James Francis Cahillane (CAH hill lane) is a retired executive with a later life career as a freelance journalist, essayist, poet and author of a memoir that became part of a series of Northampton, Massachusetts’ histories commissioned by the city’s 350th Anniversary Committee.
Jim spent four years in the USAF during the Korean conflict. Stationed in England, he met and married his wife Maureen and raised a family of five in Northampton, MA
Jim has long enjoyed reading and writing poetry, a passion he credits to the Irish folk songs sung by his Kerry grandfather, Stephen, a widower who came to America in 1947 to live with his eldest son, James, and his family.
Jim graduated from the University Without Walls at UMass/Amherst (BA ‘89). (www.umass.edu/uww) He returned to UMass to study English literature. (MA ’97). Inside and outside of UMass Jim has written alongside a number of fine poets, including Doug Anderson, Patricia Schneider and the late Agha Shahid Ali. He is a member of The Florence Poets Society, founded by Tom Clark and Carl Russo. He is also a member of The New England Poetry Club, founded by Amy Lowell and Robert Frost in 1915.
Jim and his English wife, Maureen Stone, live and garden at their country home “Mole End,” in the Berkshire foothills of Western Massachusetts
Jim’s dad James Cahillane was one of the first Irish born Mayors in the US and served a then record three terms as Northampton’s mayor, serving in the same corner office once occupied by U. S. President Calvin Coolidge. A handsome 44-year-old “Mayor Jim” presided over the city’s 300th anniversary celebrations in 1954.
James Francis Cahillane 