James Howard Severson

James Howard Severson, an industrious, community loving Midwesterner with a taste for both a good joke and a good party who became a well-traveled corporate executive and raised five children before settling into a Rocky Mountain life filled with skiing, hunting and fishing, died March 6, 2026 in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. He was 92.

Jim went home for one last martini after a brief hospitalization for pneumonia and heart issues. He died surrounded by three of his children, a grandchild and beloved caretakers.

Jim was born on Oct. 26, 1933, the nadir of the Great Depression. He grew up in a modest house his father, Harold, built in Eau Claire, Wis. Although he would go on to live in much grander houses, embrace bigger cities and travel to countries his father could only imagine, Jim carried his childhood lessons of thrift, honesty and hard work throughout his life.

His father taught Jim to ski jump when he was five, which started his prolific career as part of the Eau Claire Flying Eagles, a club that in the 1950s produced more national-level talent than any other in the United States.

Jim became a national champion and in 1954 jumped from a 400-foot scaffold covered in crushed ice at Chicago's Soldier Stadium on a hot September day as 35,000 watched before a knee injury ended his competitive career.

He passed his love of the sport to his youngest son, Kris, who also became a US Ski Team member and Olympic contender. Kris, in turn, helped his sons develop their skiing talent. They became slopestyle skiers, winning junior national titles and competing internationally.

Jim's skiing talent helped him land a spot with the revered 10th Mountain Division as a soldier on skis. He trained in Fort Carson, Colo., as part of the U.S. Army's Mountain & Cold Weather Training Command. He left the service with a deep love of mountaineering, a tattoo of a mountain ram on his shoulder and a wife.

While his Army buddies looked on, Jim married Anne Marie Zappa on July 30, 1955. They met at a college dance when Jim was a student at Eau Claire State (now the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire). Anne, who had graduated from beauty school, was working as a beautician. They had become engaged on Dec. 26, 1953.

It was, at the time, something of a mixed marriage. Anne was the daughter of Italian immigrants who worked a small dairy farm in Cumberland, Wis. and attended the Catholic church. Jim's heritage was largely Norwegian and he was raised Protestant. Their marriage would last more than 62 years, ending when Anne died from Parkinson's Disease in 2016.

After the service, Jim joined the ski team at the University of Denver, where he graduated in 1958 with a degree in industrial engineering. The couple's first two sons, Keith and Kent, were born in Colorado. The family moved back to Eau Claire and he began his career with Uniroyal, whose labor relations department he would eventually run. Their daughter, Kim, was born there.

As he climbed the corporate ladder and his family grew, he moved to Los Angeles (where their daughter Keely was born), Detroit (where their son Kris was born) then to Houston and back to Detroit. Weekend outings and vacations centered on camping and fishing, and their children learned to fish, water ski and cook over an open fire. He also loved team sports, andsupported his children's pursuits on the field and the court.

Wherever they lived, Jim and Anne's house was often the site of neighborhood gatherings, community meetings and a raucous Christmas Eve party the pair hosted for decades. Big family dinners often featured the spaghetti and meatballs Jim first encountered when he was courting Anne.

The couple moved to Steamboat Springs in 1979, when Jim accepted a job at Colowyo Coal Company. The pair quickly became part of the civic fabric. Jim served as president of Kiwanis Club, was a member of the Steamboat Foundation and, along with Anne, served as grand marshall of the 80th Steamboat Springs Winter Carnival in 1993. And of course, he kept a hand in ski jumping. He was a regular at the Howlsen Hill ski jumps, and served as a starter in the 2008 Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Retirement didn't really mean retirement. He worked as a handyman for the senior apartments where his mother, Beatrice, lived. He regularly fished Steamboat Lake in his canoe and hunted elk, even surviving a stroke during a hunt by pulling himself down the side of a hill with the butt of his gun.

When Anne had to enter a nursing home in 2014, he spent every day with her and would teach his grandkids to fish in the pond in front of the facility. He caught his last fish, netted by his grandson, Jack, when he was 90.

Jim is survived by his five children and their partners, eight grandchildren and two great grandchildren. His older brother, Gerald Roger Severson, preceded him in death in 2016. A sister, Margry Dawn Severson, died in 1929.

In lieu of a service, the family will hold a memorial service at Steamboat Lake in the summer.

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