAD. At the bottom of the shirt next to the words THE UGLY was the Missouri Tigers logo.

The stadium was sold-out, but by halftime KU was behind San Diego State University 31-0, and Jim wanted to leave. Exhausted, he had spent the game waving his hands at the field in disgust and muttering about the complete ineptitude of the KU football team. The Sunday morning calls to Matt started soon after that game. They never varied. Jim asked Matt if he had seen the score of Saturday's KU football game. Without waiting for a reply, Jim told him. Occasionally, the Jayhawks had won the day before, but more often than not they had lost by an embarrassing margin.

After that day Jim refused to travel to Lawrence to watch another game. Finally, however, he relented. This past season on a rainy Saturday in October, KU beat the Baylor University Bears 58-10. "After that I never got any calls," says Matt.

A story about Jim McDowell:

Jim lay motionless in a picked cornfield not far from Lake Madison. Next to him lying just as still was his friend Tom Critser. Flying at them 20 feet off the ground were six Canada Geese, wings cupped, feet set.

Jim and Tom met through their sons Matt and Joe. Both boys played baseball, and as Jim and Tom sat and watched their games on slow summer evenings at the diamonds at Covell Lake, it wasn't long before the conversation drifted to fishing and hunting and what the two men liked more in life – which was little. Even quicker was Tom's discovery that subsequent autumn that when Jim hunted, he liked to be the first to shoot and ­– on top of that – he was a crack shot who seldom missed.

So one November afternoon after Jim and Tom had hunted some years together and while Jim was off relieving himself, Tom unloaded the three shells from Jim's shotgun and placed them in his pocket. Minutes after Jim returned, the six Honkers were on the horizon. Springing to his feet, Jim swung his 10-gauge in the direction of one of the birds and squeezed the trigger – once, twice, three times. Click. Click. Click. Seconds later the roar of his voice rushed across the field, sweeping the stalks and stirring the feathers of the three dead geese Tom would be gathering.

In all the November afternoons that have passed since that one – a decade of them – Tom Critser never told Jim McDowell what he had done. Instead, whenever the two went hunting together or – as was often the case – with Jim's youngest son Chris and Chris' friends, Tom always asked Jim if he remembered to load his gun. Jim always told Tom to shut up. "We had a lot of good times," says Tom.

A story about Jim McDowell:

Jim had an older brother and sister and a younger brother and sister. His father was a bricklayer. His mother was a beautician. One day while sitting at the Formica table in the kitchen of their eastside Sioux Falls home eating lunch, Jim concocted a contest for his younger brother Terry and younger sister Lisa. Whichever of the two could find for him the biggest and saltiest potato chip would be the winner. Terry peered into the bag of potato chips, pulled one out and handed it to Jim. Jim ate it slow. Then Lisa peered into the bag of potato chips, pulled one out and handed it to Jim. He ate that chip even slower. Each time Jim declared Lisa the winner. Eventually, Terry had enough and quit. "He was absolutely the best brother I could ever ask for. You were proud to be with him," says Lisa.

A story about Jim McDowell:

It was Jim Vernon who helped Jim McDowell get started umpiring a decade ago, passing on tips, making suggestions and offering encouragement when he thought it was needed. At the beginning Jim worked 15- and 16-year-old VFW baseball games. But it wasn't long before he started calling American Legion high school games and then area amateur games and finally in recent years college games.

It was at the VFW state baseball tournament in Tripp in 2001 that Jim Vernon decided Jim McDowell had become an accomplished umpire. It also was at that tournament that Vernon saw Jim do something he had never seen him do in all the games they had umpired together. Whenever Jim called a strike on a batter, he clenched his fist and pumped his right arm like he always had but not until he turned sideways and took a step to the right. It was more dramatic. And it was unique to Jim.

Later, Vernon teased Jim about the change. "We used to kid a lot," says Vernon, who has umpired in Sioux Falls for 33 years and never saw anyone advance quicker than Jim. "I'd kid him, and he'd kid me. He was a good-natured guy."

Postscript:

Jim McDowell was born and raised in Sioux Falls. He grew up Catholic, liked sports and the outdoors, married when he was 22, had two children and worked delivering beer and later selling liquor to bars and restaurants in South Dakota. One might be tempted to say Jim McDowell was a common man. But nothing could be further from the truth. Jim was one of the most uncommon men I know.

Whenever Jim umpired a baseball game I coached, we talked. I left every single one of those conversations feeling better about me, about life, about the human condition. Jim died Tuesday of a heart attack at the age of 52. In the days since I have been trying to think of someone I know nicer than Jim McDowell. I keep coming up empty.