Jimmy Hager is a professional screenwriter and actor living in Columbia, SC. He was born Jimmy Nelson Eldridge on March 5, 1947 in Gastonia, NC, to parents, James O. "Jimmy" Eldridge and Thelma L. Nelson. They'd been married ten months when Jim Eldridge, a professional boxer and decorated 82nd Airborne World War 2 hero, was shot while defending a waitress who'd been attacked in a Gastonia road house. One of Jim's last wishes was "If it's a boy name him Jimmy not James." In 1959, the family moved to Charleston, SC, where Jimmy, at age 13, started raising himself with the invaluable help of Charleston's African American Community, his close friends at St. Andrews High School, countless musicians, prostitutes, gamblers and every form of night runner known to man. While earning his keep playing tenor sax in Charleston's seediest nightclubs and bars he was voted Most Talented by the 1966 class of St. Andrews High School. Jimmy left Charleston to attend USC Columbia in 1967, then dropped out to go on the road. Playing close to 300 dates a year his bands, Soul Inc., Freedom 70 and Freeway, opened for every major music act touring the southeast during the 60s and 70s including Janis Joplin, Chicago, Poco, Santana, and The Allman Brothers Band.