Obituary for Patricia C Jacobson Our Beloved Mother, Patricia Louise Collier Jacobson, was blessed to be called home by her Lord on March 26, 2018. She had just celebrated her 85th birthday on March 11th. She was surrounded by her loving family and we are so grateful for bearing witness to the graceful passing of this great woman.
Pat was born in Oakland, California in 1933 to William and Louise Collier. Bill was the only child of a Scottish photographer who emigrated to the United States and eventually settled in Denver. Louise was a granddaughter of Orrin Porter Rockwell, one of the first five men baptized by Joseph Smith.
She was very proud of her genealogy, which includes Mayflower passenger George Soule, pioneers who helped settle Kirkland and Mesa, members of the Mormon Battalion, and even a survivor of The Battle of the Alamo. Pat lived all over the Southwest during her childhood because her father was a miner who moved his family anywhere he could find work – small camps in the wilderness or copper and silver mining companies in Nevada, Colorado, Idaho, and Bisbee, before settling in Miami, Arizona. She graduated from Miami High School as the class valedictorian in 1950.
After a year at Woodbury College in Los Angeles, she transferred to the University of Arizona, where she met her future husband, Eino M. Jacobson. They married on August 16, 1952. Eino graduated from law school in 1957; his first job was with Favour & Quail in Prescott.
They moved from Tucson with their two young children, Melanie and Marcus. Daughters Robin, Monica, and Dianne were all born in Prescott. A voracious reader and curious about everything, Pat imbued her children with her abiding faith in her Lord (she became a Catholic in the fourth grade), and love of Mother Nature, literature, history, archeology, astronomy, ancient worlds, music, theater, and cinema.
Her children’s real education, however, was held at the dinner table, where Pat and Eino did their best to keep five high-energy kids under control by enforcing polite manners, telling us stories about their childhoods, teaching us songs and jokes, engaging us in current events and what it all meant, and otherwise creating five adults with a love of knowledge, an abiding commitment to our democracy, and a wicked sense of humor. Pat supported her husband’s efforts to help resurrect the Republican Party in Yavapai County in the early 1960’s (Eino was elected Yavapai County Attorney in 1964). She was a member of the Jayettes (an auxiliary to their JayCees husbands) and for over 20 years was an active member and officer of the Yavapai County Republican Women.
She and her GOP sisters worked hard to achieve the goal that the Arizona Republican Party supported a ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (sent to the States in 1972). For 30 years she was a devoted volunteer at The Sharlot Hall Museum, serving numerous terms on their Board of Directors during which the museum transformed into a first-class historical institution. Over the years, most folks knew her as the lady at the reception desk.
A strict grammarian, she edited the museum’s publications for decades until she was unable to continue due to macular degeneration. Pat is survived by her children Melanie, Marcus, Robin, Monica and her husband James Beck, and Dianne; grandchildren Dylan Cook and his wife Kayla, Justin Cook, Tessa Milosevich, Colin Levy, and Sophia Levy; her great-granddaughter Adelaide Cook; her sister Alice Collier; and many cousins, nieces and nephews. She was preceded in death by her parents, her beloved husband Eino, her sister Sandy, and her grandson Nathan Daniel Milosevich.
A Celebration of Life will be held at 11 a.m. on Saturday, April 7th, at Hampton Funeral Home, 240 South Cortez Street. A buffet reception will follow at the Marina Room at The Hassayampa Inn at 1:00 pm. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to The Sharlot Hall Museum in her honor.
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