Obituary: People left the driving to James Beauchaine

For more than 35 years, thousands of travelers out of the Twin Cities went Greyhound and left the driving to James Beauchaine in an era when flying was more of a luxury than it is now.

A well-liked driver whose jacket lapels were covered with bejeweled company pins recognizing his outstanding driving record and devoted service, Beauchaine, died Jan. 12 from congestive heart failure. He was 82.

Beauchaine clambered down the steps for the last time in 1990 as a driver and ambassador for a Minnesota-born company, whose open-strided greyhound on its buses was the nation's most recognizable image in public transportation through much of the previous century.

"He wasn't a hero," said his brother, Gerald, whose 15 years with Greyhound overlapped with his brother's tenure. "He was just an everyday worker. I don't think he ever got in a serious accident. He was well liked in the area, and all the Minneapolis drivers liked him."

Even in retirement, he picked up occasional work in the Twin Cities delivering car parts or driving shuttles in and out of the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. But as far as taking long trips for pleasure in retirement, "I think he preferred not travel," said his twin sister, Jeanette Loomis, of Marshfield, Wis., where they grew up.

Beauchaine's affection for his profession was not lost on his family, which designated memorials in his memory to be made to the Greyhound Bus Museum in Hibbing, Minn., the company's place of birth nearly 100 years ago.

Beauchaine enlisted in the Army Air Corps and was stationed in Germany during the Korean War. Soon after his discharge in the early 1950s, he followed brother Gerald and signed on with Greyhound in Minneapolis.

The company also brought Jim Beauchaine and his wife, Peggy, together. She worked for Greyhound in the Minneapolis offices.

She said she met Jim and many other drivers in her single days, but her secretarial duties helped her figure out that "most of the others were already married."

Beauchaine "was a people person, a very good servant," she said, noting that he routinely collected company safe-driving awards and never got a ticket in his civilian life. Seems the only blemish on his record was when he ran into a deer in northern Minnesota.

Peggy Beauchaine most vividly remembers a seemingly small gesture he made along a middle-of-nowhere spot on the map that left a lasting impression.

"He was driving outside of Willmar, a country road, and a woman had asked to be dropped off at the side" and not at a formal station, Peggy Beauchaine said. "They could do that at that time."

The woman's daughter wrote the company and said how much that meant to her and mother, who was returning from her husband's funeral.

"That was the kind of thing he would do without even thinking about it," Peggy Beauchaine said.

Jim Beauchaine's regular routes took him to and from Duluth, Fargo, Aberdeen, Chicago, Milwaukee and elsewhere in the Upper Midwest.

He picked up charter assignments to the Western and Southeast for several days at a time and away from the three children that he and Peggy were raising in Orono.

"Once in a while, he would get into Marshfield [where he still had family] and at least was able to say hi," Loomis, his twin, said. "But that was very seldom."

Services are scheduled for 11 a.m. Friday at the Cremation Society Chapel, 4343 Nicollet Av. S., Minneapolis, with visitation one hour before. Interment will follow at Fort Snelling National Cemetery.