Late in his life, Jim Schofield began writing a blog. It began this way: “As anyone who knows me at all can tell you, I was a hardcore, world class Luddite until last Thursday (March 9, 2017). A ‘Luddite’ is someone who hates technology (please note: we are not afraid of it, on the contrary, we dominate it through knowledge). Anyway I had a series of heart attacks and was brought back from the dead (literally) by a Zoll Life Vest. Now I am the Bionic Man and this is my inaugural web page (RAH RAH Tech).” Jim was a brilliant double major in physics and mathematics. He also inherited two chronic ailments, bipolar disorder and heart disease. Jim was grateful for lithium, which helped him with the first. Nothing much helped with the other and he began having heart attacks in his 40s. He worked for IBM, for Bell Telephone and its successors, and for the University of California Berkeley. His jobs were in high level computer programming and analysis. For one of the firms he had the assignment of taking newly written software and doing everything he could to make it fail. If it survived Jim’s test, which was chancy, it was ready for worldwide distribution. Jim refused to use email, so when IBM sent him on assignment to Japan a second employee went with him to handle communications back to the office. He hated having his picture taken, so his spirit is now going to haunt all of us who have had anything to do with putting his photo in our reunion materials. A man of strong opinions and deep loyalty to his friends, much missed.
-Fred Ohles ’75
Comments
Jim was my roommate for a year at the Carleton Farmhouse. He was the sweetest person imaginable and an outstanding roommate. We had lots of conversations about my interests in natural history and his interests (at the time) in Far Eastern cultures and how they converged. I am delighted to see he had an assignment in Japan at a later time. The history about his health surprises me, he must have felt this was something to keep private. This is a very sad loss of a capable and thoughtful individual.