Jim Hamm:
CLASS OF 1973
Sibley High SchoolClass of 1973
West st. paul, MN
Jim's Story
After high school I spent about ten years getting my bachelor's degree, mainly because I was also playing a lot of music during those years. I had moved out to the west coast shortly after high school. On the way to my bachelor's degree I spent two quarters at the University of Minnesota, a few years out, then about two and a third years at North Seattle Community College (taking two years of music theory and many other music classes), then three and a half years at Eastern Washington University, where I got a B.S. in Physics. I went to the University of Minnesota for graduate school in physics, and finished there with a Ph.D. in 1988. Since then I've been teaching at different colleges in Washington and Oregon. For twenty-eight years I taught physics, astronomy, and some math at a community college in Moses Lake, Washington. I retired at the end of the 2020-2021 school year.
My wife Dianne (from Seattle, not West Saint Paul) was an elementary school teacher, and she retired in 2020. We've been married 45 years. We have three wonderful adult daughters: Sarah Rush (married and working in Seattle, with a daughter Zola and brand new son Finn), Nicole Nickell (married, working in Boise, and the mother of Briella and Piper), and Maria Hamm (working in Helen...Expand for more
a, Montana). With widely scattered daughters we do a lot of driving. (Sarah taught in Japan for two years, which is where the picture of me was taken, on a cold day in Kyoto.)
In my spare time I like to camp, hike, garden, do woodworking, stargaze (I teach astronomy), read, and play music. I played in a band in Moses Lake for about 10 years. playing music best described as "Americana."
Shortly before I retired in 2021 Dianne and I bought 11 wooded acres three miles south of Cheney, Washington. We're in land described as the channeled scablands. Toward the end of the last ice age a series of floods from a glacial lake scrubbed most of the topsoil away down to volcanic basalt. We had to have the hole for our house foundation drilled out of solid rock, with other drilling projects for our power lines and septic tanks. There is a part of our property with some good soil accumulated, so that's where our septic drain field went. We had a house built and moved in the first week of December, 2022. We are absolutely loving our quiet home in the woods. There are many birds around during the day, we can hear coyotes most nights, and most days the loudest sound is the wind in the Ponderosa pines. We still have a lot of work to do on the place, but it sure is fun.
Register for Free to view all details!
Yearbooks
Register for Free to view all yearbooks!
Reunions
Photos
