James Robert "Slammer" O'Donnell

1953 - 2025

Jim was born on May 12th, 1953, in Seattle Washington, the oldest of six children to Fred and Peggy O'Donnell. Jim died peacefully in his sleep on Tuesday August 26th, 2025, in Lynden Washington. Jim grew up in North Seattle behind the Jackson Park Golf course where he had a typical 60's childhood working his paper route and pridefully challenging the patience of his teachers, siblings and parents.
As a child he made several trips north to visit his grandparents that lived in Haines Alaska. It was during these trips that he fell in love with the big State.
After Graduating Ingram High school in 1971 he joined the United States Army and completed basic training and became a medical corpsman spending some time in Germany. While in the service he earned and received National Service Defense medal for M16 Sharpshooter.
After the service he married, then in November of 1976 had his daughter Lindsay Brooke O'Donnell. He spent the following few years living and working in Seattle, but he could not resist the draw to the North, divorced and moved to Juneau, Alaska. In the early 80's Jim worked for the FAA as a Carpenter fixing up structures and building platforms at many of their remote structures throughout Southeast Alaska. He also spent a few seasons commercial fishing around Southeast AK. During one of the long-line fishing trips they ran into some trouble and Jim had to dive into the icy waters of Glacier Bay with a knife in his mouth to swim under the boat and cut the line wrapped in the propeller.
On September 11th, 1982, He married Brenda Nelson, the woman that took on the nearly impossible task of taming his wild side. In this marriage he also inherited Brenda's son Jason as his new stepson.
It was during this time in the early 80's that Jim started his career of installing commercial and residential flooring and partnering up with his good friend Jeff Svinicki to start their own business Juneau Floors, LLC.
In 1985 Jim and Brenda bought their first home together at the base of Thunder Mt. in Juneau, where they had Jim's second child Mikael James O'Donnell.
The Late 80's for Jim were creating very special memories for his family when Lindsay would come up for summer visits and the family Subaru would be loaded up for trips up the Alaska Highway to camp in Denali or play around in the fields and beaches in Haines. The 80's also was the time of one of Jims top 5 life accomplishments, flying naked off the Juneau Sunshine Cove rope swing in the icy waters.
Over the next decade Jim continued his business installing floors all over Southeast Alaska. He also began coaching Mikael's Little league T-ball team. This turned into a huge passion for Jim and he continued coaching for a few seasons and then dedicated several following seasons as the president of the Gastineau Channel Little League. During this time, he also became involved with Juneau Rotary Club. He and Brenda took on the opportunity through Rotary to travel to Mexico and volunteer to help with Project Amigo, helping set up libraries in the villages for the children.
After Mikael graduated high school, Jim and Brenda took a passion to traveling, together they took many trips around the globe to places like Bali, Germany, Ireland, England and Croatia. They also took time to explore many parts of the US, visiting Gettysburg, Washington DC, Boston, Niagara Falls, and NASA Houston Space station.
As Brenda was nearing retirement and crawling around in the flooring business was losing its luster for Jim, they decided to go in a new direction and purchase the gift shop in the Juneau International Airport and rebrand it as Hummingbird Hollow. This shop allowed Jim to shine in his talent of conversation, with the thousands of tourists that came in to purchase specialty Native artwork, or just a pack of gum. This shop also gave Jim opportunity to travel to the remote Northern villages of Alaska, where he purchased handcrafted Native Alaskan artwork for the shop and make many new friendships. At the gift shop Jim loved to present travelers the opportunity to blow on his custom made oosik (look it up) display whistle, which would then give him the perfect opening to explain to them what the whistle was made from.
After a decade or so in the gift shop business Jim and Brenda decided it was time to break away from the cold winters and move a bit South to Lynden, Washington. In Lynden, Jim was officially retired and spent his final years building chicken coops, gardening, pickling almost everything that could be grown in his garden, and making great new friends at his favorite hang-out "The Rusty Wagon". He also spent many days delivering meals for the Lynden Community/Senior Center developing special friendships with the more seasoned individuals.
Jim was known for his extremely unique personality that some may call childish, but his skill of one liners and quick comebacks could also at times be categorized as brilliance. His comment filter was a little thinner than most, which made for great entertainment at any restaurant, bar or gathering. He had a gift of irritating a waitress during the first drink order, but by the end of the meal she would be hugging him and asking him to come back soon. Jim was also a veteran prankster; from his perspective there was never an inappropriate time for a colorful joke or the push of a button from his handy and most trusted fart app (Prior to the app he owned a manually operated battery powered device). Jim's favorite holidays were St. Patrick's Day, Halloween, and April fool's day. However, there is a current signed truce in place on the latter with Jim and some of his family members.
Jim also had an extreme passion for music, he went to many concerts throughout his lifetime, and he always owned an impressive collection of records and cd's. Music was always playing in his household. Although he enjoyed a very wide range of music types and styles from many artists and many decades, Jim felt that Pink Floyd was best listened to at an increased volume around 5am.
Over the years Jim loved to use his carpentry experience and unique creativity to build many playhouses for his children and grandchildren, picture perfect chicken houses, and incredible haunted Halloween graveyard displays that would draw the attention of hundreds of trick or treaters from the other side of town.
Jim's biggest fears were a quiet room, a dull moment or being tickled. Any woman or small child could bring him to his knees begging for forgiveness by simply wiggling their fingers from across the room and threatening to tickle him.
Jim is survived by his wife Brenda O'Donnell; his daughter Lindsay (Larry) McDevitt; grandchildren Ian, Evan, and Jillian McDevitt who all reside in Washington, his Son Mikeal O'Donnell (fiancé Julianne) who reside in Anchorage, AK, step son Jason (Aundra) Murdoch; grandchildren Dylan and Rylan Murdoch who all reside in Auke Bay, AK, Sisters Shawn (Ron) Muzatko, Meg (Dearl) Hankins, Colleen (Bud) Hanson and Julie Wyman, who all reside in Washington and Brother Pat (Vickie) O'Donnell of California. Jim is survived by numerous nieces and nephews. Jim was preceded in death by his Mother Peggy and Father Fred O'Donnell. Jim also had countless friends around the globe who all played a huge part in his happiness in life.
A Celebration of Life is planned for Saturday March 14th, 2026, in Lynden, WA and a second Celebration of Life will be held sometime in the summer of 2026 in Juneau AK.
In Liew of flowers donations can be made to any United States veterans support organization.