The senior Van Blaricum enlisted in the Army in World War II and took advantage of a program that the military offered for a medical school education, which he finished in 1946. Van Blaricum’s childhood closely resembled a normal military brat’s life of constant moving until they ended up at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.  With the war having wound down, his father received an honorable discharge in 1948 and he moved his family to Franklin County, Tennessee, where he set up a private medical practice.

His father continued to practice and in 1968, moved to Bangladesh ( formerly East Pakistan ) where he established and ran a missionary hospital.  He eventually semi-retired in 1985 and died in 2002.

 James Van Blaricum  followed in his fathers footsteps and received an undergraduate B.S. degree from Middle Tennessee State University in 1963 and a B.A. in Biology from Andrews University then attended his father’s medical school in Loma Linda, California, UAG in Mexico and St Thomas Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee.  While at MTSU, his entrepreneurial spirit was born when he and a friend reached a deal with a local burger place to lease out the facility after closing hours to prepare and deliver hamburgers and pizzas to students in the dormitories who were studying late into the night.

To work his way through college,  James Van Blaricum  also earned a certification as a X-Ray and Lab Technician.