Jim Bryant Cue, a devout Christian, devoted husband, beloved father, and gifted creative writer, woodworker, healer, and storyteller, crossed over to the eternities peacefully on the morning of October 14, 2026, at his home in Madison, Wisconsin. He was, at his passing, 93 years old, “sharp as a tack,” and “big as life, and half again as onery.”

Introduction

Jim Bryant Cue was born August 29, 1933, in Waynoka, Oklahoma. His mother, Blanche Rose Wilder, was known as “Joy.” She was young, loving, and beautiful.

Jim Cue used to tell people to “never let the facts get in the way of a good story.” In the case of this obituary, there’s no conflict between the biographical facts and a great story. He was, to those of us who loved him, the best dad ever, a faithful husband, a dear friend, and the world’s most interesting man.

Early Disadvantage

Jim’s early childhood was marred by trauma before the age of six: the deaths of his twenty-four-year-old mother and a one-year-old brother, Johnny. Jimmy, as he was known at the time, tried in vain to rescue both of them. Growing up, he says, he “learned how to be a man by watching some things my dad did and doing the opposite.”

Jim went to ten different high schools yet maintained a 4.0 GPA. Jim planned early on to go to medical school. He mowed lawns summers and saved every penny. Upon graduation, he found that his college savings had disappeared. His dream of being a healer would have to be set aside.

Adventure

Upon graduation from high school, Jim entered the Navy, where he deliberately failed the “clerical section” of the IQ test because he “didn’t want a desk job.” He still scored a 138 and used the two-point deficit to claim he wasn’t a genius. His “country lawyer” persona and speech peppered with colloquialisms or “Okie-isms” put people at ease.

Jim pulled pranks in the Navy, like the time the cook kept serving “rabbit,” and it tasted awful. He found a mangy old stray cat, shook it up, let it out of a bag and then chased it across the mess hall while wearing a chef’s hat and swinging a cleaver. “Catch that rabbit!” he yelled. Rabbit was taken off the menu for good the following evening. Jim also discovered that to save time around the deck and get through the classified area, all you had to do was “carry a clipboard and walk briskly.”

Without a college education, Jim became a jack-of-all-trades. For decades, he performed skilled jobs that required nerves of steel, such as the commercial delivery of nitroglycerin. He once ran a twenty-two-man sign shop in San Diego. He painted a billboard for a housing development above HWY 405 for which he coined the term “the Soaring Sixties.” The phrase took off.

Jim once patented a bottle brush design.

He wrestled wild salmon in Oregon and fly fished for Marlin off the California coast. He slept on the beach in Venice. He poured scorpions out of his boots after sleeping in Death Valley overnight and walked in the noonday sun. He trucked throughout the Western states and across America with awe and wonder at Nature's Beauty. He had crystal blue, sloping eyes and, through his forties, the looks of a movie star. He was tough and he was funny. Before he was ours.

In the years before meeting Ann, life was an adventure, and Jim was a White Knight in disguise as a taxi driver, steeplejack, short order cook… the list goes on. And so do the stories.

Because he couldn’t save Joy or Johnny, he saved whoever needed his help: the abused wife he counseled, drove to the airport, and whose husband he misled into thinking she went to the other coast; the migrant worker who couldn’t afford an ambulance to the hospital; a little girl with a broken leg slipping into sepsis whose parents refused medical care; a circus performer whose drink had been laced in a revenge plot; the would-be target of a racially motivated violent mob that Jim talked into a different mood. Though raised as a white man in the South in the thirties and forties, he once saved a drowning Black youth. There are more of these stories than there is space to put them.

The Love of His Life

On September 6, 1974, Jim was painting an IHOP roof in Milwaukee when a little blonde boy ran up to him yelling “Painter! Painter!” That boy was accompanied by a “school Marm” type with John Lennon glasses and her hair in a bun. Jim noticed the boy’s shoes were untied, so he showed Ann how to tie a knot that would last. When he found out that the mother’s birthday was that day, he took her out for a drink. There, the same little boy, Martin, pulled the bobby pins out of Ann’s hair. When her long black hair came tumbling down, Jim says, “I wanted that woman like I’d never wanted a woman before.” They were married in Chicago, Friday, December 13, 1974. It became an excuse to celebrate every Friday the 13th during their 52 years of living and working side by side. You can read the full story here. In the spring of 1975 the young family settled in San Diego, honoring Jim’s intention to avoid the snow and cold.

Jim had been told while in the Navy that he’d never have kids of his own, after falling asleep under a diathermy machine. (It should have killed him.) Jim “tried for decades to prove the doctor wrong.” Ann told Jim, “If you want children, the Lord will give you children.” On July 20, 1975, Jim’s daughter, Moira, was born. It was “one of the happiest days of my life” he used to say.

Big Changes

While living in San Diego, Ann answered the door one day to the missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (You can read the full story here.) By 1978, Jim had been baptized into the LDS Church. He brought zeal, enthusiasm, and optimism to his new religion and role as a father. Following a spiritual prompting, the Cues moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where Jim and Ann found a ready audience for the herbal and natural healing expertise they had picked up in California. Together they established Cues for Health LLC and co-founded the Wisconsin School of Natural Healing. Jim explored many aspects of healing touch, and, finally, became the healer he had always wanted to be. Eventually, their skills in the alternative health field and desire to reach more people led Jim and Ann to join Sunrider, a direct sales herbal company. Together, they trained distributors in the Midwest. Jim wrote and distributed their On Cue! newsletter. The Capital Times ran an article on the family, calling the couple’s achievement the “living embodiment of the American Dream.” Their only dream was to help as many people as possible.

Creative Output

When the children were young, Jim developed “Miss Mousie” bedtime stories. The stories feature a little mouse who upended the “natural order” to fearlessly defend prey animals from predators. When Corryn took karate, Miss Mousie developed “Mousarati” and even teleportation skills known as “the move.” Eventually, Jim honed his writing skills to create hundreds of short stories, a novel, and three screenplays. In 2016 he published some of the stories in a collection titled Three Degrees Beyond Reality. Two of his short stories have been adapted and are in pre-production for animated film.

Jim’s creativity was not limited to storytelling. For years, Jim built sets and some props/costumes for Playtime Productions children’s theatre. At home, he filled the house with custom-made bookshelves, furniture, vases, and anything Ann ordered for her music studio. Eventually when the Cues built their own custom home, a woodshop for Jim was included. It was in this woodshop he made wonderful boxes, vases, and other art objects we cherish today.

Character

A peacemaker and humble servant of Our Lord.

In matters of human foibles, Jim was, almost always, a part of the solution. Those who knew him would be hard-pressed to find a single instance of Jim saying or doing something thoughtless or mean or taking pleasure in another person’s pain. He is described by members of the LDS community as “kind,” an “example of Christian faith,” a “peacemaker” and “magical.” His religious service as a priesthood holder extended to blessing the sick, counseling the bereaved, blessing and preparing sacrament, and continual prayer for the “mental, emotional, physical, spiritual and financial wellbeing” of “all those we know and love” and “even those we would care about if we but knew them.” One church member described him appearing at a priesthood meeting as “a rock star” that “people gathered around” because they were “happy to see” him. He led others to Christ not by preaching, but by practicing, the Gospel.

Self-Control and Willpower

When Jim says he learned to be a man by watching some things his father did and doing the opposite, he wasn’t kidding. He had the rare capacity to recognize his own character flaws and correct them. In high school, as a sophomore and new transfer, he had lost his temper with another, larger boy who picked a fight. He went into a blind rage and “came to” before a major injury occurred. That was when Jim realized “I have a temper.” But it was a quick leap from problem to solution. “I can do something about it,” Jim vowed. Jim never lost control of his emotions in front of his family.

Similarly, Jim determined to show love, despite having little experience to draw from. When Jim’s marriage to Louise ended, before he met Ann, with the “beep, beep” of the heart monitor in a hospital (Louise died of cancer), Jim realized it would be too late then to say, “I love you,” and vowed that if he ever found love again, he would do things differently. Ann and his children heard “I love you,” from Jim every day. Jim loved nothing more than to gather the entire family into one group embrace. He called it an “Allbody Huggle.” “Before I met your mother, I used to feel I was on the outside looking in,” Jim would say. “But since I found your mom and joined the church, I feel like I’m on the inside.”

Spiritual Growth

Perhaps the most significant spiritual event in Jim’s inner world occurred after the kids all grew up and moved away. Ann was outside in the garden as Jim sat at the kitchen table.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and heard the words, “You’re my son, too, Jim.” Jim had vowed that if he “ever got near an angel, he was going to grab on and not let go.” But in that moment, he “could not move, could not speak,” as he felt the Love of God fill him from head-to-toe.

He cherished this experience. He shared it selectively but didn’t use it to try to convince anyone of anything or manipulate others for gain. Perhaps the Good Lord Almighty just wanted to let Jim know he had earned a “pat on the back.”

A Kid at Heart

Jim used to watch Saturday morning cartoons, especially Popeye, with his kids growing up. When he was a Sunday school teacher for very young children, when he asked them if different members of the class were a “child of God,” they said yes. “What about me?” Jim asked. “Yes,” they said. “What about your dad?” he asked. “No, he’s a grown-up.” Jim was awarded honorary child status, by children. He loved to be silly, to laugh, to play, to make Dad jokes and bad puns. He didn’t just tell Miss Mousie stories to his own kids, but to others as well.

A Gentle Soul And Healing Hands

Whenever there were wounded birds or animals, Jim had a way of holding them to calm them down. It worked with wounded people, too. His voice was like a calming narcotic. Jim had hoped as a child, after his mother went to the hospital and never came back, to learn medicine to save lives. Later in life he found the healing touch in his hands, a gift he shared generously. Once when working at the LDS temple, a man who had frozen shoulder for months received a massage from Jim. It totally fixed the problem. In recent years, every medical doctor or therapist who had a session with Jim was offered a free massage. Many accepted and were grateful.

Heritage

Jim descended from John McCue, who came to America in the 1600’s after the British nobles came to take his land. John, who was a bit of a hot-head, shot and killed six of them. He fled to America and dropped the “Mc” in the ocean. DNA testing and genealogy work later showed Jim was not just Irish or Scots-Irish but a blend of Western European (Greek, Italian, Austrian, English, French, and German) with a drop of indigenous American. He identified strongly as Irish and loved to dress as a leprechaun with green suit and top hat on the Sundays closest to St. Patrick’s Day.

Final Days

On October 14, 2036, Jim was shot to death—a case of mistaken identity—by a jealous husband, after seeing the vigorous 103-year-old )allegedly) “flirt with his wife.”

At least, that was his plan, and our little joke. Remember he told us not to let the facts get in the way of a good story.

But we promised “just the facts.”

In reality, Jim passed away with a clear mind, in good spirits despite some pain, under the loving and attentive care of his wife, Ann. His youngest son, Corryn, visited him the night before he passed. His daughter called him from Los Angeles daily. His last breath came and went under the watchful eye of his eldest son, Marty, who, as a hyperactive toddler, had seen him from afar and ran toward him with excitement, as if he knew, “this man is going to love my mom more than anybody could and become my ‘real’ dad.”

A Die Hard Romantic

Jim left not only the legacy of his spiritual leadership and his stories, but a special gift to Ann. Decades before he passed, he began hand-writing little love notes he signed “Your Secret Admirer.” Ann, who is nine years younger, will be able to read a note from Jim every day for the rest of her life. (She saved them for this purpose.)

The Rest of Us

Jim is survived by his loving wife, Ann Harycki Cue; his three children: Martin, Moira (partner Bruce Edwin) and Corryn (wife Kathryn); his six grandchildren, Lauren, Rachel, Cameron, Liam, Ariella and Ethanial; half-sisters Melva and Lana, and nieces and nephews, including, but not limited to, Cathleen “Kitty” Cue. He will be missed by many in the Madison LDS community.

He was the best of us.

To honor his memory, we ask most of you to spread a little extra kindness.

If you are the adult children of aging parents, we suggest that you find something spiritual within your parents’ own faith tradition that you can do with them together on a daily basis, a practice that gave comfort to Jim. If you don’t have parents anymore, show a little gratitude for the gentlest, most self-sacrificing person in your life. You won’t regret it. And Jim would approve.

In a world where bad things still happen to good people, be your own kind of White Knight. Stick up for the little guy.

Say hello to the mailman.

Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.

And if you were blessed to be a “friend of Jim,” please share your memories with us here. But when you do, remember, you don’t have to let the facts get in the way of a good story.

A private memorial service will be planned in the near future, leaving open the possibility of a celebration-of-life in the not-so-near-future.

Cress Funeral & Cremation Service

3610 Speedway Rd    Madison

608-238-3434