Questionnaire from the St. Maries Gazette Record - 2010

Candidates for State Office: James Stivers, State Senate, District 2

Please provide a brief biography.

James W. Stivers was born in Roswell, New Mexico in 1959 to Airman First Class, Perry Stivers and wife, Beth Stivers. After numerous re-locations during his military service, Perry Stivers moved his family to his place of origins near Dixon, Illinois in 1967.

James graduated from Harlem North Campus High School in Loves Park, Illinois and attended seminary at the Rockford School of Theology. He later transferred credits to the Minneapolis School of Theology and then was credentialed through Lee College (now Lee University) of Cleveland, Tennessee.

He served as a minister and pastor for several years in northern Illinois and then Riverton, Wyoming where he met his wife, Kaylynn A. Douglas of Butte, Montana. They were married in 1985.

He relocated his family to Wichita, Kansas where he worked as a painting contractor, advanced his education, and tried his hand at small-scale farming. For ten years, his company was a member of an international trade exchange, from which he learned valuable experience in alternative economies.

In 1998, he and his family moved to Moscow, Idaho so that his children could be closer to their grandparents. He started a painting business in the Idaho panhandle and then, in 1999, purchased 30 acres near DeSmet, where he and Kay have been preparing the land for organic farming.