He tended to minimize the family's assets and said almost nothing about the Burroughs Glass Company that his father started in 1918 with the proceeds of the sale of some of his
Burroughs Corporation stock, mentioning the company only once in his many interviews with Ted Morgan (Literary Outlaw 25).
In 1984, Jack, then corporate vice president of
Burroughs Corporation, was approached to help launch International Imaging Materials, Inc.
Jim worked for
Burroughs Corporation for almost thirty years and then joined the Investors Group as a Financial Planner for fifteen years.
He worked as a bank auditor in his native Charleston, West Virginia, and managed an information technology (IT) department that used a lot of big iron built by the
Burroughs Corporation. A salesman since high school, when he sold West Bend[R] waterless cookware in Charleston neighborhoods and Balfour class rings to his high-school classmates, he took a large-account sales job with Burroughs, where he was able to leverage his banking experience.