FROM FOOTBALL TO FUND-RAISERS, FORMER BANKER STAYS ACTIVE.

Byline: Bettie Rencoret Senior columnist

``Mr. Lancaster,'' as James C. Jackson is known affectionately to many, is a man with no regrets.

Plaques and photos on his home office walls tell how he has long been a respected member of the banking community, owned Joshua Memorial Park for 27 years and stayed married to ``the same lovely woman'' for 47 years.

Jackson won one of Lancaster's early honorary mayor campaigns, which raised money for charities.

``Everybody benefited in the long run. It was a good money-making scheme, and it was fun,'' he said. ``I was in a lot of news stories. When you're in business you need that. I guess I had my picture in the paper more than a hundred times that year, and I enjoyed all of it.''

Earning money for charity is not foreign to him even now.

Not one to volunteer such information, he will admit that he still does a few things to help out unfortunates now and then. He gave a self-effacing grin when reminded that his concern for the plight of the homeless inspired him recently to conduct a private fund-raising campaign.

He solicited donations from friends and acquaintances and gave $2,500 to the Lancaster United Methodist Church to be used for its soup and sandwich kitchens. That provided a lot of meals for the hungry.

A people person who likes to experience new things and places, he has gone around the world twice, once in 1989 and again in 1992.

In 1984 when his wife, Olive, was still alive, they took a trip to the Holy Land and a couple of cruises to the Caribbean.

When Olive died in 1986 of cancer, the bottom fell out of his world for a while, just as it did for both of them when their firstborn son James Jr. died suddenly at age 2.

``We called him Buddy, and he was apparently all right when we went on a picnic one day in 1950,'' he said. ``We had no inkling there was anything wrong, but the next day he died of bulbar polio. It was that quick.''

He highlights that tragedy and Olive's death as the two most painful events in his life.

That life began on Feb. 9, 1913, in Epps, La., ``a small town on the Mississippi River up in the northeastern corner of the state, near the Arkansas border.''

He grew into a strapping, sports-oriented youth who wanted to play football.

Since Epps didn't have a football team, his older sister and brother-in-law talked him into going to live with them in nearby Delhi. The high school there had a good team, so with his parents' permission, he went there for his education.

It just happened that Olive Avent and her mother lived next door. Olive also went to Delhi High School.

When Jackson graduated from DHS in 1935, it was with a football scholarship to Tulane University in New Orleans. During that first year he played all of the team's line positions but was restless.

``I heard a radio broadcast from Catalina Island, where Jan Garber and his band were playing, and I longed to come to the West Coast,'' he said. ``I wasn't doing anything but having a good time anyway.''

He wrote to the University of Southern California under an assumed name, asking to be enrolled.

``Lo and behold, they accepted me!'' he said.

He didn't have enough money for the trip, so he decided to hitchhike to California and got lucky.

``I got a ride out of Shreveport, La., with two girls who brought me all the way across country to Los Angeles,'' he said. ``I remember that the Conrad Nagle band was playing in Santa Monica when I got out here. I was wined and dined and shown a wonderful time during one semester at USC.''

Then he got itchy feet again and after working a little while went up to the University of Oregon to join its football spring training.

``When I left there to come back to California I had $1. By the time I got to Los Angeles,'' he said, ``I had 50 cents. So I hocked my raincoat for three bucks and was back in the money again.''

He worked two jobs for a while. At night it was in a 15 cents-a-drink bar. Mornings he served at a juice bar.

For big money, he walked across the street to St. Vincent's Hospital and gave blood for $25 a pint.

The next few years he worked at various Bank of America branches in several positions, winding up as assistant vice president in north Long Beach before he quit in 1942 and bought a dump truck. He hauled junk for six months and registered for the draft, but he was never called.

It was also in 1942 that he and Olive were married, and he settled down to banking again.

He worked for five years in the Farmers and Merchants Bank in Watts, where he was vice president and assistant manager until he left in 1957 to go to Long Beach National Bank.

When that was sold in 1959 he went back to Bank of America and was sent to the Palmdale branch, then transferred after a year to the old Lancaster Boulevard branch.

From there he want to work for the old Antelope Valley Bank under the late Harry Gauger, before it became the California Bank. When that change took place he went to work for Dalton Smith's Mojave Electric company.

``About that time Irving Harris called me and asked, `How would you like to buy a dead business?' '' Jackson recalled. ``He made it sound interesting so I met with him and we talked it over.''

He also met with the original owners of Joshua Memorial Park and ultimately a deal was made.

``I borrowed $30,000 on a note from Irv and that's how I got started at Joshua,'' he said. ``I owned it for 27 years before I sold it in 1986 to Service Corporation International. I still serve as a consultant.''

His remaining children are attorney Ronald A. Jackson, who was once a contender for a local judgeship and is now in private practice in Oxnard; and Jacqueline Duncan of Jackson, Miss. They have produced four grandchildren.

Always a fund raiser, he recently proved he hasn't lost his touch by staging a benefit for the re-election campaign of his friend, Vice Mayor Henry Hearns.

``Henry and I go way back,'' he said. ``We come from the same geographical area and so have essentially the same environmental background. We've been friends a long time. There's nothing like having good friends.''

LANCASTER - There will be a Spring Boutique from 9 a.m. to l p.m. on Saturday, March 21, at the Antelope Valley Senior Center, 777 W. Jackman St.

Seniors are invited to shop early for Easter or get a head start on gifts for the 1998 Christmas season.

LANCASTER - Menus for the week at the senior life nutrition sites in Lancaster, Palmdale and Pearblossom have been announced. All meals include bread, margarine and coffee, tea or milk for a suggested congregate donation of $2.

Monday: Chili with beef, mixed vegetables, garden salad, pineapple.

Tuesday: Corned beef and cabbage, parsleyed potatoes, fruit cocktail, dinner roll, cake.

Wednesday: Hot dogs, pasta salad, green beans, coleslaw, pudding.

Thursday: Turkey with gravy, herbed dressing, squash, lettuce salad, pears, juice.

Friday: Roast beef with gravy, mashed potatoes, peas, carrot and raisin salad, banana.

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Photo

PHOTO Lancaster's James Jackson, 85, continues to raise money for charity.

Bettie Rencoret/Special to the Daily News