Longtime Hawaii automobile dealer Jim B. Slemons II died Feb. 4 at home in Las Vegas. He was 80.
Slemons was born Jan. 27, 1933, in Pasadena, Calif. and grew up to inherit his father’s automobile dealership business. He expanded the business to include dealerships in California and Hawaii, a boat dealership and a regional airline.
"Hawaii was very dear to Jim," widow Gina Maria Slemons said. "From the people, and the culture, until his last week, that was the place he always wanted to return to. He definitely held it very dear to his heart."
In addition to his business career, Slemons also was active in nonprofit fundraising and was a captain in the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary and a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve.
Retired Coast Guard Reserve Capt. Ralph Hoekstra posted in an online mortuary guest book that Slemons "volunteered the use of his yacht to transport members of the U.S. Navy’s seal teams as part of a Joint Services Military Readiness exercise," that he was "a generous person and loved the Coast Guard," once staging a fundraiser for the marching band.
His life as a high-living socialite and philanthropist is well-documented in the Los Angeles Times. The paper has pages and pages of reporting on Slemons from the society pages to the business pages, the latter of which chronicled his successes, and, beginning in the 1990s, the failures.
In 1987 his Mercedes-Benz dealership, Jim Slemons Imports in Newport Beach, sold 1,870 new and used models to place it among the top three or four Mercedes dealerships in the U.S.
In 1990 it was the second-largest Mercedes dealership with $80 million in revenue.
In 2002, Times reporter Jean Pasco said Slemons had been the "quintessential Newport Beach entrepreneur," as the "owner of a flourishing Mercedes-Benz empire and a jet-setter who married six times, kept an 83-foot yacht at Newport Harbor and boasted a string of showplace homes" including a custom-built, 10,000 square-foot home in the gated, Harbor Ridge section of Newport Beach.
In the next paragraph, Pasco reported that Slemons was homeless and living in his car near Waikiki Beach, but that he was trying to make a comeback.
The effort befell a setback in 2009 when Slemons filed for Chapter 11 reorganization in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Honolulu over lease payments for the land under his former Aiea Volvo dealership, and impending displacement for the rail transit line.
Jim Slemons Volvo in Aiea once sported a DeLorean, suspended from a crane, as a publicity stunt pertaining to jailed automaker John DeLorean. Slemons left the Hawaii auto business in 1996.
Two ex-wives posted messages in the online guest book as well.
"Jim, I always loved you and always will. You are a legend. You will be sorely missed," posted Tajah.
Anne Slemons posted that "Jim was a fun and loving husband and best friend."
Marlena Hays described Slemons as "a man like no other, so misunderstood by so many (with) a heart of gold. You were Newport," she said.
Slemons is survived by wife Gina Maria; son Bryan; niece Tamara and nephew-in-law, Robert, according to an obituary published in California.
Services were held Wednesday at Pacific View Memorial Park and Mortuary in Corona Del Mar, Calif.
———
On the Net:
» is.gd/SlemonsMemorial
