Jim Cherry grew up in San Diego in a family of 14 children.  He was the second oldest and was conscripted along with his older brother at a young age to assist their grandfather to maintain his tenement type homes.  Starting at age 9 with sorting through buckets of screws and nails, Grandpa Ed taught the boys how to repair most everything.  Thus, they became emergency fix-it scholars.  Grandpa Ed was a very creative person and not much of a by-the-book contractor. The boys in later years would joke about how they learned to not do things the correct way, but Grandpa’s way.  Somehow Grandpa’s way crept into their DNA and is partly responsible for how they creatively function today.  If you happen to notice anything unusual in Jim’s wordsmithing techniques it could most likely be Grandpa’s fault. 

Jim is a graduate of San Diego State University in Philosophy and English with additional graduate work in Creative Writing and Religious Studies.  After he received training from his grandfather, he later became a journeyman carpenter in an effort to learn the correct way to do things.  This led to a desire to hone his woodworking skills. Jim studied furniture making on his own and later started his own business as a furniture maker.  His accomplishments were displayed in Fine Woodworking Magazine, and also in the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles. 

As a woodworker and building contractor Jim found little time to pursue his secret desire to write.  It wasn’t until he and his wife, Juliana, moved to Hawaii in 2009 and later retired, that the inner life of wordsmithing finally and slowly became a reality. His suitcase of worldly trade skills jumbled together with Grandpa’s DNA, the philosophy of the great thinkers of the ages, the majestic beauty of the Islands, and the innocent, trusting nature of the common man, are all responsible for producing this book, Kamaka, Kahuna at the Crossroads of Ancient Hawaii.