James Brinckman

James D. Brinckman was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on April 14, 1945 and he died in Waukesha, Wisconsin on June 4, 2023. His parents were Jerome H. and Florence A. Brinckman. Jim is survived by his daughter Jamie Brinckman of Dallas, Georgia, two grandchildren: Savannah Foster and Triston Heath, and six siblings: Jerry J. Brinckman (Pewaukee, WI), Patricia Hanson (Sun Prairie, WI), John Brinckman (La Crosse, WI), Jeff Brinckman (Madison, WI), Joseph Brinckman (Sebastopol, CA) and Ann Kropp (Stevens Pt, WI). Jim graduated from Good Shepherd Grade School in Menomonee Falls in 1959. He attended Francis Jordan High School in Milwaukee for one year, before finishing at Menomonee Falls High School in 1963. He started as a lineman on the high school football team and was a member of the 1962 Homecoming Court. Jim enrolled at St. Norbert College in Green Bay in 1963, where he joined the Alpha Delta Gamma fraternity. His college education was suspended in 1965 by an Air Force enlistment. Jim was first stationed in Texas and then in Idaho, before he put in for overseas duty in 1967. After obtaining a security clearance, he was shipped out to a base in Japan (that didn't exist, as he put it), where his unit did surveillance on the Soviets, who were then supplying the North Vietnamese. When Jim returned to the U.S. in 1969, his homecoming at LA International was dampened as he learned that all his luggage, including some tailor-made suits he purchased in Tokyo, had been stolen. He literally made it home with just the shirt on his back. Jim graduated from St. Norbert College in 1971. He then accepted a position with the Xerox Corp. Upon learning that his father had sustained a partially disabling heart attack in 1975, Jim resigned at Xerox and purchased Brinckman's Business Machines, where he kept his father on the payroll through his death in 1982. Jim left Menomonee Falls in 1982 to start a new life. He married in Indiana in 1983 and had one daughter in 1984. Jim also helped raise his wife's two older children. After Jim divorced, he returned to Wisconsin in 1994. Jim's primary employment later in his life through his retirement was at the Veterans Hospital in Milwaukee. Military honors service will be Saturday, July 15, 11:00 AM at American Legion Post 1, N120 W15932 Friestadt Rd., Germantown, with a reception to follow.