Finding it hard to believe it's been 10 years already, Jim obviously had a huge impact on many. Though I didn't know him well, he was always professional yet friendly, always made everyone in the room feel better before he left. Wishing the family peace and comfort in the years that have passed since you lost a father, husband, coworker and friend. God bless Jim McGrane.

I know these messages are for each of us who knew and loved Jim. That is one reason they continue to be posted 10 years on and I suspect they will be for another 10.

Among the many things I miss is the comfort of knowing that I could go to him for anything - business or personal and he would lend an ear. In his more difficult days when the private equity assholes were torturing him because they knew better how to run a finance company, I was glad I could lend an ear. To this day, I don't want anything to do with PE firms.

Another year without Jim is only made tolerable by the knowledge that I am in league with so many others that have benefited from his influence and friendship.

Until next year...

Sure miss you. You are not only a great boss to me but a valuable friend

Jim, you are missed but not forgotten. I bike ride by your resting place up to three times a week year-round and reach out to you each time. I give you short updates and hope you hear them. You left us way to early.

Jim, I think about your often and you are not gone to me. I continue to benefit from all I learned from you and the relationship we have. I love you and miss you my friend. God Bless to you and your family, as you know I believe in eternal life and know that I will get to see you again my brother.  Love, bill

I can't believe it's been 9 years. I find myself quoting you, thinking of you and how lucky I was to have that time under your leadership. Bill Carey wrote me a letter recently and told me you'd be proud - it brought me to tears. I wish you were here to run things by so very often - your guidance, perspective and laugh is deeply missed.  I love you Jim... and hope you've gotten to spend some time with my Dad up in Heaven entertaining and telling stories. The USXL experience with you and the amazing team will forever influence me. 

Hard to believe it has been 8 years since you left us Jim. Your legacy shines through each of these tributes left by so many who were influenced by your leadership and your friendship. Reading them again reinforces for me just how long a shadow you cast. 

As others have remarked, I go through my work and personal life comforted with the knowledge that you were my mentor, my friend and someone whose lessons remain with me to this day. 

I miss you always but I will never forget you. I love you brother.

I trust you are singing with the angels and making heaven a better place - if that is even possible!

Brother Jim, just this week I have spoken to two members of the team Dennis and Jeff. You still influence me and all of us in such a positive and impactful way. I was thinking like Mike what would Jim tell me here and I tapped in and had a quick connect with you. Thanks for being alive in my life eight years after you passed through one existence to another. Love you brother.  

Boss I know I am late on this, no excuse and meant to reach out last week but work got the better of me and it should not have. I don’t know if you see this but I sure hope that you do, I don’t know if you know what I am up to but talk to you each day and part of the reason I went back to the office in August in the midst of this mess was to see you and talk to you. I would have brought your picture home boss but the wife may think I am a little crazy talking to your picture that sits over my shoulder, she already has an opinion on my crazy. Very few people have made such an impression on me as you have, I wish I would have told you that when you were here, another lesson of many that you have taught me. I write this hoping that you see this, I write this to remember you and your impact on my life, most of all I write this as a tribute to the best leader I have ever worked for and with. I love you brother and miss you.

Experiences and memories that last a lifetime when it comes to you my friend. Hard for me to comprehend that it has been seven years, you are in my thoughts and your influence on my life has made me a better person and a better leader. Your impact continues today and I miss you deeply.  Love you Jim. 

I can't believe you've been gone 7 years... your legacy lives on through so many of us. We are staying in touch, helping each other, guiding each other, laughing together and practicing intentional leadership, while trusting dangerously at times. I miss you my friend and mentor, you are forever missed.

Happy birthday in Heaven Jim - I know we will meet again some day and in the meantime, I am comforted that you are in the Lord's hands and with your Dad, who grieved as we all did when you left us. I love and miss you my friend.  

Five years ago today you left us with a great hole in our hearts. Yet, five years later, you continue to influence me and my actions each and every day. True leadership lives on forever; you have left a legacy of leadership examples for us. I miss you dearly my friend. Until we meet again...

On the eve of your departure I am struggling, I miss you as much as I did a year ago and years before that. Every time I have a difficult situation I think of you my friend, WWJD? I know that you and yours will never know how much you meant to me and my familial and non-familial. I love and miss you my friend and I am grateful that you impacted my life the way that you did. I hope to see you soon but not too soon.

Hard to wake up and get a message that it has been 4 years now since Jim left us. His influence in my life and the lives of so many has passed the test of time and is ongoing. I loved this guy and still have such love for Maryann, Geoff and Sam. Our sadness is stilled only by the thought of Jim and his dad Don re-united in heavenly peace.

It is hard to believe that you left us almost 4 years ago. I miss you brother but I see you every day. The picture of us shoulder to shoulder resides in my office to remind me of our friendship and your leadership. Not a day goes by that I do not ask myself what would Jim do? I would not be where I am at today without the 10 years of your influence. You are the best leader and mentor that I have ever witnessed. I hope that I will see you again, I miss our knife fights. Love you boss.

Thinking of you on your birthday and missing you as always!

Hard for me to believe it has been two years since Jim's passing. He continues to inspire me on a routine basis and I think of Jim often. The impact we have on others last way beyond our mortal existence. Jims impact was unique and powerful. Love you Jim.  My love and thoughts to his family. bill adams

I think about Jim at some point every day. Jim's passion and creativity always inspired me so much. Miss you my friend.

Happy Birthday to my/our friend Jim. My thoughts and prayers are with Jim entire family today. I know that I miss Jim and think about him everyday. His impact and friendship live on and I am blessed to be part of that circle. Thoughts and love to Maryann, Geoffrey and Samantha. bill adams

In celebration of your birthday, I am having an old favorite munchie- Freihofer's chocolate chip cookies, Kahlua, and milk!
Happy trails!

This is the first time I am writing here. I knew Jimmy when we were both freshman in college. This goes back to 1972. His friends at that time included Stu Stanley, the Pollochino family and a few other members of his band. Even back when he was 18 years old, Jim was always looking to grow in business and he loved music. He sold Steed oil part time while going to college, as well as performing in a band as a singer, harmonica player and conga player - all self taught. Every time I hear a Gladys Knight song or other songs from that era, I think of him. He turned me on to Spyra Gyra, Traffic, Sonny James and Brownie McGee, blues and jazz. I met his grandparents, the McGranes, in Florida and learned that his grandfather had been a famous musician who performed with Tommy Dorsey in the Big Band era. His grandma taught me to make cheese blinzes and pepper steak and I still have the recipes to this day. I loved Jimmy and my memories of him will always be powerful. Happy Birthday J.D. Maryann, Geoff and Sam...you don't know me, but I just wanted to reach out to you all send love and say hello. I hope you are doing well. Warm thoughts go out to Don, Gloria, Lisa and Tommy. xox

Thinking of you Jim and the family. Not easy to come back to this site on the one hand but when trying to look positively, it is great to see the pictures and read the tributes. It reminds me how lucky we were to have known you. You are missed and yet I am looking forward to the better days up in heaven with so many who are there before us.

Jim ,I don't know what pulled me to your website today but happy birthday-I do really miss you
love your friend
David

Happy Birthday in heaven Jimmy. We all miss you.

The Castoro Family

I worked with Jim a number of years ago and just wanted to say that he was a warm, caring person, who thought about others constantly; he also happened to possess a strong business sense and a great work ethic. I am so sorry for your loss. You are all in our thoughts and prayers.

I had the great pleasure of working for Jim 15 years ago and the experience left a tremendous impression on me; he was one the the few truly unaffected, kind and generous people I've ever known. He always took time to teach, share and mentor, and to laugh out loud. What a joy to have known him. Hopefully, his memory will continue to offer comfort to his family, and may God bless them.

Jim's infectious smile and caring persona made every ELFA or ELFF event special when he was in attendance. He always went the extra mile on behalf of the industry, and was always supportive as a volunteer. Those of us here at ELFA and ELFF were truly blessed to have known and experienced such an outstanding human being.

"Jim was an incredibly special person. Very Intelligent and thoughtful; deeply principled; a visionary; passionate about what he believed in with great compassion for all. In the business world he proved to be an outstanding leader who garnered the respect of all whom knew him. An as a friend, you couldn’t ask for more. He always was available to speak and provide counsel, and would do anything for his friends. As a husband and father, he was a role model for us all.  So, Jim on behalf of your family and friends, I thank you. I salute you for your brilliant mind, for your passion and vision, for your nurturing of others, for your generosity, for your leadership, for your patience and understanding, for your spirituality, for your deep devotion to your family, and finally, for your unconditional friendship and love."

We did not know Jim personally, but we spent many hours over dinner with his brother Tom listening to him talk about Jim.  You could tell Tom loved, respected and admired his brother.  Even though we didn't know Jim, it's obvious he affected many people in very positive ways ... Even two people from Colorado who only knew of him through his brother's stories.  Maybe that's the definition of immortality - Affecting those around us and living on through the memories and small influences we leave with others.  God bless the McGrane family.

I met Jim on two occasions, so I do not know him nearly as well as many others who will leave a tribute. My only knowing of him is work related. At our first meeting, I was unprepared to be as impressed with Jim as I was. He was an extraordinary person. He knew more about Organizational Transformation, in a deeply informed way, than any leader I had ever met. He was a very personal and engaging. I was drawn into relationship immediately. I had been looking forward to getting to know him much better. I will miss that opportunity. My prayers are with Jim as he journeys on and with his family as they grieve his loss.

Jim McGrane was a class individual in every sense of the word. He knew how to balance his professional life with his personal life and yet still made time for everybody. He was my first sales manager over 25 years ago and gave me tremendous encouragement and for that I remain forever grateful. Over the years I had contact with him at various times and he always was warm and generous and gave me his wise counsel and advice. A person like Jim comes along very rarely. Our thoughts are with his family who have a lot of great memories to remember.

On behalf of me, my brother Paul, Michael Turturro,Cynthia William and John Botti as well as our families..... we would like to extend our condolences to Maryann, his family and his parents.

All of us and Stu Stanley spent thousands of hours and years together as friends and members of a band called Somethin' Sweet.

In fact we also recorded a disco record with Maryann's brother Freddie.

Although we lost touch when they moved out of NY I have thought of Jimmy many times and was hopeful that we could get the old gang together to refresh friendships.

I agree with his friend who said he was a passionate musician learning the congas, harp and as a singer. I still see his head tilt as he stared into the sky to hit the high notes.

I am glad to see that his life was full of friendship and love and wish we could have been more a part of it but I am glad that he is shining down on his family and in peace.

Jim.......as you once sang " don't take away the music...it's the only thing we got.....it's our piece of the rock"

I had the great honor of working with Jim at two companies, US Leasing and AT&T Capital. Jim was always the kind of guy you could count on to be there when you needed him. He was open and ready to lead & support and never to busy to help. We will all miss him.

I met Jim more than ten years ago when we were looking for growth opportunities on the US market. At that time, he was a recognized specialist of vendor finance and the founder of USXL,one of the rising stars of small ticket finance. Since then, I had regular contacts with Jim and I could appreciate the qualities of the man, not only those of the professional strongly involved in our industry. I discovered that he had simple and true values based on family, friendship and respect of others. He was a good man. Repose en paix mon ami !

Jim was kind to everyone, an inspiration, and someone I always enjoyed seeing at industry events. He will truly be missed. My deepest condolences to Jim's family and friends.

Jim was one of the "good guys" in leasing. I appreciated his help when I started my company in 2006. I enjoyed ELA functions with him. He and I lobbied together on Capitol Hill days in DC for the ELA. I have a great amount of respect for him and tried to emulate his leadership style in some small way. He is missed.

My deepest condolence to the McGrane family on Jim’s passing. I knew him for many years; first with AT&T Credit & now with USXL/Everbank. Like so many others have already expressed, Jim wasn’t the typical corporate executive. I don’t think he laughed at my corny jokes to be nice – I think his sense of humor was as corny as mine.

My favorite story; Me & my band played a few holiday parties in the early days of USXL. Jim was a blues enthusiast & wanted to blow the harp on a particular song. I knew he was a great musician & told him, no problem. But he wanted to rehearse & asked where we practice. I told him we play in our drummer’s barn on Wednesday nights. I gave him the address, but didn’t expect him to really show up. Well, sure enough, the following Wednesday, there was Jim in the barn, with me & the band, working on the old John Mayall song he wanted to do. When he left, my band mates said, “What a cool guy. You say he’s a co-worker of yours?” I said, “No, he’s the president of the company I work for.” Needless to say, they were surprised.

Maryann, Samantha, Geoffrey, I am deeply sadden to hear of Jim’s passing. I had the pleasure to work with Jim on several fund raiser projects at St. Matthew’s. Jim was a friend for many years and member of the fund raiser team, his inspiration, guidance and enthusiasm helped make many fund raisers a success. My prayers are with you and your family at this sad time.

To Maryann, Samantha, Geoffrey and family. My family and I are keeping you in our thoughts and prayers.  I do hope you find some comfort in the kind words and happy memories that we are sharing with you. Jim was truly special to all of us.

Jim was the first person in a Senior Management position that I really got to know personally. After working at large companies, with little or no interaction with upper management, I started working at a small startup called US Express Leasing. I’d like to share some amazing story about how I started to get to know Jim but there really isn’t one. Getting to know Jim was just like getting to know any other coworker. Jim wasn’t “President of USXL – Jim McGrane”, he was Jim and his job just happened to be President of USXL. There was no pretense when interacting with him. No air of superiority or feigning concern. He was very special because he was one of us. He had his job, and you had yours. But first and foremost, he valued you as a person. And what’s most amazing is he never had to go out of his way to show you this. It was simply who he was.

Jim will be missed by so many.  It’s a rare blessing to have had the opportunity to know such an intelligent, visionary and inspiring leader. Rarer still to have that same person serve as an example of how to strive to simply be a great person. To me, that was Jim.

I had the chance to meet Jim 10 years ago and since, I saw him once a year at the ELFA Convention. Each time I saw a man who radiated empathy and concerns of others. He was not only a great professional but an exceptional individual. My prayers and deepest sympathy to Jim's family."

Jim was my mentor and my boss durinng the Heller's days. His unforgetable smile and easy-to-approach personality will remain in my heart forever. He gave me excellent advise and help even when I left for another company. Good bye - my mentor, boss and friend! I will surely miss you!

Jim McGrane hired me to join him in starting a Vendor Leasing group at Charter Financial in New York. Although we worked together for only a brief period of time, I saw then, what many of the comments reflected in this tribute are saying today. Jim was, plain and simple, a good person in every way possible. A great listener, teacher and someone you could talk with about anything. Jim was a visionary who believed anything was doable or possible. My heartfelt condolences to all of Jim's family and friends.

I met Jim while working at Charter Financial. He was always a charismatic, creative and positive individual. He would always great you with a smile. We stayed in touch from time to time after that and he remained that positive and bright person.

Rest in peace Jim.

Julie and I would like to share our deepest condolences with Maryann, Geoffrey and Samantha as well as with all of those that had the pleasure of calling Jim their friend. What a special man who touched so many.... He will be greatly missed but forever remembered.

I briefly worked with Jim in a consultant engagement 20 years ago. It was a new experience for me that opened my eyes to a completely new perspective on leasing. I can echoing the comments above, he was a good listener and always had time to chat no matter how busy or remote the topic was. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family, and the equipment leasing community has lost one of its truly good leaders.

We will all miss Jim. His smile would light up a room. It is hard to understand when someone is taken from us much too soon. Jim was a good Father and Son. My condolances to the family as they suffer through this loss. The good Lord has a plan. Someday Jim, we'll all be together again.

I was hired to run Asset Management for Heller GVF a week before Jim started with the company. When news came that Jim McGrane had taken over leadership at Heller I thought my days were numbered. Little did I know that a long friendship was about to begin. After a difficult year at HF, Jim had taken the leadership team to a "team building" event in Tucson, AZ. I was on the cusp of accepting a position with a competitor but after having spent several days in the desert with Jim and learning about his passion and compassion, my mind was made up - I would go through a wall for this guy. I'll never forget the day in his office when he told me of his true passion, Latin percussion. Here was a guy, a captain of industry, a leader, a motivator, who just really wanted to play the drums...

I was saddened by the news of his passing, but saddened even greater knowing the world has lost yet another kind, loving, passionate person. Eternal rest Jim...

I met Jim and Maryann around the time they had Geoff and Samantha, and our families became the best of friends. We spent some wonderful times together. Jim, we will all miss you, your zest for life, the love and devotion you showed for your family, and your warmth and good nature. Thank you for sharing those things with us, we are a better family for having known you.

Having worked with Jim at Heller, I had not seen Jim in person for a number of years, until six weeks ago when we bumped into each other at Jacksonville airport. He was just the same, we did not stop talking until we landed in Newark. His effervescent character, reminded me of just how much passion one can have for our industry, he will be missed by many of us. My prayers and thoughts are with his family..