In a world where you can be anything, be kind.
Obituary
Loving Memory of Alvin "Jake" Jacobsen
September 4, 1936 – June 9, 2026
Alvin "Jake" Jacobsen of Edmonds, Washington, and Sierra Madre, CA, passed away peacefully at home on June 9, 2026, at the age of 90, surrounded by his wife, Meg, and his children, Christian and Annie. Born September 4, 1936, he was commonly known as Jake for most of his adult life, with one key exception: his mother, who always called him Al or Alvin. He lived a life so full of adventure that it sounds, at times, like fiction: a professional pyrotechnician, a Corvette racer in the golden age of Southern California car culture, a motorcycle race competitor on the Isle of Man, a Canadian gold miner working a river bottom in a wet suit, a builder of landmark Los Angeles buildings, and a friend to artists, philanthropists, and business titans alike. But ask anyone who knew him and they will tell you that the most remarkable thing about Jake was never the adventure itself. It was him.
Jake was not a thrill seeker. He never went looking for the next dare or the next risk. What he had instead was an open door: a genuine, easy curiosity about the world and the people in it, and a willingness to say yes when someone invited him along. Whether it was marlin fishing in Cabo San Lucas, viewing flight operations on the USS Carl Vinson, or getting into the pits at the Spanish Grand Prix, people wanted Jake along. He was fun, generous, interested in whatever was happening around him, and he had a gift for turning any experience into a story worth listening to. That is how an ordinary life turns into an extraordinary one: not by seeking adventure, but by being the kind of person adventure, and adventurous friends, kept inviting along.
That openness showed itself early. As a teenager, Jake apprenticed as a pyrotechnician at the Rose Bowl, a trade he would practice professionally for the rest of his life. It was through this work that he met his future wife, Meg, when her brother Sherwood apprenticed under Jake, and that connection eventually brought Jake and Meg together. They married on July 9, 1965, beginning a loving partnership that would last the rest of his life. Relocating back to Washington State in 2001 brought "The Amoeba" of the Jacobsen and Woodward families back together, and the family fireworks tradition begun by Jake as a youth is kept alight today by Jay Woodward.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Jake found himself in the middle of the Southern California car scene, later immortalized in movies like American Graffiti. (After seeing the film, Jake seriously wondered if he knew the people behind the film, because it was so close to home for him!) Racing his 1957 Corvette to 11 wins, one second place, and one DNF, he raced through the world of drive-ins, drag strips, and Friday nights in the sleepy towns in the hills outside Los Angeles. At a chance meeting at a party, he was asked if he wanted to be a gold miner, and within a few weeks he found himself in a wetsuit on the bottom of a Canadian riverbed, working the dredge as a gold miner in partnership with a Southern California adventurer and captain of industry, Clarence LaMar. In 1964, that same appetite for the open road took him across the world, where - while on a BSA motorcycle tour with a bunch of other riders - he competed in the Isle of Man TT Race, one of the most demanding and storied motorcycle courses anywhere.
Jake's professional life was just as varied as his adventures. He built successful businesses in different areas of construction, and worked on iconic structures like the Mark Taper Forum, now a fixture of the Los Angeles cultural landscape. In 1977, Jake relocated the family from Huntington Beach to the Pacific Northwest to open a new branch of his friends’ company, Modulaire, and did so well they made him VP of Marketing… which caused him and the family to move back to California again in 1985, this time to Mill Valley. For a time after he retired he bought and sold classic Ferraris... after driving them a bit first, of course, and had one of the first three Audi Quattro cars in North America as his daily driver! Among his service-oriented roles, he was a tank commander in the National Guard and Army Reserves, and a leader of both the Angel Island Association and Golden Gate Breakfast Club. In the 1970's Jake served as President of Big Brothers of Greater Los Angeles, when the organization was branching out into new communities - in Watts for example - that had not previously been served well, channeling his natural mentorship and warmth into a formal commitment to young people who needed it.
His circle of friends and acquaintances reflected the same breadth as everything else in his life. He counted Roy Disney Jr. and Dr. Linus Pauling among his personal friends, and he spent time around some of the great hot rod and custom car artists of the era, watching Von Dutch and Big Daddy Ed Roth at work in their heyday, as well as the landscape painter Ray Friesz. Meg and Jake both talk of the time they encountered Ray painting a seascape on a Southern California beach, when a rogue wave came in and took down the painting, permanently embedding sand and beach debris into the paint. That painting still hangs in their Edmonds living room today. Jake moved easily among scientists, artists, builders, leaders, and dreamers, because he met every one of them with the same sincere interest and respect.
As remarkable as Jake's own adventures were, the love story he shared with Meg deserves its own chapter. Married for more than 60 years, they carried on like sweet teenagers the whole way through: holding hands, sharing kisses, and treating each other with a steady warmth and affection that, through committed effort and some challenging growth, never faded. Many of their friends still point to Jake and Meg as the model for what a healthy, loving marriage looks like and can be. Their own children count their parents as two of their very best friends.
The various Jacobsen homes over the years reflected that same warmth. Throughout Christian and Annie's childhoods, the Jacobsen house was the place where any childhood friends in strife could count on a warm meal, a warm hug, and a warm bed when needed. That generosity traveled with them, too. Jake and Meg explored the country and the world together, sometimes bringing their children along and sometimes traveling with friends, and they made new friends on nearly every trip they took. It was not unusual for someone they had met or stayed with along the way to later show up as a guest in the Jacobsen home, the friendship having long outlasted the journey that started it. From the day they married until the day he passed, Jake and Meg remained entirely smitten with each other.
For all the remarkable chapters of his life, those who loved Jake will remember him first for his character. He was a kind soul, the kind of man who made everyone around him feel like a friend, and a born storyteller who could make you feel like you had been there for every race, every dive, every late night in the desert. (Except that one story in the desert that he and Elliott wouldn’t talk about!) He shared his stories generously, and he carried his kindness the same way: without effort, without performance, simply because it was who he was.
Jake is survived by his wife of nearly 61 years, Meg, his son, Christian, and his daughter, Annie, who are both closer to 60 than they’d like to admit. He was preceded in death by his parents, Gotfred and Kathe, and his sister, Doris.
The family intends to honor Jake in the way that feels most fitting: by carrying on the annual Fourth of July fireworks show in Blaine, Washington. Pyro Jay Woodward welcomed us into his crew when we moved back to Washington in 2001 and continued a tradition that traces directly back to the trade Jake first apprenticed in at the Rose Bowl as a teenager, and enjoyed throughout his life.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations in Jake's honor be made to The Heifer Project or the Dementia Action Alliance or the Edmonds Food Bank, where Meg and Annie still volunteer weekly.
The family invites friends and family to share their own memories and stories of Jake on this page. He would have loved nothing more than hearing one more good story.
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I will always love him for his kind and generous nature. Love you Jake and miss you lots!
And then there was the Xmas when he volunteered to be the Santa at the Warm Beach Christmas lights event. This wouldn't be remarkable really, except for how the kids there dealt with him. You had to be there. Because they knew they weren't dealing with your run of the mill mall Santa. They *knew*. They knew they had found the Real Deal and that they 'd better put the appropriate effort into their time with him. Those kids were thrilled in a way I've not seen before or since around any Santa Claus. Maybe they knew something we've forgotten. Santa isn't one guy that can cover the whole planet in one night, maybe he's more of a distributed collective, a joint cooperative venture of perhaps the best of humanity, watching out for and guiding the next generation somehow.... and Jake just had More of that in him than most. I miss you terribly Jake and always will, but I raise my pint to you and will share the "remember when's" to the end. SKOL!!!!
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