Edward James McGraw Jr.

Obituary of Edward James McGraw Jr.
Born in Saginaw to Edward James and Delia Besner McGraw on March 9, 1921, Edward James ("Jim") McGraw Jr. died one month shy of his 104 birthday on February 7, 2025, leaving family and scores of wonderful friends with hundreds of memories of a life well-lived.
Jim died peacefully in his sleep in Tucson, Arizona, near his long-time home in Green Valley. His cremated remains will be interred in the McGraw family plot in Mt. Olivet Cemetery at 11am, Thursday, October 23, 2025. His beloved wife Florence Dorothy Kracke Phenegar and later best friend Doris Mae Chandler Meadow preceded him in death, as did his three sisters, Margaret Lappin, Elizabeth "Betty" Finkbeiner, and C. Harriett Bode. Jim leaves behind Lappin family nieces in Ann Arbor and North Carolina and Bode family nieces in Illinois, North Carolina and Arizona.
Jim enlisted in the US Air Corps (now the USAF) in 1942. Jim was a gunner in the highly vulnerable tail turret of a B24 Liberator, serving in the 448th Bomb Group in Seething, England. He was promoted early to Staff Sargent, and then wounded, leading to a Purple Heart and a story in Life magazine in March 1944. Returning to duty just a month later, his plane was shot down over occupied France after a mission over Frankfurt. Jim was captured and was sent to the infamous Stalag Luft I POW camp until the end of WWII. Never one to dwell on bad times, he rarely talked about the war. Instead, he regaled us with his stories about his Army-funded recovery in Paris after he and a buddy escaped from the POW camp hours ahead of the arrival of the Soviet Army.
When he returned to Saginaw, he found family and a fiancée who thought he'd been killed in action. Resilient as always, he finished his bachelor's degree in business at the University of Michigan and moved to the west coast at a time driving across the country was still a major adventure, particularly when he did it, taking the northern route in January, a source of yet more stories. He loved the west, living in Oregon, California and Idaho until he finally settled in Arizona. Jim never met a stranger, and wherever he lived and visited, he found lifelong friends who will remember him for his great sense of humor, his unbounded enthusiasm for life, and his amazing stories. His beloved friends in Green Valley will always talk about the "little parties" he assembled at his home right up until the month before he died. Any memory of Jim includes him laughing over a Jameson Black Barrel, a beer, or a Margarita made from scratch from his outstanding recipe.
He was a favorite at American Legion Post 131 in Green Valley, where love and hugs always greeted him for Monday burger nights even in his last year of life. He leaves behind wonderful memories and friends from Canada to Mexico and a million stories that will be told and retold with love and laughter, toasting him wherever he is now, surely with a glass of Jameson in hand.
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