James L. Easton, renowned for innovative sporting goods such as carbon-fiber arrows and aluminum baseball bats, was driven by a never-ending passion for excellence.

James (Jim) Easton passed away at his home in Los Angeles, surrounded by family and friends. He was 88 years old.

As a young man in the 1950’s, Jim worked in his father’s archery shop by day and studied engineering at UCLA by night. Eventually, after five years at Douglas Aircraft, where he worked on the DC8 jetliner, Mr. Easton returned to the family business to help make the Easton company the world’s foremost innovator of sporting goods, such as ice hockey sticks, baseball bats, and arrow shafts used at the Olympic Games and worldwide.

Jim Easton’s deep involvement in the sport of archery is particularly credited with that sport being designated as a core Olympic Games event today.

Mr. Easton had seen the products he developed transform every sport into which he delved. Even after becoming president of the international governing body for archery, and a member of the International Olympic Committee, Mr. Easton’s passion for excellence drove him to spend hours per week on his company’s shop floor, improving processes and rubbing elbows daily with his large staff of engineers.

As president of the World Archery Federation for 16 years from 1988 to 2004, Mr. Easton innovated new competition formats making archery a television-friendly sport, one of the most-watched during the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Mr. Easton was elected to the International Olympic Committee in 1994. As IOC Vice-President, and as an Executive Board member, Mr. Easton worked hard to support the Olympic Games, having previously served as Archery Commissioner, Olympic Village Mayor, and Technology Commissioner for the highly successful 1984 Olympic Games.

Mr. Easton was a board member of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, and served on the Salt Lake Olympic Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Games.

Mr. Easton was born in Los Angeles on July 26, 1935, son of archery innovators Doug and Mary Easton. Doug Easton had built a business making highly crafted, custom archery gear, popular at the time with Hollywood luminaries such as Errol Flynn. Some of Jim Easton’s earliest memories involved helping his parents and younger brother build wooden aviation map cases for World War 2 Allied pilots.

Throughout high school, Mr. Easton was a competitive archer, taking a podium at a US Nationals in the 1950’s. After his return to the family business in the early 1960’s, he collaborated with his younger brother, world-renowned architect Robert (Bob) Easton, to create the first aluminum ski poles.

He also developed a critical part of NASA’s lunar instrumentation for the Apollo manned lunar program.

Mr. Easton moved the company beyond archery into baseball and softball equipment, ice and field hockey equipment, tennis racquets, golf equipment, bicycles, and many other pursuits. But archery was always his dearest passion and pursuit. To that end, he was credited with the earliest development of carbon fiber for archery bows and arrows.

He met his wife, Phyllis, while creating technical literature to advance the sport of archery. Together they created numerous books and videos documenting the history of the sport in the Olympic Games, and oversaw philanthropic work benefiting UCLA and other institutions around the world.

In later years, two substantial sports development foundations, created with proceeds from his archery and team sports businesses, fulfilled Mr. Easton’s interests in philanthropy. In particular, Mr. Easton built numerous world-class archery centers for the advancement and teaching of the sport throughout the United States, and helped create a world level archery training center in Lausanne, Switzerland near the IOC headquarters.

Jim Easton was awarded the UCLA Medal in 2014, and made substantial contributions to UCLA, and Utah’s Huntsman Cancer Research Center, Intermountain Hospital Trauma Center, Primary Children’s Hospital and The National Ability Center.

His family-owned archery companies, Hoyt Archery, and Easton Technical Products, employ more than 400 workers in Utah and Indiana.

Mr. Easton is survived by his wife of 29 years, Phyllis, son Greg, daughter Lynn, and three grandchildren.

The family will celebrate Jim’s life at a private memorial observance.

Provided by USA Archery

When Alex Gilliam and his younger brother were sent along to an archery lesson by their parents, two things of note occurred. First, his sibling turned tail and decided shooting arrows was not for him, and secondly Alex found his calling. He is now among the top recurve archers in the country.

“My brother's reason for walking away – and I remember exactly what he said – he said the coach scared him,” recalled Gilliam with a laugh. “For me, I liked archery, and I really wanted to stick with it, because I’m asthmatic and doing a lot of sports was really tough for me growing up.”

Through elementary school Gilliam was introduced to various sports by his parents, such as t-ball, flag football, soccer and basketball, and although he was not bad at them he was aware that his stamina suffered as a result of his condition.

“I had a lot of breathing problems which meant that I couldn’t keep up with everybody over long periods of time,” Gilliam explained. “So, when we had the opportunity to try archery, I enjoyed it; I definitely wasn’t bad at it by any means and kept wanting to go back for classes.”

It is not too much of an exaggeration to suggest that discovering archery had quite the positive affect on a young Gilliam.

He said, “Once I’d finished fifth or sixth grade, I knew that if I wanted to keep playing basketball I would have to go up a league and I was pretty demoralized because I knew that if I went up a league I would go from coming off the bench to getting no playing time at all.

“But doing archery, at some of the first state events that I went to, I was able to pick up a bronze medal in the U15 division. I still have the medal to this day. It’s one of the few local tournament medals that I keep around, and for me it was showing how much that award meant to me at that time. I’m pretty sure I cried that day because I didn’t think it was possible.”

That moment was the catalyst for the teenage Gilliam. On finding a sport he was both good at and enjoyed was a game-changer. No longer was he the kid overlooked, or warming the bench, or struggling to keep pace with teammates. He was where he belonged, an athlete others looked up to and someone who was in demand.

“Growing up, although it was aerobic, I originally thought that basketball would be my sport,” he recalled. “It was the one I had the least amount of problems with, though that fizzled out.

“But finding archery and being able to go in and practice without using my rescue inhaler, or be just completely out of breath, it was a realization that I can actually put in a good amount of time into this and not feel like I’m killing myself after every practice.”

Gilliam now had a sport where he could actually set himself goals. From local events, to eyeing opportunities at state level, then the national scene and perhaps being competitive on the world stage, here was a young man at home with bow in hand.

“Sitting here among the top 16 in the country, for me the Olympic dream has never felt more real, more alive,” Gilliam added.

Gilliam sits seventh after two stages of the 2024 Olympic Games U.S. Team Trials. Stage 3 takes place ahead of the Arizona Cup in early April.

Being the kid nobody wants on their team, or granted token minutes in games can impact a child’s self-esteem, and for Gilliam that was the case, until archery came along.

“I remember going to a class with my friends,” he began. “We all had house bows and as you progressed in the class you worked your way down the range, stepping up in target difficulty.

“I was shooting well and the coach asked me if I wanted to join the competitive team or if I was looking to try out for the competitive team. I’m like, ‘sure, yeah, let’s give this a go’.”

And that was the moment. That was the moment Alex Gilliam was no longer along for the ride, picking up participation trophies – something he disliked, by the way – or receiving the practice ball at baseball for being the best player in practice. Gilliam was convinced he was the last player to receive that particular ‘prize’ “because I was the only one left.”

“To go from not getting much recognition from teammates or coaches, to ‘oh, wow, this coach wants me to be on the team, this coach sees something in me’.

“Before I started shooting archery I was very introverted, I was very emotional and didn’t want to interact with too many people.

“Not doing fantastic at sports really hurt my confidence and my self image, so being able to shoot and being able to build my confidence and being around a team that I felt valued in, that I respected and respected me, helped me become a lot more extrovert.”

From his local club, Gilliam progressed to Junior Dream Team - a program developed to bridge the gap between Junior Olympic Archery Development and the Resident Athlete Program - and now finds himself excelling at the collegiate level at Texas A&M University (TAMU) alongside other Olympic hopefuls Trenton Cowles and Riley Marx.

Born in Texas but raised in the Atlanta area, Gilliam is studying mechanical engineering at TAMU. He finished his undergraduate degree in May with a 4.0 GPA and is currently pursuing his masters, with hopes of applying that to a career in motorsports, whether Formula 1 or endurance racing, or – of course – archery, a sport that has given him so much.

And just to come full circle, Gilliam’s younger brother did return to archery. He picked up a compound bow and shot in a couple of competitions but has now pursued other options.

“If he’d stuck with it, he could’ve been a really good shooter,” Gilliam suggested. “Maybe he could’ve been here with me in the Trials.

“But he’s found stuff that he really enjoys and usually when you find something that you really enjoy, then you tend to focus on it and get very good at that thing.”

So, just like his older brother, then?