James D. Belote

Jim was born in Asheville, N.C., on July 7, 1938, to Martha and James Belote who were missionaries for the Southern Baptist church. In 1941, at three years of age, he sailed with his parents to Honolulu, Hawaii, en route to their first mission assignment: Canton, China. Due to conflicts arising between Japan and China, this trip was paused in Hawaii where they were reassigned to preach and teach during WWII. As a result, Jim’s earliest memory is of their family running around outside their home, gawking upward at strangely marked planes, one of which actually left a bullet hole in an outside wall of the family house on Dec. 7. After the war the original assignment was restored, and Jim spent some childhood years, first in Canton, China then in the Philippines while Mao Tse Tung conducted his revolution, which included attacks on Chinese Christians. This was followed by a later assignment to Hong Kong, where the family continued their missionary efforts throughout Jim’s high school years. He completed his high school education at King George V in Hong Kong in 1956 and came to Mars Hill NC to attend Mars Hill College (now Mars Hill University) for two years. In 1958, he went to Missoula, Montana, to begin his undergraduate studies in Forestry at the University of Montana. With only one semester left to finish, he interrupted his studies for a two-year stint in the Peace Corps where he worked as a Volunteer in Ecuador, but returned afterwards to complete his degree in History in 1964. Son David was born in Missoula in 1965.

It was his Peace Corps service in Ecuador that provided the direction for much of his life that followed. He met Linda Smith, a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer there, and in 1963 they married in Saraguro, a bi-ethnic Ecuadorian national white/indigenous community in the southern highlands. Both Jim and Linda became fascinated by the culture of the indigenous people who were teaching them so much about living a good community life. They decided there and then to go to graduate school to learn (and earn doctorates in) Anthropology. The program in Anthropology at the University of Illinois attracted them, and accepted them both as graduate students in 1966. Their studies included two lengthy periods of residence in Saraguro for research; daughter Karen was born in Saraguro in 1971 during a two-year period of research. Jim’s investigations focused on the Saraguros’ colonization of the tropical forest area to the east in the Amazon basin for cattle-raising. Along with earning his Ph.D. in 1984, Jim earned the distinction of becoming “the person who took the greatest amount of time (18 years) to complete his dissertation” at the University of Illinois.

He also became over the years, the person who most documented the Saraguro culture through photographs. In the early 2000s he gifted the Canton Saraguro government with a full set of his photographs (black-and-whites in the 60s; color thereafter) as well as full sets to the indigenous leaders of a variety of organizations and communities. This record is priceless today.

Jim loved learning, in all of its guises. He’d focus on miniscule details while cogitating on universal-scale principles and values. He truly wanted to know and understand “life, the universe and everything.” His favorite environment was the out-of-doors, especially in winter. Special places he loved include the wild lands surrounding Hong Kong, where many fishing pools and waterfalls abound, Lake Superior, Isle Royale, the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, The Paavola Wetlands Nature Area, The Rocky Mountains of Montana, The Cajas region of Ecuador and the high paramos in the same country. Wherever he went, Jim was happiest hiking, exploring, backpacking, camping, canoeing, cross-country skiing, building colossal snow tunnels in the front yard (even in Duluth!), arriving at the highest point in any given area and writing notes about it all in a journal.

His employment while an undergraduate student was working summers for the U.S. Forest Service in the Rocky Mountains as a ribes eradicator. (Ribes is a plant which served as an alternate host to “blister rust” a disease lethal to important trees, like White Pine.) His alternate job those summers was fire-fighter as needed. When he and Linda were seeking employment as anthropologists, he gave her a map with a line drawn across the northern part of the US, and told her they should only apply for jobs in the highlighted “snow belt.” Their first employment in college teaching was a shared appointment between the two of them at Grove City College in Pennsylvania (1972-74); the second was a tenure-track position for Linda at Michigan Tech’s Social Sciences Department (1974-89). This evolved into adjunct faculty appointments at Tech for Jim to teach a variety of courses in Social Sciences, Humanities and even Forestry at one point. He also taught courses at Finlandia from time to time. In 1989, Linda was hired as Assistant Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. Jim and Karen remained in Houghton that year so that Karen could graduate with her H.S. class. When Jim came to live in Duluth in 1990, he learned the Sociology-Anthropology Department had already created a part-time teaching job for him there. In addition to teaching the Belotes achieved a fairly strong publication record, writing articles together primarily about the culture of the Saraguro people. Jim also solo-authored some fiction and some non-fiction articles in a variety of magazines, including Lake Superior Magazine, Michigan Out-of-Doors and Above the Bridge. Although Jim and Linda felt strong ties to Duluth, when they retired from UMD in January 2006, they felt an even stronger pull back to the Snow Country i.e. the Copper Country (this time to Hancock), in March of that year.

In his retirement years, Jim turned his full attention to his first love–the Out-of-Doors. Specifically, he wanted to make it accessible to the public so that others could learn to relate to, and learn from nature. On any given day, he could mostly be found in one of two places: at the Keweenaw Land Trust’s Paavola Wetlands Nature Area, or on the portion of the North Country Trail that runs through the U.P., which is maintained by the local Peter Wolfe Chapter. On the Paavola property Jim planned out most of the trails that are existing at that area still today, as well as some which have since become overgrown since he last served there as steward. His last real walk was taken at Paavola through a favorite White Pine grove on Oct. 3, 2024, two days before his heart attack. His love for big old trees had been growing as Jim himself aged. He would wander in the woods near the Bluffs where he and Linda lived most recently, and then come home and take Linda to meet his latest find: a huge red oak or perhaps an elderly sugar maple. The Paavola White Pines also invoked Jim’s love.

Jim was preceded in death by his parents, James Dalby Belote and Martha Bigham Belote, as well as his brother Theodore (Teddy) Belote. His close friend and former brother-in-law Robert (Bob) F. Filer also preceded him, in a death which included Parkinson’s Disease. He is survived by his son David Clinton Belote and daughter Karen Kay Belote-Stevens, son-in-law Sven Stevens and their daughter Grace Marie Belote-Stevens as well as by three sisters and their children: Virginia (Ginger) Belote Henry and her children Lisa Henry Benham and her daughter; Michael Allen Henry, Sr. and his wife LaTanya and their three children; Carolyn Belote Briggs and her son Seth Belote Roberts and his wife Elizabeth (Libby) and their two daughters; and Linda Anne (Lela) Belote. Jim is also missed by his former sister-in-law Marilyn Filer and her three children Mark Filer, Kristan Coleman and Anne Walker who were very close to their Uncle Jim. Finally, Sarah Filer Zollweg another daughter of Bob Filer, mourns the loss of her uncle as well. As a husband, father, grandfather and friend, with a gracious, loving, gentle spirit, he wlll be greatly missed by all who knew him.

It is suggested that persons who wish to make a donation in memory of Jim Belote consider making this to the Keweenaw Land Trust, 49902 Limerick St., Hancock, MI 49930 and earmarking it for the Paavola Wetlands Nature Area trails or to The Peter Wolfe Chapter of the North Country Trail Association, at this link: www.northcountrytrail.org/donate. Be sure to indicate in the comment box this is a donation to the Peter Wolfe Chapter (or just PWC) in memory of Jim Belote.

Friends are invited to attend a Celebration of Life service in memory of Jim on Saturday May 31, 2025 at the Keweenaw Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 604 Bridge Street, Houghton from 1-3 p.m.

The Belote family thanks Jeff and Mark Dennis of the O’Neill-Dennis funeral Home in Hancock, as well as the Chassell Cemetery workers for heir kind assistance. To leave online condolences for Jim’s family, please go to www.oneilldennisfh.com.