Jim Russell served Fallbrook right until the end

James Clair Russell was 36 years old when he was badly hurt in a motorcycle accident.

It was Christmas Eve 1977. He was coming home from visiting his fiancée in Bonsall when he hydroplaned and crashed. The accident left him paralyzed from the waist down.

A crash that devastating is certainly life-altering, and Russell couldn’t have been blamed if it caused any course changes for him.

Except he didn’t let it stop him. Russell had only been living in Fallbrook a year when that crash happened. He would stay in town for the rest of his life, and become one of Fallbrook’s most prominent local leade...