James Offutt Denham

Jim was born in Kansas City, Missouri on Oct. 30, 1945. His boyhood home was right down the street from Brookside Park, where he played many games of baseball. Jim attended Bryant Grade School, and graduated from Southwest High School in 1963. He attended the University of Missouri at Kansas and at Columbia, and earned his BA at San Francisco State and a Master of Social Work at the University of Oklahoma. Throughout school, he loved studying Spanish, literature and history.

Jim worked as a social worker for more than thirty years. At San Francisco General Hospital, he worked in the medical records department and as an interpreter for Spanish-speaking patients. In Oklahoma, he worked in child welfare and adoption, especially taking joy in helping families adopt.

Jim married Judith Blake in 1980 in Antigua, Guatemala. He was a devoted father to their two children, Diana and Caroline. He supported them in all of their endeavors - from endless weekend soccer games to graduate school - and was always up for an adventure, traveling around the world to visit them, taking them along to local "noodling" or rattlesnake festivals, and joining them for cross-country road trips. 

Jim was also a loyal friend. He kept in touch with childhood pals and his cousins from Missouri, and he made new close friends throughout his life. He was easygoing and fun-loving, and delighted in a good conversation and a good party. While living in Norman, Jim was an active member of the Challenges and Choices discussion group of the St. Stephen’s United Methodist Church. He enjoyed the church men’s group, hosted their annual "wild game dinner" many times, and looked forward to the annual group trip to a ranch in northwestern Oklahoma. In early retirement, he enjoyed meeting friends for coffee most mornings at Café Plaid.

After retiring from the Department of Social Services in Oklahoma, Jim returned to San Francisco, to the same apartment he had rented many years before on Octavia Street in Japantown. Jim met Linda Williams while he was visiting friends in Sonoma. After two years of dating, they pledged their love to one another in a Commitment Ceremony in their backyard on Carnation Court, surrounded by family and friends. They continued to enjoy spending time both in Sonoma and San Francisco and loved to travel, mostly to see family in places like Kansas City, Los Angeles, Portland, Oaxaca, Mexico and Oslo, Norway. Jim loved any occasion to hug his grandchildren.

Those baseball games at Brookside Park made a big impression on Jim, and he loved baseball throughout his life, going to Giants games regularly in San Francisco with a group of Kansas City buddies. And basketball: every summer Jim and Linda would go to Kezar Pavilion in San Francisco to watch the Pro-Am Basketball League games, while also cheering on the Warriors. And football: Jim played football in high school and was a big Kansas City Chiefs fan. Between the successes of the Giants, Royals, Warriors and Chiefs in recent years, Jim was constantly thrilled. Jim was also a lifelong runner, and ran marathons in San Francisco and Dallas. He ran races well into his seventies. 

In Sonoma, he enjoyed being part of two Spanish-speaking groups: one at Vintage House in Sonoma and the other, “Charla,” a group of Spanish-speaking friends in Creekside. Jim was always reading several books at one time, and at least one was in Spanish. Always an avid reader with a deep curiosity about the world around him, he read his family's encyclopedia collection cover-to-cover as a child.

Jim was well-known as a pool player par excellence, in Norman, San Francisco and Sonoma. The pool playing group at the Creekside Clubhouse will miss his advice, as well as watching him hit a seemingly impossible shot. He was so good at pool that he would play left-handed to make it sporting.

Jim passed away on Dec. 30, 2024 in Sonoma. He will be remembered for his love of his friends and family, his storytelling and great sense of humor, his gentle, kind nature and his spontaneous joy of life. 

He is survived by his daughters, Diana Denham and her husband, Uriel Marin; and Caroline Simpson and her husband, Ben Simpson; his partner Linda Williams; stepdaughter Heidi Guibord and her husband, Tim Tenorio; stepson Garth Guibord and his wife, Jen Guibord; and eight grandchildren - Lua Marin Denham, Eva Marin Denham, Ruth Simpson, Graham Simpson, Beatrice Simpson, Elliot Tenorio, Dexter Guibord, and Emmett Guibord.

There will be a gathering to remember Jim on Saturday, February 1, 2025 at the Creekside Clubhouse, 159 Avenida Barbera, Sonoma, CA.  

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