Jim Niswender not only founded the Prayer Walkway at Unity but continues to maintain the impressive result of a fund raising project that he suggested as a member of UCC’s Board of Directors in 2013. Since its creation, he has picked up the blanks, laid the bricks honoring present and departed Unity members, even their beloved pets, and protected the pristine memorial of life experiences, a fulfillment of an idea that has paid for itself in more than monetary ways.
Jim was introduced to Unity by his wife Linda whom he met on an internet chat room in 1998 (before the advent of Facebook, eHarmony etc.) In 2000, they married on Madeira Beach and returned to Michigan but only for one winter. Linda, who had been attending UCC since 1989, missed Leddy, the church and the southern climate. In May 2001, the Niswenders came back to Florida to stay, and Jim began regularly attending church here, where he serves on the welcome committee and is one of the golf cart drivers providing short rides to Sunday morning services. In Michigan, Jim and Linda occasionally attended the large Renaissance Unity Church in Warren, where Democratic presidential hopeful Marianne Williamson was then interim minister.
Born and raised in Monroe, Michigan, two years after high school graduation, Jim enlisted in the Air Force where he would spend the next 20 years in faraway places—Vietnam, Misawa AB in northern Japan, a NATO assignment to the Netherlands, as well as stateside assignments at Otis AFB on Cape Cod, Rickenbacker AFB near Columbus, Homestead AFB in Florida and, finally, Langley AFB, VA where he retired in 1988.
In civilian life, back in Michigan, Jim worked for Detroit Edison at Fermi II Nuclear Power Plant, applying what he had learned in the Air Force in the field of metrology, the engineering science of very precise measurements. His last employer was Ocean Optics Inc. when the company was in Dunedin. He had a small part in many NASA projects and has worked on instruments that have gone to the top of Mt. Everest, airborne above Antarctica, crashed on the moon looking for water, and instruments headed to Pluto and Mars.
Although he enjoyed his career as a metrologist, he has, since 2013, equally enjoyed retirement. He and Linda, both in second marriages, have a combined family of 7 children and 10 grandchildren. Sadly, Jim’s oldest son Jeff made transition in 2004, and his granddaughter Julia was murdered in 2012. The couple especially loves traveling. In this country they have visited several places in California, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, all of New England, Tennessee, Kentucky, The Great Smokies and Asheville, NC to see grandchildren at least twice a year. They both love zoos, county fairs, and demolition derbies, which are frequently included in their motor trips.
A highlight of this past summer for the Niswenders was their first overseas trip and cruise from Amsterdam to Scotland, Ireland and Wales, an adventure that they both thoroughly enjoyed and one they may very likely repeat.