James Joseph “Jimmy” Lores was practically nowhere on the internet. The only item found after he died was a Facebook post from June 2021, when the Town of Hempstead recognized him as a Covid Hero.
That’s what Lores was all about — doing good deeds without any fanfare.
He died on July 30, at age 70.
Born on Jan. 22, 1956, Lores grew up in East Rockaway the oldest son of Lorayne and Manuel Lores. He lived in the village his entire life.
“If there is an any one person who lived his life like Jesus, it was my brother,” Joe Lores, who has coached basketball, soccer and now softball at East Rockaway High School, said, reading his prepared eulogy to a Herald reporter. “Jimmy put everyone, and I do mean everyone, first.”
Considered an East Rockaway legend, Lores was known throughout the community as “Jimmy the bus driver.” He drove a school bus for the Independent Coach Corp. for 11 years, and for the East Rockaway school district for 19 years, as well as for the district summer camp — Summer Better Opportunities and Outcomes for Student Success Tomorrow — run by his brother.
He was also known as Coach Jimmy, because he served as a volunteer junior varsity softball coach for 30 years at the high school, helping coach Scott Gerken, and was Uncle Jim to a host of nieces, nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews.
At Christmastime, he would pull up with his van and, as his brother described it, “You’d think Santa’s sled just came across the roof.”
Lores’s kindness extended to relatives of friends who had died, honored at the holidays with grave blankets that he made. Joe recalled riding along with Jimmy two years ago, visiting five cemeteries and laying out more than 40 blankets. The families of the interred did not know he did this.
“His generosity didn’t stop at family,” Joe wrote in his eulogy. “The signs that adorn the fence line at the [high] school were originally done by hand by Jimmy. When someone complained, he got professionally printed signs done at his own cost.”
The money Lores earned from selling the trash-day metal he collected around the village funded an annual scholarship given to the graduating seniors who played on East Rockaway High’s softball team.
“He’s proof that a lifetime of seemingly small acts of kindness can have a really big impact,” said Joe, noting that on the last day of the summer camp, the campers, ages 4 to 16, screamed as loud as they could to honor Jimmy.
“Jimmy left this world, but he left it a better place because he was in it,” Joe added. “And incredibly blessed are we to have known him.”
Dom Vulpis, the athletic director at the high school from 1995 to 2017, said that Lores’s generosity touched every corner of the school community. “You don’t find people like him anymore,” Vulpis said. “He did it for all the right reasons.”
Vulpis said he encouraged Lores to become a bus driver for the district, and he eventually did much more than that. He volunteered wherever he was needed — transporting school teams, setting up for Homecoming and pep rallies, helping maintain buses, delivering mail, coaching JV softball and quietly supporting students and families in need.
“Every kid liked him,” Vulpis said. “He wanted one thing, and that was for kids to achieve the best they could.”
Longtime ERHS football coach Russ Pajer said that Lores’s kindness was evident on every road trip and at nearly every athletic event. Whether bringing flowers for Senior Night, finding gifts for student-athletes or making sure championship teams were recognized with signs along the high school fence, he always found ways to make others feel appreciated.
“Everything he did was for the kids and for the East Rockaway community,” Pajer said. “He never wanted to be thanked or recognized for it. That’s just who he was.”
Pajer added that generations of student-athletes knew Jimmy not only as their bus driver, but also as one of their biggest supporters. After away-game victories, he would sound the bus horn as they returned to town to let the community know the Rocks had won.
“Every kid who played for East Rockaway knew Jimmy and cared about him,” Pajer said. “We’re all going to miss him. It’s going to be a void in our athletic community.”
Lores is survived by his brother, and Joe’s wife, Eileen; his nieces and nephews, Katelyn, Jennifer Martinez (Mark), Joseph (Claire Canty) and Michael (Kerry); and his grandnieces and grandnephews, Charlotte, Cooper, Raegan, Reilly and the late Mae.
A visitation was held on Monday at the Donza Funeral Home, followed by a funeral Mass at Saint Raymond R.C. Church on Tuesday, both in East Rockaway, and interment at Holy Rood Cemetery in Westbury.
Those interested in planting trees in Lores’s memory can go to the Sympathy Store website.
