Born and raised in Youngstown, Ohio, James McCollum is a direct descendent of two early pioneering families in the Mahoning Valley. John and Jane Ayers McCollum, the first settlers in Austintown, Ohio, and Joshua and Mary Steward Kyle, among the earliest settlors in Youngstown and Canfield, are his great-grandparents x3. He traces his McCollum family lineage back to Scotland of the 1600’s, and through Joshua Kyle directly to John Proctor Jr. of Salem, Massachusetts infamy, and the Salem witch-trials and hangings (Proctor Jr. is his great-grandfather x8).

An Air Force veteran (1966-70), he earned a BS in Ed, summa cum laude, with a History major from Youngstown State University, where he was the recipient of the B’nai B’rith Undergraduate History Award, and a Juris Doctor Degree from the School of Law, University of Akron.  He is a retired higher education executive, with a distinguished career in public higher education that includes serving as a state assistant attorney general and a university attorney, chief of staff to presidents, a higher education association CEO, interim vice president for student affairs, acting university president, and adjunct faculty member.

The author of Oh God, Where Art Thou? The Great Conundrum, and The Old Mill Creek, The Park Collection, he is in the process completing a non-fiction book on ethics, truth, and reality, and is well under way writing a fictional novel; both of which should be completed by mid-year 2021.

He is married to Donna Klink McCollum, and has two children, a daughter Annemarie, and a son, Eric.