Deceased Classmate: James Clifford Pecha
Date Of Birth: Jun-28-1945
Date Deceased: Jan-13-2016
Age at Death: 70
Cause of Death: leukemia
Classmate City: Albuquerque
Classmate State: NM
Classmate Country: USA
Was a Veteran: No 
Survived By: Wife Sharon and Sister Connie

Jim was my best friend at Highland High. I had my '46 Ford and to paraphrase Paladin, "Have Car - Will Travel". We hung out, went places, cruised the circuit between Franks and Vips, and basically shared our high school "nerd-dumb" in each others company. We took three years of Mr. Walensky's art classes together. Jim was the true natural talent when it came to art. He went on to graduate from UNM with a degree in Architecture but art continued to be his true passion. I lost track of Jim after college but reconnected 50 years later when his sister Connie "hooked us up". His wife Sharon had developed dementia and he was caring for her when he was diagnosed with leukemia. As he was hospitalized Sharon was sent to a retirement home in Las Lunas to be cared for and he asked me to visit him in the hospital. Over the next several months we got reacquainted. When we were friends in high school I knew his parents had placed restrictions on his activities. They wouldn't allow him to use their car or have friends over but they always allowed him to go places with me for some reason. I didn't know anything about the emotional abuse he was subjected to by his mother at the time and I suspect he didn't understand what was happening either. Emotional abuse is so below the radar that it's effect only surfaces in adulthood as the abused slowly realizes the profound effect the scars have left on his ability to live life. Jim wrote of some the abuse suffered at the hands of his family in his blog Art Across New Mexico.com. In his own words: "My Mother was raised with six brothers, which terrorized her life. When I came along she decided not to allow another male to escape punishment. I felt her anger towards me and felt hesitant about talking to her, which resulted in a slight speech stuttering problem. I remember hearing her talk about, divide and conquer,” but I didn’t know what that meant as a child. She used my speech problem as a way to gain control of our family. She told my family not to talk to me, but didn’t tell me of her directive; so I tried harder to communicate with them, but they just stared at me. The rejection made my speech problem worse. I felt alone, punished and separated. She did a cruel thing. She didn’t tell me what she had done until I was forty-eight years old. She continued her assault on me by limiting the amount of food I could eat, which kept me weakened and skinny. She said many times that her brothers had eaten her family out of house and home. That wasn’t going to happen to her again. I felt the separation from my family, but couldn’t figure out why I was being treated so badly; so I listened to the Sunday School teacher about God’s love. I had a relationship with God from an early age, which continued through today, with a few bumps along the way. If I hadn’t found God’s love, I might have turned my feeling of separation into anger and struck back, like so many young people are doing today in mass murders. Separation is a primary concern, which can only be ultimately resolved with a relationship with God." You can see why some of his Class of '63 posts were a bit "evangelical" in tone. Christianity and his art work were his coping mechanism to deal with the emotional abuse he suffered as a child. To me his slight stutter was just a part of his charm. To read more of this complex individual and to see some of Jim Pecha's art work: go to: artacrossnewmexico.com Rest In Peace my dear friend.