A 100-year walk with God

Most mornings, Jim Campagna drives himself to daily Mass at either Cathedral of the Holy Spirit or Pro-Cathedral of St. Mary in Bismarck where he is a parishioner. Not bad for someone about to turn 100 years old on December 21 this year.

“I put God first in my life,” Jim said. “I know every day might be my last day, but as long as I’m ready, that’s all that matters.”

When he was born in Bismarck at St. Alexius hospital in 1923, life expectancy was 56.1 years for men and 58.5 for women. Antibiotics had not been invented yet—that would happen in 1928 with penicillin— so childhood illnesses and tuberculosis were the leading causes of death.

Campagna was only six years old when the Great Depression began in 1929, continuing until 1941. “I was the seventh child of ten children,” he said. “I’m the only one left now. We had a farm about 1 mile east from Mary College. We walked about 1 ½ miles to school where I went to first grade. I remember the rough winters.”

“A widow lived a mile north of us on the top of a hill and one day Mom told me to go check on her,” he recalled. “I was 6 years old. She was okay and gave me a slice of boughten bread. It was so sweet. Oh, was it good.”

Back then, sending a young child a mile away was not out of the ordinary. But Campagna met with danger when he headed back. “On my way home, pigs came out after me,” he recalled. “I could tell by their voices they would have eaten me if they had caught me. There were big drifts, and I went over them. That is what saved me.”

He was close with his brothers Albert and Reynald who were four and six years older respectively. In mild weather, the three of them slept up in the barn where a goat would follow them up the steps and sleep with them. Campagna remembers the first prayer he said on his own was after he grabbed a horse’s tail and was kicked into the air. “When I came down,” he said, “I Iost my breath. I prayed, ‘God, I don’t want to die,’ and my breath came back.”

His family moved into town in 1932 when he was in the fourth grade at Bismarck’s Roosevelt Elementary School. He assumes their pastor told his parents the children should be at the Catholic school, so he switched to St. Mary’s school. To earn spending money when he was 14, Campagna would buy Bismarck Tribune newspapers for 2 cents and sell them downtown for a nickel. “I remember if I had 20 cents, it felt like a lot,” he said.

When his father died on May 7, 1938, Campagna quit school in his junior year to go to work. “In Oregon, railroad jobs paid 50 cents an hour,” he said. “I went there, and we worked 10 hours a day, six days a week, $30 a week. Boy, that was big money.”

Joined the Navy

In 1942, he joined the Navy during World II. Until then, Campagna was known as Francis, but on his birth certificate, that is actually his middle name. “My real name is James,” he said. “I never knew that. For 19 years, I was called Francis or Frenchie, but in boot camp, I was told, ‘Your name is James now.’ I’ve kept that name ever since, but when I came back from the Navy, my family didn’t know who James was.”

In the Navy, Campagna was a gunner on supply ships. “They called us the armed guards,” he said. “We’d take supplies to the islands and come back. I was on five merchant ships. We went everywhere—Mariana and Marshall Islands, the Philippines, and Guadalcanal. We’d only stay a day or two, take supplies off, and go.”

“One island I remember is Guadalcanal where we saw Eleanor Roosevelt,” Campagna said. “She was the first lady. She came up and got some coffee from the ship and left.”

Switch to Merchant Marine

After the Navy, Campagna tried business college for six months but decided to join the Merchant Marine, working on tankers for six years, paid twice as much as he had earned in the Navy.

While home on a visit to Bismarck in 1949, he met his wife who worked with one of his sisters as a telephone operator. “When I met her, she was different than anything I had ever seen,” he said. The two kept in touch through letters. She moved to San Jose, California with her sister. Campagna also moved there and the two of them worked at a cannery, each staying in the respective dorms for men and women.

They married at St. Joseph Church in San Jose in December 1952, continuing work at the cannery for $1 a day until Campagna landed a job with the U.S. Game and Fish on Grizzly Island in the San Francisco Bay area. He was in charge of irrigation to enhance feeding for the waterfowl. Campagna worked there for 16 years but moved back to Bismarck with their four children due to his wife’s illness. “Her perceptions were off,” Campagna explained. “We needed to be closer to family for help. In 1984, she went to Jamestown State Hospital. They took care of her until she died Thanksgiving Day 1993.”

Campagna worked with Job Service until retirement in 1988 and has lived in his home on 16th street since 1984. “A grandson has lived with me for the last 10 years,” he said. “He takes care of everything. He keeps the place clean and makes me lunches. If it wasn’t for him, I don’t think I would make it.” Campagna said he has 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren although he loses track of how many are grand- or great-grandchildren.

Daily Mass since 1969

Since 1969, Campagna has attended daily Mass. “I go because God loves me and I get to receive Him every day,” he said. “I’ve had many trials and tribulations. I need Him in Communion to get through the day. God is good to me. He gives me the strength. Without God we can do nothing but sin. With God, we can do all things. I know it, that’s why I’m here.”

When asked what advice Campagna would like to give to others he shared, “Find God in your life because without God there’s nothing.” He said it hurts him to see people ignoring God and caring about finances more than their soul.

“Pray every day, morning noon and night for your salvation,” he advised. “It’s the most important thing you can do.”