ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jim Haines was born on September 17, 1965 at St. John’s Hospital (Saints Memorial Medical Center today) in Lowell, Massachusetts. His father, Leonard, was a former high school football star for Tewksbury high in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s.

Jim was raised in North Billerica’s Garden City neighborhood, the same neighborhood where his mother, Alice Conway (who passed away in May of 2004), was born and raised, and attended the Billerica public schools. He was a student at three Billerica schools. The now closed Talbot Elementary School, the Marshall Middle School, and Billerica Memorial High School where he graduated in 1983.

Although Jim never played football for BMHS, he attended almost all the games and cheered his friends and schoolmates on.

After high school, Jim went straight into the work force. He worked for four years at Computervision in Bedford, MA before being laid off in 1988. He then went to Precision Robots, Inc. of Woburn, MA. By 1994 the company had relocated to Billerica and became PRI-Automation. Jim left PRIA in 1998 and worked for Magellan Health Services in Burlington, MA for two years before moving on to the position of Engineering Service Associate at MJ Research, Inc. of Waltham, MA in August of 2000. In August of 2004, MJ Research, Inc. was purchased by Bio-Rad Laboratories of Hercules, CA and is now Bio-Rad Labs, New England Operations.

From 1985 to 1988, Jim covered the Billerica football team for Community Newspaper Company’s publication the Billerica MinuteMan. He returned to CNC in 1995 and wrote occasionally, covering several different sports. His articles have run in CNC’s papers including Billerica, Belmont, Burlington, Chelmsford, Lexington, Reading, Tewksbury, Wilmington, Winchester, and Woburn.

In between his stays at the newspaper is where Jim began to look deeply into the history of the Billerica Memorial and Howe High School football team. What started out as a quest just to have all the scores of every game that Howe & BMHS had ever played, turned into a collection of memories that has brought the past, present and future teams together.

In 1996, Jim was nominated for President of the Howe High School-Billerica Memorial High School Alumni Association. At the 100th annual banquet and reunion of the association, the over 300 alumnus from Howe and BMHS, who attended, elected Jim unanimously and he served two years until he officially stepped down in 1998.

Jim met Jim Gorman, the web designer, while Gorman was working as a temp at Magellan Behavioral Health during the summer of 1999. While returning to Magellan during his Christmas break in 1999, Gorman offered to help design the web site and in January 2000 the site was launched.

Currently, Jim lives in North Billerica and was a member of the Woburn Bowladrome’s Wednesday Night Men’s Bowling League from 1996 to 2006 and then again for one more season in 2007-08. He also bowled in the Tuesday Night Men’s Summer Bowling League from 1999 to 2000. The league bowls candlepins and its Web Page is www.darkangelmedia.com/bowling/bowling/mensleague.html

He can be seen at several BMHS athletic events supporting the Indian athletes and he is an avid fan of the three time Super Bowl Champion NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS! Jim was a season ticket holder for the New England Patriots from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1997 to 2007, but due to the fact that Jim will be laid off from Bio-Rad at the end of 2008, he was forced to give up the tickets. Jim is attending the CSB School of Broadcasting in Needham, MA and will graduate in November of 08. He hopes to be either a DJ at a Hot AC or Oldies station or be a radio talk show host. Stay tuned for futher updates on his efforts.

The author, Jim Haines, after a round of golf at River Bend in West Bridgwater. July 2005.