‘Made people feel loved’: Wife, friends remember McHenry County officer, Huntley youth baseball coach

An Algonquin family man who enjoyed going to country music concerts, coached hundreds of Huntley-area youth baseball players and was a longtime McHenry County corrections officer has died.

James “Jimmy” Udesen died Monday in his home after a nearly yearlong battle with glioblastoma. He was 43.

His wife, Dawn Udesen, who knew him years before they married, said he was diagnosed last March with the Stage 4 brain cancer. There were no signs until suddenly early one morning Udesen suffered a seizure.

“I was in complete and utter shock,” his wife said.

At first, doctors said he had a mass on his brain but it was benign. In April, he had surgery. Ten days later the surgeon called and gave the couple “devastating news. It shook us to the core,” Dawn Udesen said. He went through all treatments available, but the cancer kept progressing, despite him being “in the best shape of his life,” she said.

Yet, until the end he remained positive, loving, and still joked with friends and family. He worked in the jail until December. Even in January, after receiving more “devastating news” that there were no more treatment options, Udesen recalled that as she was “terrified,” he remained hopeful.

He truly believed that “he was 100% going to be the stat of survivorship. He never talked about losing the battle.”

Even when they would leave appointments where doctors gave “terrible” updates, “he would find something positive. ... He never accepted” that he would lose this battle, Udesen said.

In the weeks before he died, Udesen said she had help from “dear friends” and family who took shifts around the clock caring for him in their home, for which she is grateful.

Udesen said “the most incredible thing” about her husband was that in spite of a rough upbringing in Elgin, he turned his life around. He was positive, loving, funny and fun. He encouraged all youth – including those young inmates he encountered as part of his job at the county jail – to turn their lives around. He approached everyone, whatever their circumstances, without judgment, Udesen said.

The couple moved to the Huntley area in 2007 and he began coaching youth baseball teams including Huntley Blue and the Huntley Red Raiders, Udesen said.

Tiffany Jernigan, previously of Huntley, was a single mom raising three children when she met Udesen and he began coaching her 7-year-old son. The Udesens soon became her best friends. James Udesen was “an incredible mentor” and often helped her by taking her son for games when she worked, she said.

“He was like a father figure,” Jernigan said. “He really, really believed in all the kids. He always saw their potential and just like believed they could be the best they could be. He was super positive, super energetic and super passionate about the game of baseball.”

Jernigan said she will miss “all the fun memories” including laughing, singing and traveling to country music concerts.

Sue Erickson of Huntley is married to Ben Erickson, James Udesen’s lifelong friend. She said Udesen was a fighter up until the end.

She will miss most “his heart. Jim truly, truly had a heart for other people. He made people feel loved and welcomed, made everybody laugh.”

The Ericksons always considered Udesen part of the family. But the couple’s youngest son, Matthew, had a “special bond” with Udesen. Matthew was born with Stage 4 brain cancer 13 years ago. Erickson said Udesen held fundraisers and put Matthew’s logo on team jerseys. Matthew, who is developmentally delayed, always asks for Udesen. When Matthew would see Udesen he would run to him and say, “My buddy Jimmy.”

When Udesen was diagnosed with cancer, that “bond was sealed even more.”

“It was just on a different level,” Erickson recalled. “No one fully understands cancer until you walk it. A lot of things Matthew went through Jim went through. ... All of those things, we kind of walked through them with Jim in the same way he walked that with Matthew. I think that bond that Jim and Matthew had is something that we will cherish forever.”

Dawn Udesen, who raised their son and a daughter from a previous relationship with her husband, said she just wants “people to know that he always saw the good. He always saw the good in a situation or a person. Titles didn’t mean anything. It was the relationships with people.”

A service will be from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday, March 1, at DeFiore Funeral and Cremation Services, 10763 Dundee-Huntley Road in Huntley.