Co-Workers, friends and family are invited on June 25th, 2016, to St Catherine’s Parish 17400 Peak Ave., Morgan Hill, CA. for Memorial Mass at 2:00 P.M. (Vigil, Visitation, Funeral Mass and Burial held earlier in the week in Wisconsin). A Celebration of Life BBQ + Pot Luck will be held at the Marschke home after services. Please bring your favorite story to tell about Jim. In lieu of flowers, please make a donation to The American Lung Association. Online condolences may be made at www.gundersonfh.com. Gunderson West Funeral & Cremation Care, 7435 University Avenue, (608)831-6761.
James Daniel Marschke died June 5, 2016, surrounded by loved ones after a short battle with cancer.
James “Jim” was born April 16, 1955 in Indianapolis, IN, to Robert F. and Phyllis S. Marschke.
When Jim was 13, the family moved to Madison, WI. From an early age, Jimmy was known as the family daredevil and mischief-maker. There are many, many stories about Jim.
Half-heartedly, he attended Memorial High School in Madison and preferred tinkering with gadgets and cars to studying. As he got older, Jim started to canoe, camp and fish in the great outdoors with life-long friends and family. This experience proved to be useful as he supported his son through 10+ years of scouting.
Jim attended the Madison Area Technical College and earned an associate’s degree in Industrial Education and went on to Graduate from the University of WisconsinStout, with a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Technology.
In the early 1980’s he packed his possessions and took a road trip with his best friend to tour the country and seek his fortune. Once in CA, he landed at Apple Inc. where he worked for 33+ years as Manager of the Reliability Test Engineering Organization.
In 1998, Jim married Lida Parveen Jalali in Hope Valley, CA. Jim was very sentimental, family oriented and loved his children, Alyssa from a previous marriage to Katherine, and Jimmy from his marriage to Lida.
Jim enjoyed telling people that he came from a family of six children. His favorite place on earth was their family cottage on Crystal Lake in Wisconsin.
Jim was handy at practically everything and as a result was called upon to help fix everything from computers to cars. He always had a building project in the works. With the help of friends and family, Jim renovated his cabin on Loma Prieta in the Santa Cruz Mountain range near Morgan Hill, CA.
Jim was an avid reader and his hobbies included software development; woodworking, coin, stamp, and civil war collecting; swimming, diving, fishing; building and operating model trains, cars and airplanes; and watching the Green Bay Packers. Jim was a quintessential renaissance man.
He is survived by his wife, Lida; his two children, Alyssa and Jimmy; his brothers, Robert and Jonathan; his sisters: Elizabeth, Georgia, and Sarah; nieces, Mercy, Luisa and Samantha; nephews, Ben, Robby and Tyler; cousins, Debby, Gail, Ginny and Suzy, and his Aunt, Shirley Ross.
We thank the staff at Good Samaritan Hospital in San Jose for their compassionate care. Jim’s siblings and children thank Lida for her loving care of Jim who was, according to Lida, an exceptional husband and father; and, to many, the best son, brother, cousin, son-in law, friend, manager and co-worker.
