James D. “Jim” Gilpatrick, the colorful former manager of Baltimore Street tobacconist A. Fader & Son, died of complications from dementia May 28 at Stella Maris Hospice.
The former Bel Air resident was 83. “Jim was just a laid-back and natural-born salesman,” said J. Calvin “Nippy” Jenkins, a Baltimore attorney and former customer.
“If you called up central casting and told them to send over a salesman, it would be Jim. He was a big-framed man and made a presence whenever he entered a room.” James Dennis Gilpatrick, son of Jules Irving Gilpatrick, an electrical engineer, and Emilie Kubicek Gilpatrick, a registered nurse, was born in Milwaukee, and raised in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
A 1958 graduate of Central High School in Sheboygan, he attended what was then the University of Wisconsin-Sheboygan as a pre-engineering student from 1958 to 1959, when he entered the Air Force. A radar technician, he was stationed at Lowry Air Force Base in Colorado, until being discharged in 1963. He began his career as a tobacconist in 1963 as a sales representative at The Tobacco Bar Limited in Madison, Wisconsin, and rose to become its manager.
After meeting Ira “Bill” Fader Jr., owner of A. Fader & Son, at an industry conference, Mr.
Fader, who died earlier this year , offered Mr. Gilpatrick a sales job in Baltimore in the business at 201 E. Baltimore St.
that was established in 1891. Mr. Gilpatrick rose to vice president and general manager, where he was responsible for it.
