James Burton Haskins (Jim) lived an amazing 101 years as a son, brother of four, engineer, WWII Navy Veteran, husband, pilot, friend and favorite uncle. He was born in 1924 in Danville, Illinois and lived his final years in Georgetown, Texas.
Jim’s beautiful wife, Martha Stewart Haskins, passed away on May 13, 2020, and Jim missed her greatly until the day he died. In his final weeks on earth, most of his dreams involved life with Martha. God willing, a look at their afterlife together.
Jim was known to all as “a man who never stopped learning” and he was curious about everything. He was a voracious reader, he learned to fly and owned a plane, he spoke Spanish, took auto-cad classes at UNLV for so long that he eventually taught the class, and his preferred form of travel was by train, with Martha, of course.
His “way out” of Danville was to work for Boeing in Seattle, Washington. His time there was cut short, however, when in 1944 he was ordered to report to the Draft Board in Chicago and begin Navy Boot Camp in Seneca, New York. He was then trained as a Navy corpsman before being deployed to the WWII Pacific Theater from San Diego.
Jim was on the island of Guam when he received news of the A-Bomb and Japanese surrender. Instead of going home (as he’d hoped), he was deployed to China for a year to assist in getting thousands of Japanese out of the country.
Following the war, Jim went straight to Indiana Tech in Fort Wayne, where he earned a Civil Engineering Degree. He then took an opportunity overseas in Saudi Arabia working for an oil conglomerate. After extensive Middle East travel, he was well-suited for his next career move to Venezuela where he worked for Exxon Oil. His love of Spanish and South America coincided with meeting the love of his life, Martha, whom he piloted around the jungles near Caracas.
Upon returning to the USA, Jim & Martha created a life in Las Vegas, Nevada, working in real estate and rental home ownership. They lived in Las Vegas for forty years before coming home to Texas in 2020. Here they were closer to family, including Patty Sharp, Martha’s sister, and her children and grandkids. They also found a wonderful church community at First Baptist Georgetown. Jim’s and Martha’s internment will be on August 5, 2026 at Central Texas State Veteran’s Cemetery in Killeen, Texas.