James Clair Jr., 57; helped build auto dealerships

JAMES CLAIR JR.

As an auto dealer, a friend, and a father, James E. Clair Jr. could listen with the kind of warmth and intensity that made the rest of the world melt away.

"He looked in your eyes, and at that time you felt like you were the only person in the world," said George Albrecht, a friend for 30 years and a longtime competitor among Greater Boston's car dealerships. "And that's how he always made you feel."

Last fall, Mr. Clair and his family sold most of their dealerships. A couple of weeks after the deal was finalized, one of his younger brothers died of a heart attack. Mr. Clair, who had been battling cancer for two years, died Tuesday in Lahey Clinic in Burlington of an infection related to his treatment. He was 57 and had lived in Dover.

"It wasn't supposed to be scripted this way," Joseph Clair of Medfield said of the deaths of Mr. Clair and their brother Mark, who had also lived in Dover.

The oldest of five children, Mr. Clair was the first to follow their father into the car business. He graduated from Weston High School, attended Maine Central Institute in Pittsfield, and graduated in 1973 from Nathaniel Hawthorne College in Antrim, N.H.

"He started working with our father down on Center Street in West Roxbury, when it was Thompson Buick," Joseph said.

James Clair Sr., who was known as Ernie, worked with his sons to build a series of auto dealerships that became Clair Auto Group.

"I've known him since he was a young manager of his father's Cadillac dealership in Danvers," said Albrecht, who owns Woburn Foreign Motors and other businesses. "He wanted to hire me before I bought my first dealership 30 years ago. He was an honest and enterprising guy who cared for his employees and his customers."

Sometimes that meant Mr. Clair quietly lent a hand behind the scenes when an employee faced an unexpected financial or medical crisis, said his wife, Claire.

"He almost felt compelled to help people," she said.

The two met when Claire McMahon roomed at Boston College with Mr. Clair's sister, Mary of Weymouth. They married in 1976.

Work took up much of Mr. Clair's time. Along with the dealerships, he was for a time president of the Toyota regional advertising association. But Albrecht said his friend "knew there was more to life, and he enjoyed all parts."

Arc of Greater Boston, a nonprofit that offers services for the developmentally disabled, honored Mr. Clair and his brothers Joseph and Mark a few years ago for their volunteer work.

Mr. Clair also liked to spend time away from work - preferably outdoors and a long way from automobile sales lots. Vacations were built around golfing or skiing. He took part in the Monster Shark Tournament off Martha's Vineyard. He hunted in Africa and near the Arctic Circle.

"He was very, very adventurous," his wife said.

And wherever he went, Mr. Clair usually found himself in the center of a crowd. He often was the companion of choice in golf carts at country clubs, and at the breakfast table during business trips, "people would come over and sit at the table with Jim because he could make amusing comments in the morning," his wife said.

"If you walked into a bar and Jim was in the room, you would naturally gravitate to him," Albrecht said. "And he would welcome you in like an old friend or a dear friend, whether you had seen him that afternoon or five months ago."

Among Mr. Clair's memberships was one in Ireland, his ancestral homeland, at Tralee Golf Club. Last fall, his mother, Theresa (Walton) of Weston, took the family to County Kerry in Ireland.

After selling most of the family's dealerships, Mr. Clair and his brother Michael of Biddeford, Maine, established a timber farm in Wellington, about an hour south of Moosehead Lake, where Mr. Clair had built a log cabin. Mr. Clair liked to ride snowmobiles, too. The day before he died, he called his brothers Joseph and Michael, who were snowmobiling in Maine, to check on the snow conditions.

Albrecht said that because he and Mr. Clair "both had sons in the business, we would talk about that and the challenges that they face and that we faced in trying to be their guiding light without walking the path for them."

He added: "You never went away from Jim without feeling uplifted. I feel a sense of deep loss to think I'll never see him again. There's a hole in my world."

Mr. Clair's wife said that was also the case for their son, James III.

"There was a bond between those two," she said. "My son Jimmy says: 'He's my compass. I've lost my compass, but I think he's equipped me enough to find my way through life.' "

A funeral Mass will be said at 10 a.m. tomorrow in the Church of the Most Precious Blood in Dover. Burial will be in Highland Cemetery in Dover.