Jimmie Lee Holmes

Funeral services will be held 11:00 am Friday, August 16, 2024 in the chapel of McLaurin Funeral Home with Pastor Jim Bogle officiating. Burial will follow with military graveside rites at Pinecrest Memorial Park.

The family will receive friends from 10:00 am until 11:00 am at the funeral home, prior to the service.

Jim was born on June 3, 1937 in Foster, Nebraska, the third son of George Daniel Holmes and Lucile Ann (Carrell) Holmes. Jim grew up in rural northeast Nebraska, having to milk cows before school in his early years and running a team of horses for farm work. In his teens, the family moved to “town,” a small community a mile or so away that had a few streets that surrounded a grain elevator on the local railroad line. Each summer, he and his friends and cousins worked at each other’s farms and entertained themselves by engaging in the typical antics that farm kids get into. One fateful, hot summer day in 1953, while the gang was swimming in the local creek, a neighborhood girl of about 12 suddenly decided to jump in with the older kids. The girl had never learned to swim and began to drown. Thankfully, Jim recognized the immediate danger, jumped in, and saved her life. From there, a lifelong friendship between Jim, her, and her family endured.

Jim enlisted in the U.S. Air Force on September 10, 1954 and trained as an aircraft mechanic on the B-47 bomber, which was Strategic Air Command’s primary “jet-powered” nuclear capability during the early Cold War before strategic missiles and the venerable B-52 bomber became the mainstays that endure to this day. Jim made several life-long friends that started during those early days in basic training. Jim would advance quickly to crew chief solely responsible for the mission readiness and maintenance for his assigned airplane. He and his maintenance team would frequently deploy with his aircraft to several forward locations in support of the national strategy including Guam and Montana. Notably, while stationed in Savannah, Georgia, he flew alert missions in direct support to the Cuban missile crisis.

Jim left the Air Force in 1964 and worked in Raleigh, NC at a missile battery manufacturing plant for a short time and later joined the U.S. Coast Guard as an Aircraft Machinist Mate and air crew member on the twin engine Grumman Albatross seaplane and later the Sikorsky HH-52 and H-3 helicopters. Flying search and rescue missions as the helo flight engineer, he operated the helo’s basket hoist and is credited with a significant number of lives saved in the Gulf of Mexico while stationed in St Petersburg, FL and the Atlantic Ocean while stationed at Elizabeth City, NC.

During his service in the Air Force, Jim met his future wife while on leave, and on September 21, 1958, he married Ann Ruth Barbour of Powhatan in Dillion, South Carolina. They had two children: David and Denise. Jim retired in 1975 after 20 years of service and moved the family to Clayton, where he built a residence and became a long-time member of Powhatan Freewill Baptist Church. He was hired by the Town of Garner as the supervisor responsible for the town’s garage. Starting with little more than a single vehicle garage, he grew the maintenance department into a fully functioning new multi-bay facility with the staff and equipment to maintain the town’s entire fleet of vehicles and construction equipment. Jim would later leave Garner and worked for the City of Raleigh’s maintenance garage until his full retirement.

He enjoyed an active retirement and was forever working with his hands. He enjoyed constructing wood projects, remodeling his house, and building sheds and miniature doll houses. He also photography and sharing those pictures of various family and church events. The time of his life was always when his grandchildren visited from Ohio and in later years when his great grandchildren visited.

Survivors include his two children: Lt. Col Jimmie David Holmes, USAF-Retired and Patricia Denise Wheeler; three grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren; and younger sister, Connie Young.

Jim is preceded in death by his parents; brothers, Jed and Marlan; younger sister, Sally Beacom; and beloved wife of 66 years, Ann.

Online condolences may be made to the family at: www.mclaurinatpinecrest.com.

McLaurin Funeral Home in Clayton, North Carolina is honored to be assisting the Holmes family.