Jeremy Jim Jackson August 19, 1943 –
December 28, 2020 Service on
Wednesday,
13th January 2021. Sarasota, Florida. 10:00 AM
Internet Live Stream
7:00
AM Washington State
10:00 AM
Eastern Standard Time (New York)
3:00 PM London
4:00 PM
Madrid
5:00 PM
Cape Town
2:00 AM
Thursday, Sydney
Background
Music:
Anisina – Pink Floyd
Photographic
slide show
Introduction
Tanya Parker, Funeral Director
Celebration
of Life Message by
Pastor Josh Powell
Scripture
passages: Ephesians
2:8-9
8
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this is
not
from yourselves, it is the gift of God - 9 not by works, so that no
one can boast.
Psalm
121
A song of ascents.
1 Lift up my eyes to the mountains
-
where does my help come from?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
the
Maker of heaven and earth.
3 He will not let your foot slip -
he
who watches over you will not slumber;
4 indeed, he who watches over Israel
will
neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The Lord watches over
you -
the
Lord is your shade at your right
hand;
6 the sun will not harm you by day,
nor
the moon by night.
7 The Lord will keep you from all
harm -
he
will watch over your life;
8 the Lord will watch over your
coming and going
both
now and forevermore.
Closing
Scripture: Matthew
11:28-30
28
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you
rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and
humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke
is easy and my burden is light."
Thank you, Tanya and Pastor Josh for
those words. And thank you to all of you who are joining us today,
whether via the live stream or watching later on video link. We’re
sorry that you’re not able to be with us in person but you have sent
lovely messages of support and shared your memories of dad and it has
been really lovely to read them.
Some of them we remembered, some were entirely new stories we had never
heard about, some might even have been embellished a little with the
passing of time, but what is clear is that dad did so much and enjoyed
fun times with so many of you in one lifetime and you all have those
memories to hold onto.
===
Jerry Jackson started racing from an early age. His sister Jill
remembers him removing the front axle of his tricycle, so that the
front wheel was loose and then (gathering momentum) pulling a wheelie
as he raced downhill, using a pile of gravel as a natural break to end
his daredevil run. And later on - when he was a bit older, sister Jan
remembers him surprising her by arriving one time to meet her in an
army jeep, having joined the young Army Cadet Force.
He was also a bit of a rebel from an early age. One time in the school
canteen, playing a prank on a greedy art teacher who was universally
disliked by deploying his early ‘chemical engineering’ skills to seal a
slug wrapped in a lettuce leaf with the glutinous school mashed potato
before placing it on the salad counter. A perfectly concealed surprise
which was then hoovered up and scoffed down by the art teacher in
question, to the delight of dad’s peers.
Another time, he combined both his long-lived disdain for cricket (“I’d
rather watch paint dry”, as he would say) and model building skills by
constructing a remote-controlled model aeroplane with bomb-bay doors on
it which he would fly over the team from the visiting school on match
days to bombard them with small bags of flour. There was, after all
nothing in the rules to say that you couldn’t do that.
Britain in the early 60s was a time of great new music, social identity
and an enthusiastic social scene around motor racing. As one of his
friends wrote to us: A
better pal than Jerry others could only dream of
ever having known. I first met him and a number of his close
group of friends, when I spied them in a front garden of a local house
surrounded by interesting old racing cars. It is a true
reflection of our friendship that 60 years on the group are still the
best of pals.
One of the victims of those “Northwood old boys” as they have become
more recently known from that time was P.C. Mitchell who was a frequent
target and source of amusement for the gang. And dad was never one for
being put down by the police - one time after being stopped
on the motorway, physically pushing their police car up the hard
shoulder to demonstrate to them that the hand brake on their car was no
better than the handbrake on his.
Because as you may have observed, Dad didn’t really get on well with
things that didn’t work. And he liked to tell people, not only about
how bad they were – which anyone can do, but also about why they were
bad and how they could be made better, which…not many people can. That
person could well have been you at a drinks party or it could have been
a spotty teenager taking a Saturday morning job to sell dishwashers in
Curry’s. All were entitled to be educated.
And it wasn’t just mechanical devices and household white goods that
came under dad’s scrutiny. It was other short fallings in life. Badly
programmed websites and software, carelessly designed carparking
layouts, bureaucrats, middlemen, interferers of all kinds and (worst of
all) cold-callers trying to sell life insurance or some-such all got
under dad’s skin. But whereas you or I faced with a cold caller would
simply feel embarrassed, or annoyed, hang-up, tut and wish that they’d
stop calling dad would go to lengths to engage with them, telling them
in no uncertain terms exactly why what they were doing was wrong why
they should stop doing it and (quite often in colourful language) what
he would do if they didn’t. Because it wasn’t good enough. And in his
mind, it needed fixing. The things that didn’t work in life all needed
fixing.
This valiant, incessant and often exhausting refusal to simply take
life ‘lying down’ led him to be a creative inventor, skilled engineer
and a diligent grafter. He cared about what he made. With standards
generally way higher than the next best product on the market and far
beyond what would have been needed to outsell it.
And it’s interesting to note so many of the comments you’ve written
since his passing note this infectious enthusiasm and burning energy
which swept people along with it. It was inspirational to you, as I
know it was for all of us in this room. Not only that, but he managed
to deal it out with great doses of surreal humour and a laugh that
would sometimes see him in fits of tears, dabbing at his eyes with a
handkerchief.
I will always remember him as solidly reassuring, the most capable man
in the room, the man who always seemed to be at the top of a ladder
fixing guttering when I wanted to talk with him, my concert going
companion to Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd and latterly on his last trip to
the UK, when I took him to see ELO in Liverpool and a trip to the
Beatles museum. There was much more to talk about (and so many more
Monty Python sketches to recount on our lengthy walks round Sarasota),
but as John Lennon said ‘life
is what happens to you when you’re busy
making other plans’, or as John Cleese put it: “Zoom. What was that?
That was your life, mate! Oh, that was quick. Do I get another? Sorry,
mate. That's your lot”.
Dad was not one for “organised religion” as he would call it. It was
another institution which needed some improvement. But he did see the
wonder of design in the world and marvelled at its intricacy and
sophistication. Whether it was calling an onion skin ‘mother nature’s
wrapping’ or going into great detail to describe how the sticky burrs
that clung to his trousers meshed in with the man-made fabric, he was
certainly a huge respecter of the ‘grand design’ of the universe but
unlike most, more in its intricate detail than its expansive nature and
dwelt on it a lot. Perhaps never more so than observing the supreme
accuracy of the pelican in flight. In fact, he even expressed a desire
to come back as one after death.
So, I like to think of dad, leaving us all with a knowing wink to
experience that amazing freedom of flight as his soul flew upwards. And
once he had swooped and dived and experienced the utmost of earthbound
pleasures, carried on upwards to a place of even greater wonder and
majestic design. And on arrival there in heaven, as he walked through
those ‘pearly gates’ as we often call them, stooping over to examine
them in some considerable detail. After a time turning to a passing
angel to say “You don’t want to use that kind of bracket. That’s going
to rust in the cloud moisture”.
We will miss you dad. And I imagine you’ll have made a few structural
improvements by the time we get to see you again.
I want to take this opportunity to again thank everyone for joining
us today, to celebrate the life of Jerry Jackson. We thank his son,
James, for sharing those stories with us, and his grandchildren for
their heartfelt words and a very special thanks to Pastor Josh Powell
for his words of comfort to the family this morning.
Dear
friends we do ask that you please keep his family, especially his wife
and son, in your thoughts and prayers during the coming days and weeks.
To the bereaved family; I’d like to remind you of God’s Promises:
Poem: God Hath Not Promised “God hath not promised Skies always blue Nor flower strewn pathways All our lives thru God hath not promised Sun without rain Joy without sorrow Nor peace without pain But what God hath promised Strength for the day Rest for the labor And light for the way Grace for trials Help from above Unfailing sympathy And undying Love”
Family I encourage you to not only love one another, but to show one another outward expressions of love, each and every day.
On behalf of myself, and the entire National Cremation & Burial Society Family, I’d
like to say, “Thank you” for this opportunity to serve you and to let
you know that our service does not end here. So please if you need
anything, don’t hesitate to call on us.
Again, we thank everyone for attending today.
Excerpt from the poem "God Hath
Not Promised" by Annie Johnson Flint
