Thank you for taking the time to visit this web-site. The next two pages attempt to recall the life of my Great Uncle James W. Willoughby. I do have vivid recollections of maternal family gatherings where the exploits of Jim ‘Kid’ were remembered but not always in a positive light. I was never very certain what was fact and what was fiction. I suppose over the years I concluded the depth of these conversations had more to do with the amount of Irish whiskey consumed at these assemblages than actual fact. My Grandfather, in his melodic Irish brogue, would suggest these stories where a lot of ‘blarney’ but one has to understand that Jim ‘Kid’ Willoughby was an in-law of no account, at least in his view. But my research into Jim’s life has revealed that he lived a far more colorful life that far exceeded the anecdotal stories recalled by my family.

In February of 2007 my Uncle Ben died at the age of 85 years, he was the last of my Mother’s family generation. I had the good fortune to spend three days with Uncle Ben, of the last week he was alive. I was able to listen once again to the alleged tells of Jim ‘Kid’. . .