Past President Jim Bradley is sailing off into retirement at the end of this month, but he hasn’t bailed on his commitment to the Rotary Club of San Francisco. Jim joined the Club in 1989 and was President in 1998-99, having previously served on the Board as Club Service Chair in 1995-97. Currently, he is in the first year of a two-year term as Club Treasurer. He also was on the San Francisco Rotary Foundation Board for 14 years, serving as President for three years.
Jim’s goals as Treasurer are “to keep the Board well informed on the Club’s financials and to try to keep all the money flowing in the right direction, the transparency of the Club’s financial situation.”
Born and raised in Fresno, Jim studied business administration at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, then returned to Fresno and worked for his father in the family’s laundry and linen supply business. In 1977, he moved to San Francisco, where he worked for Chubb Insurance Co. for eight years, then at Cal Insurance for 38 years.
His hobbies are hiking the High Sierra and sailing his 18-foot race boat. Jim, a member of the St. Francis Yacht Club, races almost every month throughout California and on the East Coast. He says he’s “won a few championships. I’m not going to be an America’s Cup guy, but on the local scene, I do pretty well.”
Jim and his wife, Kathy, live in Ingleside Terrace on the same block as Past Presidents John Hoch and Harold Hoogasian. Kathy is a math specialist for the San Francisco Unified School District, teaching math teachers how to teach math. The couple has a son, Ben, and a daughter, Samantha, who are both married and live in Seattle.
Jim’s father was a Rotarian, “so I always knew about Rotary,” he says. In college, he joined a service group similar to Rotaract sponsored by Kiwanis and found that “my grades got better, my life got better. Rotary has been good for me, personally and also business-wise. When you’re helping out other people, you’re just a better person.”
When he first joined Rotary, Jim got involved with youth programs, and then-President Peter Lagarias asked him to be the contact person with the SFUSD for Club programs like Academic Decathlon and what was then called Camp Enterprise, now RYLA. During his year as President, the Club bought a new van for the Boys and Girls Club, which is still in use, and initiated a project with SFUSD high school counselors to teach seminars in Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The Club also got involved in the 50th anniversary of the United Nations, and Jim ran the Model UN for that celebration. The Club won both a Presidential Citation from RI and the Best Club Award from the District the year Jim was President.
“Individually, you can’t really do very much for the good of society,” he says, “but as a group you can do some pretty significant things. Being part of a group that does these things is pretty great.”
Jim says he prefers “hands-on service to writing checks,” but he also writes checks. He is a Paul Harris Fellow, as were his father, mother, and brother. His wife and daughter also are Paul Harris Fellows, and he’s trying to get his son down from Seattle to accept the same honor. “One of my objectives is to have the whole family, to try to get everyone. I guess when grandchildren come along, I’ll work on that.”