Published in the May 11, 2020 edition.
WAKEFIELD — James H. Meuse Jr., 88, beloved husband, father, and grandfather passed away peacefully at Elmhurst HealthCare on Friday May 1, 2020.
Jim was born on December 12, 1931 in Boston. He was the son of the late James Meuse Sr. and the late Frances (Poitier) Meuse.
He was raised in Dorchester and Malden and graduated from Malden High School in 1950. Upon graduation he worked as a TV repairman for Jordan Marsh. His intense passion for anything involving electronics and communications followed him into the military, where his basic training at Sampson Air Force Base and Keesler Air Force Base leaned heavily toward what we now refer to as STEM.
First in his class at Keesler, he was offered an opportunity to be trained as a spy. Turning down that offer, he was asked what he wanted to do. His response was “I want to know everything about radar.” So basic training was followed by a year at Kimpo Air Base near Seoul, Korea, as a radar repairman. Here he developed a reputation as the go-to-guy for fixing broken down electronics equipment using parts scrounged from a used electronics shop in downtown Seoul. He was a true polymath. There was no repair he could not accomplish. No new subject matter he could not master. He was extremely intelligent and always valued the importance of higher education, a gift he was denied due to life’s circumstances but which he was able to bestow on his children.
Upon his honorable discharge in 1956, he started a long career at IBM as a field engineer, where he remained for 25 years until his retirement in 1981.
He married Jeanette M. Scarlata on April 18, 1959 and settled in Wakefield where they raised four children. Theirs was a welcoming home. As their children grew older, they learned to expect a constant stream of unannounced visitors. Jim’s hobbies included ham radio (K1PAW; his conversations included one with the Kon-Tiki expedition) and anything else related to communications, including his long quest to bring cable television to Wakefield which he was instrumental in bringing to fruition. Home projects were a constant and ranged from making homemade root beer, fudge, soufflés and a well-regarded fruitcake to constructing a porch essentially single-handedly. His pursuit of challenging and varied projects was a trait that he definitely passed on to his children.
Jim is survived by his loving wife, Jeanette, his sons James Meuse and his wife, Lai Kuan, Kevin Meuse and his wife, Susan Wong, and Brian Meuse, and his daughter, Mariane Mears, and her husband, William, and seven precious grandchildren, Rachel, Conor, Jeremy, Miranda, Amy, Matilda, and Scarlett.
Services for Jim will be announced at a future date when we can all safely gather to remember and celebrate his life. Having spent his entire adult life caring for us, we know that is how he would want it.
