A Tribute

New just reached me that a charm­ing gen­tle­man of my acquain­tance from my years in North­field died ear­lier this month. His obit­u­ary in the Star-Tribune is online, and cov­er­age of his memo­r­ial ser­vice is in the online ver­sion of the North­field News.

Bob Jacob­sen was a hard­core, old school small town cham­pion. I met him through his fam­ily store. To my ever­last­ing shame, I met the man because I’d bounced a check at his store and was com­ing to the store to make it right. It was a stu­pid mis­take on my part, noth­ing but a nineteen-year-old’s sloppy book­keep­ing, and I was deeply embar­rassed over the inci­dent. This was small town Min­nesota and Jacobsen’s was an insti­tu­tion. I did not want Mr. Jacob­sen to think that I was irre­spon­si­ble (even though I was), that I was try­ing to rip him off (because I surely wasn’t!) and I did not want to be one of “those peo­ple” who had their bad checks pho­to­copied and hung over the reg­is­ter with a warn­ing to cashiers “Do NOT Accept!” as I’d seen in other parts of town. I made my apolo­gies, paid my debt, and that seemed to be that. Not only did I never get a side­ways glance from the Jacob­sens but they treated me like a val­ued cus­tomer and I did my best to live up to that gra­cious treat­ment. As he got to know me, Bob loved to kid me that my dad was “mak­ing trou­ble” in his role as Super­in­ten­dent the waste­water depart­ment for the city, though I never was clear what kind of “trou­ble” pre­cisely he saw.

The gift reg­istry for my first wed­ding was at Jacobsen’s. Over the years, I bought count­less, tow­els, umbrel­las, muk­luks, floor pil­lows, Min­nesota Twins Cham­pi­onship sweat­shirts… Even after I moved away, I would come back and shop Jacobsen’s my first oppor­tu­nity. When Kate was a baby she became attached to the queen-sized blan­ket on my bed and would repeat­edly try to drag it off my bed and around our tiny apart­ment with her. I couldn’t find that style of blan­ket any­where but I knew Jacobsen’s would get it for me if there were still blan­kets to be got­ten. I bought the small­est size I could get (Twin) which was still too big, and they offered to cut it down to “crib-size” for us. Going above and beyond the call of duty, the baby blan­kets arrived; not the one I was expect­ing, but two and not just cut down to size but edged in satin! It’s kind of a cheat that I’m telling this story in rela­tion to Bob because by that time it was largely Bob’s son Rol­lie and his wife Shar (who, as the fab­ric and sun­dries mis­tress, I sus­pect was the one to stitch that satin edg­ing) that I dealt with on my vis­its. They were gen­tly encour­ag­ing Bob to ease out of work­ing the store but he was drag­ging his heels and resist­ing retire­ment, even semi-retirement. Bob and the store were so entwined and his exam­ple that the whole fam­ily followed.

There are plenty of peo­ple who also felt moved to remem­ber Bob and his small town, get-to-know-you, activism. Bob was a com­mu­nity builder. He was an exam­ple of our best impulses. He was a rare fel­low and a fine per­son and I’m sad to know we’ve lost him.