Mourners gather to remember Jim Acheson

The collection of memories about Jim Acheson shared from the podium at McMorran Theater Wednesday spanned decades — and they started well before the businessman and philanthropist made his own mark on Port Huron.

“It is worth noting that Thomas Edison was the employer of Jim’s grandfather, and he encouraged his grandfather to locate in Port Huron. Do you know how significant that is?” Rev. Max Amstutz said before a mostly packed main floor during Acheson’s funeral services.

The reverend was referring to Edison, the inventor once referred to as Port Huron’s most favorite son, and the elder Edward Acheson, who founded Acheson Colloids Co., the company that would become the international Acheson Industries and that Jim Acheson would one day sell before founding Acheson Ventures in the late 1990s.

The latter piece was when Frank Tranzow, Acheson’s friend of eight decades, said Jim’s “third era” began — breaking further into the community giving and philanthropy most well-known for reshaping the southside’s waterfront.

“Perhaps, if Thomas Edison had not encouraged him (Edward Acheson) to do that, we would not have Jim today,” Amstutz said. “Thomas Edison was a key player for all we have experienced.”

Jim Acheson died Sunday, April 2. Services Wednesday preceded a private burial at Lakeside Cemetery.

The occasion brought in dozens of loved ones, family members, friends, and community leaders from both Port Huron and Florida, where he also invested philanthropically later in life.

Additionally speaking was Port Huron Pastor Kevin Totty, City Manager James Freed, friend Joe Mesenburg, Ross Licata, police chief in Lighthouse Point, Florida, and Jackie Hanton and Randy Maiers, of the Community Foundation of St. Clair County.

While multiple highlighted local accomplishments of Acheson, the philanthropist and community trendsetter, they also touched on features of Acheson, the man, whose primary loves after giving back were his family and boating.

For Mesenburg, who shared time with Acheson in boating clubs, it was their time around the water.

There was the occasion when a post-happy hour Acheson slipped and fell into the water after putting on the wrong boat shoes — maritime footwear and when to wear socks a running constant in jest among speakers.

Then, Mesenburg joked about another when he paid a band playing “the kind of music, I’m sure, Jim did not prefer” to stop while dining at a restaurant near a Northern Michigan marina.

“Honest to god truth, then they got up and went outside and couldn’t come in until we finished eating,” he said, eliciting among the biggest laughs of the services. “That was memorable to me.”

Hanton and Maiers, too, recalled personal experiences with Acheson — marked by his passion for community — over the last two decades. And turning the focus of Acheson’s accomplishments away from the waterfront, Freed got specific on the philanthropist’s focus on Port Huron’s southside neighborhoods.

Tranzow said he and Acheson became friends early in their Port Huron schooling, enjoying time on the water growing up and later rooming their freshman year of college. But it was a much more recent memory that helped summarize who Acheson was to him in the end.

“It was a week before Jim died, maybe less than that, (we) had a fairly lengthy conversation," Tranzow said. "That was pretty unusual to have lengthy conversations with Jim, but we did. And (as we) concluded the conversation, I said, ‘You know, you and I are brothers.’ … And he said, ‘We sure are.’ He said, ‘Bye, brother.’”

Contact Jackie Smith (810) 989-6270 or jssmith@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @Jackie20Smith.

This article originally appeared on Port Huron Times Herald: Mourners gather to remember Jim Acheson