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Jacobson family remembered by 2,400 mourners
Dr. Erin Jacobson, left, and his wife Amy Jacobson pose with their children, Taylor, in pink, Ava, in blue and Jude, in his father's lap in St. Helena last November.
AP Photo/Briana Marie PhotographyPublished: Saturday, April 4, 2009 at 7:55 p.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, April 4, 2009 at 7:55 p.m.
It could have been a fairytale, and to those who knew the Jacobsons, it was.
The three tow-headed tots, vivacious children just coming into their own, yet already outgoing and caring so much like their parents.
The nuturing mother, just as able to make a friend as to bake a perfect pie and plan a perfect vacation.
The larger-than-life father: adventurous, playful, charming, successful.
“It was kind of like Camelot,” said Paul Jacobson, brother of Dr. Erin Jacobson who died with his wife, Amy Feldkamp Jacobson, and their three children, Taylor, 4, Ava, 3, and Jude, almost 2, in a plane crash in Butte, Mont. on March 22.
“And it was just getting started,” Jacobson said.
The family’s wide smiles sparkled from photos propped on the altar of the Pacific Union College church in Angwin Saturday where the Jacobsons were mourned and celebrated.
About 2,400 family and friends gathered for the memorial service which lasted more than two hours and was backdrop to family stories of adventurous travels through foreign countries and moments of sharing bagels and bedtimes at home.
The Jacobsons, residents of Saint Helena and graduates of Pacific Union College located just a few miles away, were heading for a weeklong ski vacation at the exclusive Yellowstone Club when their private plane nosedived into a cemetery about 500 feet short of a runway.
Also on board were Amy Jacobson’s sister, her family of four, and five friends. All died.
The cause of crash has not been determined.
The Jacobsons were a young family who led a charmed life full of adventure and love, family and friends said.
Amy Jacobson skillfully led her brood of young children, taking time to savor the children’s moments of dress-up and home dance recitals. She baked meals for new mothers and pies for new neighbors. In her mother’s group she took time to get to know the other moms on coffee dates and weekend get-aways.
Amy, said childhood friend Marla Summerour, “was up for just about any challenge.”
Erin Jacobson, an opthalmologist with a private practice in the Napa Valley, was a natural match to Amy’s adventurous spirit. When Amy ran marathons and skied, Erin did, too, and then some. He bodysurfed, snow-mobilied and rode mountain bikes and motorcycles.
Together, said Feldkamp family friend Pete Nelson, “they were always on the move.”
Those journeys were on display Saturday in the carefully crafted scrapbooks documenting Erin and Amy Jacobson’s wedding in 1996, anniversary vacations, children’s births, friends’ weddings and daily events.
The photos, friends said, were mostly the work of Erin Jacobson who always tried to capture his family’s effervescence with a camera.
Also on display was the children’s schoolwork: toddler feet stamped in ink, wobbly letters and colorful crayon sketches in a coloring book only partially completed.
It was Taylor’s coloring book, her name written on the front and a family portrait among the drawings, that illustrated what so many family and friends said of the Jacobson family: As much as they gave to others, their commitment was to each other.
“He just wanted to do more, see more,” said Rick Beller, Erin Jacobson’s medical partner at the Eye Care Center of Napa Valley.
Beller described Jacobson as the perfect partner: patient, committed, talented and hardworking. But, Beller said, at 5:17 p.m. every day, Jacobson was finished.
He fumbled through his lab coat, all his pockets, before finding his phone and sending a text message to Amy that he would be home soon, Beller said.
“His family always came first,” Beller said.
Little Jude was his special little boy, friends said, tucked into the crook of his father’s arm and always asking “Daddy, where you go?”
The memorial was the second tragedy for the tight-night Seventh Day Adventist college and surrounding community, home to about 1,400 students and 800 permanent residents, in four months.
In November, Pacific Union mourned the deaths of four students killed in a car crash. Luke Nishikawa, 22, Simon Son, 19, and Chong Shin, 20, were passengers in 20-year-old Boaz Pak’s Honda when he lost control of the car and crashed into an oncoming vehicle.
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