James Marvin Richards

Services for James “Jim” Richards, 88, formerly of Globe, will be held at Whitney & Murphy Funeral Home on Indian School Road in Phoenix at 11 a.m. on September 14. Jim passed away in Phoenix on August 25, 2024 from pneumonia. He was born prematurely in Chicago on August 12, 1936 and the picaresque tales of his early childhood are from a world long gone...sledding down coal heaps in the winter, stealing random boxes off trucks to find pineapples or girdles or other unfamiliar items inside, riding freight cars to a wartime Ford plant and sitting in a cockpit of a naval plane still under construction, hanging on the outside of streetcars, and with his holding onto a passing cars' bumper while letting his feet slide on the ice.

Fortunate encounters with supportive teachers in high school led him to Eastern Illinois University, which recruited him for both wrestling and football (he passed on the football once on campus) and where he studied physical education and business. He joined the US Army before graduating and spent nearly three years in West Germany with a mobile hospital unit in support of the Berlin Crisis that led to the construction of the Berlin Wall. Taking advantage of the G.I. Bill, Jim finished his degree at EIU upon his honorable discharge from service. After a short sales career in the Midwest and the south, he settled in Globe as a teacher and later school administrator after obtaining his masters at Northern Arizona University. In the course of his thirty-year career he was a teacher, a vice principal, a wrestling coach, a DECA club sponsor, and above all, a mentor. 

His legacy lies not in his formal professional highlights but in his impact on his children and students. For as long as he lived in Globe, people would stop by the house, ask him for a hug, and say, "Everything I am, I owe to this man." He believed in his kids, and they knew it.

Jim Richards is survived by his brother Chuck Richards, his children Shannon (Lou) Pontigon, Ryan Ferland, and Sara Ferland, and three grandchildren. His wife Cheryl, his parents Charles and Lucille, and his brothers, Bobby Richards, and Jerry Richards, preceded him in death.