by Gretchen Wing

Once this article is widely read, Jim Yalden may regret the interview. Given his technical skill set and his extraordinary energy level, this recent arrival to Lopez will likely find himself in demand by various boards and volunteer coordinators.

Despite traveling halfway around the world, Jim still spends his days the way he began them in Australia: making himself handy.

Jim started life in 1926 on a dairy farm in Grafton, New South Wales, on land bought by his English father in 1908.

While Jim was “quite keen” to pursue a career in butter- and cheese-making, history had other plans. First the family lost their land in the Great Depression, becoming share farmers.

Then World War II broke out, just as Jim graduated from high school, “and everything fell apart.” Instead of agriculture, Jim pursued an interest in radio, which took him much farther from home.

One of Australia’s largest newspapers, the Sydney Sun, printed a radio magazine, and hired Jim – from 200 applicants – as a “technical journalist,” to construct radio projects. “But I hated the city,” he says.

So he was pleased to hire on with the Australian Broadcast Commission (a national enterprise) which sent him to south Albury, New South Wales.

They needed a 24-hour technician, and Jim was their man, traveling the state at all hours to keep the circuits connected.

In 1948, Jim went into business for himself, in Glen Innes, back in northern New South Wales.

Besides fixing regular radios, Jim sold two-way radios and other electronics, and his business grew until he had a partner, specializing in industrial refrigeration, and 15-20 employees.

He also found himself a wife, Margare or Marg, and the couple soon had a son and, later, an adopted daughter. Life was full.

But by 1970, Jim was itching to immerse himself in a technology still unknown in Australia: color TV.

Here a brief history lesson arises in the interview: “Did you know that the first color TV in the world was in England? Actually, the first TV was in England, long before the War.”

Most people back then rented their TVs, and Jim went to work for Visionhire in Southampton, after a six-week sea voyage with his wife and daughter. Jim, the son of an Englishman, felt an instant connection: “I adored it.”

In his Lopez home, a chunk of stone from the old Winchester Cathedral symbolizes this attachment.

While in England, Marg suffered a major stroke, but the family held together. When Visionhire singled Jim out to introduce the company in Australia, they sent him first to train employees in Hong Kong, and Marg and their daughter Rhonda came along. “Those Chinese guys were really great,” Jim says.

Most technicians rode bikes, but the Yaldens got chauffeured to lunch daily for several weeks.

Back in Australia, Jim helped Visionhire get a foothold, but then went back into solo business.

In 1980, Jim’s wife Marg passed away after eight years of care. In the aftermath, Jim met Gwen, a distant cousin visiting from America, also widowed.

The two were married in Gig Harbor, then settled in Milton, in southern New South Wales.

Back in the 1960s, an interest in health administration started Jim serving on the local hospital board.

Now, he was appointed to the Health Board of Illawarra, New South Wales. What began as a small commission reorganized and grew, until Jim found himself overseeing a two hundred million-dollar budget.

Twice a week Jim headed committees which audited finances and appointed doctors to the Health Service, all while managing his own business and working at a radio station at Nowra. “I’d be getting up at two in the morning,” Jim mentions, adding that he has never needed more than four to five hours of sleep per night.

Eventually, Gwen longed to be closer to her children, so in 1995 the couple moved to Sedro-Woolley.

Approaching 70, Jim got his green card and went to work for Cascade Job Corps, teaching kids job skills for the next 14 years.

When Gwen died in 2008, Jim did not consider moving back to Australia. “I don’t believe in going back,” he says “It’s never the same.” Instead he became an American citizen.

A keen sailor, Jim had logged many miles around the San Juans during his Sedro-Woolley years, and his stepdaughter, Anne Winfrey, had worked on Lopez. Impressed with the facilities available in the village, Jim added Lopez citizenship to his collection in 2014.

Jim has already become involved in maintenance around the Hamlet, fixing large appliances. But putting down new roots does not mean forgetting old ones, and Jim stays in touch with Australian family and friends. Reviling the “pathetic” quality of Skype, Jim uses a British website to make phone calls to Australia for 1 cent per minute.

So if this high-tech, high-energy octogenarian ends up teaching workshops in technology, don’t be surprised. Sign up.