James Thomas "Jimm" Erickson

James Thomas “Jimm” Erickson, 62, of Santa Clara, CA, a man of many gifts and innumerable friends, died August 8, 2025, after a lengthy illness.

The fifth and youngest child of Harold L. “Pete” Erickson Jr. and Frances “Pudge” (Carnell) Erickson, Jimm was born November 29, 1962 in Milwaukee, WI. His precocious intelligence and youthful joie de vivre were compromised in childhood by a telescoped intestine, for which he underwent last-minute life-saving surgery. From then on, there was no stopping him. Self-taught in many skills, including piano/keyboard, guitar, and even juggling, and a voracious reader of many writers in multiple genres, Jimm capped his teenage years by earning the highest PSAT scores in the history of Glendale Nicolet High School. Jimm’s IQ was literally “off the chart.” Local legend has it that the IQ testers ran out of questions for him and gave up. Prior to graduation from Nicolet, Jimm was elected class president on the “400 Frogs” platform, promising only that his first act upon being elected would be to resign—a promise he immediately honored.

Already a published authority on astrology, Jimm graduated in 1985 with a Literature and Music B.A. degree from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA. In the ensuing years he became a regular contributor to the online service All.Music Guide (now All.Rovi) and wrote poetry, song collections, and five rock operas (or, as Jimm described them, “mock operas”), all while perfoming live music with a band called “The Answer.” According to friend and former bandmate John Lebhar, “Everyone I played music with in the [Pioneer] Valley had a story about Jimm.”

Ever expanding his horizons, in 2001 Jimm entered the University of Wisconsin Law School, and the following year he transferred to Santa Clara University School of Law. He served as research assistant for two professors, became the book review and ethics editor of the Santa Clara Law Review, clocked in many hours of clinical work at East San Jose Community Law Center, and made the Dean’s List two years in a row. Jimm graduated Cum Laude in 2004 with a High Technology Law Certificate and the CALI Excellence for the Future Award, and was a member of the Order of the Coif. Between 2005 and 2021 he was an associate attorney at Roberts and Elliot, Mousalam and Associates, and Mlnarik Law Group, and in 2022 became a senior litigation attorney for Masoom Law Firm of San Jose, CA. The personal demons that may have visited him earlier in life will in time be forgotten; his record of achievements will endure forever.

But, wait, there’s more. Having previously dabbled in screenwriting with a ribald account of the sex-obsessed 1980s (“Weak and Willing”), in 2024 Jimm published his first novel, Speakeasy, under the nom de plume Jimm Chanson. Speakeasy is a fact-based detective story inspired by the career of Judson W. Minor, who in 1924 became the first African-American officer in the Milwaukee Police Department. Just before leaving us, Jimm put the finishing touches on a second novel, The Center of Attention, a darkly comic commentary on the Hollywood of the “gold coast hippie” era. Like all of his creative works, these novels are imbued with the intelligence, insightfulness, and irrepressible wit for which he will always be fondly remembered.

Jimm is survived by his four siblings: Hal (Joanne) of Milwaukee, WI; Bill (Evelyn) of Hendersonville, NC; David of Camarillo, CA; and Anne (David Tracy) of Cincinnati, OH. He is also survived by nephews Brian, Peter, Kean, and Miles; niece Robin; grandniece Lorelai; grandnephew Calvin; and many friends.

And a eulogy? Well, as Jimm himself wrote in May with ironic eloquence in his final poem, “Panegyric”:

I will sleep with myself tonightas though I were at once a beautiful woman,witty and intelligent; loving towardsme too.               I will sleep with myselftonight as though I were a “raging”genius, whatever that is, in a whiteheat of anger and paranoia.                                              I willsleep with myself tonight as thoughtime were not passing, and Iwere a ghost, observant and communicative,
tapping on tables to give warning of my
resentment at the quick, who never knowquite what to say in response. I will sleepwith myself tonight as though I werea poet, too precious for words (so goes
the cliché, the cliché that comes
to mind), my mind focussed on thingslike whether I begin too many lineswith conjunctions or … what elseis it I avoid? I will sleep,
I know I will, with myselftonight, as though itwere tonight, as thoughit were over, which it is.