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Tribute to Jim Fallon

By Walt Nygard

Jim Fallon died in the early hours of the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Combat Paper and Frontline Paper veterans, families, and friends lost a best friend. His smile and easy banter were a fixture of every Sunday workshop and many a Frontline affair, in the studio or on the road.

Jim brought a lifetime of colorful experience: Vietnam Combat Medic, jazz drummer and club owner, bartender, union rep in New York and California, VA case officer, and veteran anti-war activist. He's traveled the world and shared the adventure with his wife of 47 years, Peg Fallon.

An Agent Orange casualty from the War, bone cancer left him with a titanium right arm. Though it ended his drumming, Jim worked with veterans his whole life, and through knowing me and friends like Frank Wagner and Jan Barry, Jim discovered Combat Paper, a deep and revelatory experience we all shared. Combat Paper changed our lives.

Though a disabled veteran, Jim saw us cut lino blocks and print our first images, telling our stories with our art. And Jim Fallon was a man with a treasure trove of stories. With his rebuilt arm and a little help from his friends, he began producing work sublime in feeling, for the War he knew, for the musicians he loved, for the New York—New Jersey home he knew so well, and for the wonders of the natural world.

And he began to paint. He covered sheets of the paper we love with passionate colors. And regardless of the subject, his work emanates a joy of life that he would not see extinguished, even as we grieve his loss.

I met Jim Fallon almost twenty years ago. In Veterans For Peace, we marched together in New York and New Jersey, Washington, DC, Portland, Oregon, Portland, Maine, and places I forget.

I thought Jim was the coolest guy I knew. Fair winds and following seas, my Friend...

Walt Nygard is studio manager and lead instructor of Frontline Paper and a close friend of Jim.