THE FATE OF MY CHILDHOOD FRIEND JIMMY AHOLA

My family moved to the state of New Jersey in 1960. We left all our friends behind when we moved. When we came back five years later we moved into a house in north Seattle on Densmore Avenue Northeast near northeast 145th st. While there I ran into an old aquaintance of mine from my early days in Lake City. I inquired of him about my friend Jimmy Ahola. He told me some things that he was doing at the time, and said that he was getting ready to go to California to learn how to sail, which was his passion at the time. I never saw Jim after I came back from the east coast. A few times over the years I looked in the phone book hoping to find his number so I could contact him. His number was not listed. Neither was anyone in his family listed.

Recently I was surfing the web. I typed in his name just to see what I could come up with. I came across two sites that had articles about some people who were on a vessel that sank in the Pacific Ocean and became lost at sea on small lifeboats. One of the people who died was listed as Jim Ahola. I was grief-stricken. Something told me that this was my old friend. As the story went, something happend to their large sailboat and it sank in a matter of minutes. The people on board only had a few minutes to grab a few belongings and get into the two lifeboats. They drifted at sea for about twenty days before the Coast Guard found them. By this time Jim had been dead for eight days. The article states that Jim had been distraught about the yacht sinking, and this contributed to his death. His brother in law owned the craft.

Here are the sites...
www.infoasis.com/~latitude38/letters/200308.htm The article is called: THE FAMOUS SINKING IN THE LATE 70'S
www.infoasis.com/~latitude38/letters/200408.htm Scroll down almost to the bottom of the site to the article called: STRANGE STORIES FROM THE 70'S.

Jim and I started kindergarden together and went to two or three grades together. The picture above is the third grade class with Miss Miller, our teacher. Click the picture to make it larger. Jim is on the top row at the far left. I'm the one in the Cub Scout uniform in the top row, the fourth from the left.