James Andrew Turnage

James Andrew Turnage passed away peacefully at his home in Bozeman on March 8th following a long struggle with ALS. Jim was born on May 8, 1944, in Ancon, Panama—at that time the Panama Canal Zone—to William V. Turnage and Erna Rassow Turnage. Much of Jim’s early childhood was spent abroad—in Panama, Japan, China and Thailand—while his father worked for the U.S. Foreign Service. In the 1950’s the family, including Jim’s older brother, Bill, moved to the Washington, D.C. area, where three more siblings—Bob, Margaret and Diane, were born. Jim attended Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School and graduated from Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland. He also attended Mississippi State University and the University of Maryland.



While working for the telephone company in Washington, he met Linda Schneider. They married in her hometown of Cooperstown, New York, in 1970 and had two sons, Brady and Graham. The family lived in Pottersville, New Jersey. In New Jersey Jim worked in commercial real estate and other business ventures. After divorcing, Jim eventually moved to the west coast and became a BMW salesman.



Jim worked at the BMW dealership in Bellevue, Washington, until his retirement in 2017. He then moved to Bozeman, where his son Graham and daughter-in-law Emily live. Jim spent the last fourteen months of his life in Bozeman. He loved the area’s vast natural beauty and, while he still could, loved driving his BMW 330i on the backroads of southwest Montana.



The brightness of his soul shines in places such as Anacortes, WA, Point Lobos, CA, the paddock at Saratoga Springs Race Track, Block Island, RI, Bethesda, MD, Cooperstown, NY, Peter Luger’s Steak House in Brooklyn, any mom-and-pop general store that sells Atomic Fire Balls, Ski Nautique dealerships along the eastern seaboard (even though he never water skied a day in his life), the Navy hospital in Whidbey Island, WA, where he celebrated the births of his four grandchildren, the hills and hollows of northern New Jersey, his small apartment in Bozeman where he fought ALS with a determination and persistence that makes each of us proud, and in the homes of family and friends where he told many a captivating tale as late into the night as you could last.



The Turnage family will hold a memorial in Bozeman this summer. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations in Jim’s name, either to a charity of your choosing or to Hospice of Bozeman Health, which gave excellent and compassionate care to Jim in his final chapter. Jim is survived by son and daughter-in-law Graham and Emily of Bozeman; son and daughter-in-law Brady and Melissa of Middletown, Delaware; their children Olivia, Aiden, Cade and Lilly; ex-wife Linda Schneider Kehoe of Cooperstown, NY; brother Robert Turnage and sister-in-law Kristina Somma of Sacramento, California; sister Margaret Hebson of Gainesville, Florida; sister Diane Keedy of Sonoma, California and sister-in-law Annemarie Turnage of Mill Valley, California.