James Granville McClure ’35

Jim died Jan 19, 2001, in Wheeling, W.Va. He prepared for Princeton at Mercersburg Academy, and at Princeton majored in politics and was a member of Cannon Club. He got his LLB at West Virginia's Law School in Morgantown in 1938. That same fall he was back in Wheeling, in private law practice.

Looking back on his two years in the Naval Reserve during WWII, starting in 1943, Jim admitted it broadened his resume. After indoctrination at Norfolk, Va., he received orders to report to Tulagi, in the Solomon Islands, as an intelligence officer attached to a group of PT boats stationed there. Jim next investigated and wrote the official Navy report on the sinking of John F. Kennedy's PT-109.

Jim resumed practicing law in Wheeling in 1945. He was chairman of West Virginia's Racing Commission from 1957 to 1960, when he was elected judge, first judicial circuit of West Virginia. He stepped up to chief judge in 1975 and held that post until he retired in 1981. Survivors include his wife, Jessie Whitaker McClure, son James T. II '73, daughter Louise R. Mackay, four grandchildren, and a sister, Barbara McClure Doty.

The Class of 1935