Longtime Big Bear Lake resident James “Mac” McAlister died in his family home on McAlister Road yesterday afternoon (July 29), though the San Bernardino County Coroner’s Department has not yet released the cause of death. McAlister, who had jokingly referred to himself as one of the Valley’s “historical relics” during a Big Bear Valley Historical Society presentation in 2006 had attended a Kiwanis luncheon with his daughter Kaysie yesterday, prior to his passing, according to friend Neal Hertzmann, who said of Mac, “I loved the guy. I saw him at church all the time, and he was always a kick.” McAlister, who turned 84 in May and had subsequently suffered a stroke in June which resulted in partial paralysis, lived on the fox farm his parents built in the ’20s. As McAlister has said, “My folks dragged me up here at the age of four in 1928 with a truckload of foxes.” He went on to be one of six graduates from Big Bear High School (which was then in cabins at the site of the current BBMS) in 1942, before attending UCLA and joining the U.S. Marine Corps, for whom he piloted airplanes during World War II. After 26 years in Hawaii with wife Anne, McAlister returned to Big Bear and, per good friend Don Ekberg, had “been back for 35 years.” McAlister had been a member of the Kiwanis Club, a docent at the Big Bear Historical Museum, and sang in the church choir. He is survived by daughters Kaysie, Connie and Kim, who are planning a burial service in Riverside. Much loved by this community, McAlister said, “It was just a wonderful experience growing up in Big Bear.”
