John James “Jim” Leineweber

1910s–1920s

Born 28 August 1913 at home on Flanders Street in Portland, Oregon, the second of five children of John Baptiste Leineweber and Margaret Madigan. His grandfather Cornelius Madigan lived with the family. Went to Cathedral School.

1930s

Co-captained the Columbia Prep basketball team, then played four varsity seasons at Columbia University (renamed the University of Portland), finishing as captain and senior class president. Graduated in 1936 and joined General Petroleum in 1937, transferring to Seattle in 1939.

1940s

Navy officer from 1942 to 1946: coding officer at Dutch Harbor, Alaska, then at the Naval Supply Depot in Clearfield, Utah, rising to lieutenant. Married Ensign Mary Alice Dee on 5 April 1945 and returned to General Petroleum in Portland.

1950s–1980s

Unit chief in General Petroleum's Portland accounting office, later an independent insurance agent until 1986. Raised six children at 4063 SE Ash Street and served as a treasurer for the St. Vincent de Paul Society.

1990s

Celebrated his fiftieth wedding anniversary in the spring of 1995 and died at home in Portland on 16 October 1995.

A Portland Boyhood

John James "Jim" Leineweber was born at 9:45 on the evening of August 28, 1913, at his family's home at 547 Flanders Street in Portland, Oregon. He was the second of five children of John Baptiste Leineweber and Margaret Marie Madigan: Peter was two years older, and William ("Pinky"), Thomas, and Margaret came after him. It was a full house; in 1920 his grandfather Cornelius Madigan and his aunt and uncle, Sarah and Magnus Hansen, lived there too. In the summer of 1921 the family and Grandfather Madigan stayed at The Rolfe in Long Beach, Washington, and on the Fourth of July, 1926, at the Ancient Order of Hibernians' celebration on Council Crest, twelve-year-old Jim took second place in the men's race for ages twelve to fifteen.

He went to Cathedral School and then Columbia Preparatory High School, where in 1931–32 he was co-captain and center of the basketball team, the "Irishmen." By the end of February he had scored 184 points for the season.

Columbia's Last Team

Jim stayed on at Columbia University, on the same North Portland campus, and played four seasons of varsity basketball. As a freshman center he missed two games with poison oak, and in April 1933 he won his bout in the Monogram Club's annual "Columbia Cauliflower Show" by a third-round knockout. In February 1935, in the middle of his junior season, the school changed its name to the University of Portland, but the basketball team finished the season under the old name, making it the last team ever to play as Columbia. Jim, now at guard and forward, scored 14 points in one game against Puget Sound and sank a free throw in overtime to beat the Pacific Packards; his 128 points made him the team's second-highest scorer, and he was elected captain for the next season.

His senior season was dogged by a twisted ankle that kept him out of several games in January 1936, yet he still finished third on the team with 119 points, known for his defense as well as his scoring, and played in the Oregon collegiate Olympic elimination tournament that March. Off the court he was vice-president of the Monogram Club, a founding member of the Economics Club, and circulation manager of The Log yearbook, and in February 1936 he became senior class president when the previous president resigned. He also hit the winning home run for the Cathedral baseball team against St. Ignatius in the summer of 1935. On June 7, 1936, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in business administration, in a ceremony at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. He was six foot one, with blond hair and blue eyes.

From Salem to Seattle

Jim's first job, in the second half of 1936, was as a survey report editor for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Salem, checking the reports of ten interviewers surveying family incomes. After a stint writing up sales orders at the U.S. Rubber Company, he joined the accounting department of the General Petroleum Corporation in Portland in October 1937 as a price clerk, and in April 1939 the company transferred him to its offices in Seattle's Dexter Horton Building. In Seattle he won a varsity basketball award at the Washington Athletic Club and by 1942 was living at the College Club, a club for college men on Spring Street. He was best man at a friend's wedding in 1936 and at his brother Peter's in 1938.

Dutch Harbor and Clearfield

Jim was commissioned an ensign in the Naval Reserve in May 1942 and reported for active duty in Seattle in June as a coding officer. He sailed north on the USS U.S. Grant and landed at Dutch Harbor, in Alaska's Aleutian Islands, on July 5, only to be sent on to Kodiak for his assignment, which turned out to be Dutch Harbor. After stops at Sitka and Kodiak he was back on July 21, 1942, reporting to the Naval Operating Base. For the next twenty months he stood coding-room watches and served as custodian of registered publications. He was promoted to lieutenant (junior grade) in May 1943 and got home to Portland on leave that summer.

In April 1944 he was transferred to the Naval Supply Depot at Clearfield, Utah, as its welfare and recreation officer; he was made a full lieutenant that July. In September a WAVES ensign from Pittsburgh, Mary Alice Dee, arrived at Clearfield as assistant to the welfare and recreation officer, the job Jim then held. They were married on April 5, 1945, at the Hill Field air base chapel in Clearfield and spent a five-day honeymoon at the Shirley Savoy Hotel in Denver. Jim's other duties at Clearfield included barracks officer, overseeing the athletic program, and later civil readjustment officer and ship's service officer. In March 1946 he took twenty days' leave to bring his family home from Pittsburgh. He left active duty that summer, with the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign ribbon with one star, the American Campaign ribbon, and the World War II Victory Medal, and was discharged from the inactive reserve in 1954.

Family, Work, and Service

Back in Portland in September 1946, Jim returned to General Petroleum and worked his way up through its accounting office, as unit chief for oil stock movements, for the accounting department, and from 1950 for accounts receivable, supervising thirteen employees and the office's IBM accounting systems. That same September he was named the first president of the University of Portland's Metropolitan Club of alumni. After a few years in his mother's house on NW Glisan Street and an upstairs flat on NW Everett, by 1950 Jim and Mary Alice had settled at 4063 SE Ash Street, which was home for the rest of their lives. They raised six children there, among them Greg, Meghan's father. Later in his career Jim worked as an independent insurance agent and broker, retiring in 1986.

His great commitment outside the family was the St. Vincent de Paul Society. In 1974 he became treasurer of its Day Care Center advisory board, and he also served as treasurer of the Portland Council and on the board of St. Martin's Nursery. In 1987 he completed the Society's Ozanam School of Charity and received its Long and Distinguished Service Award, and in December 1992, though he was using a wheelchair, he was still out delivering the Society's baskets.

At Christmas 1993 Jim and Mary Alice went to a party at their son Greg's house, where the menu included clam chowder and an experimental ten-foot-long submarine sandwich. In the spring of 1995 they celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary with the family in the Columbia Gorge. Jim had Parkinson's disease in his later years, and he died at home on October 16, 1995, at eighty-two. He was a member of All Saints parish and was buried at Mount Calvary Cemetery in Portland. Mary Alice died less than three months later.