Robert Jacobs ~ Class of 1959
Departed ~ 6/6/2004
Lovingly submitted by: Bill Brink
A SAD GOODBYE: MURPHYSBORO REMEMBERS ROBERT JACOBS IN SERVICE
- KRISTEN CATES THE SOUTHERN [Wed Jun 16 2004]
- Jun 17, 2004
MURPHYSBORO – Hope, mixed with anger and sadness, filled the sanctuary of Murphysboro United Methodist Church Wednesday, as members of the community gathered to remember Robert Jacobs, a local resident killed in Saudi Arabia last week.
Jacobs, 62, was found dead in his apartment in Riyadh June 8th, after he had been shot to death, according to reports. Family members reported earlier that Jacobs had been living there the past seven years, training members of the Saudi Arabian national guard on graphic design.
Reports so far have indicated that Jacobs could have been killed by terrorists, but the investigation is ongoing.
Brad Hinchcliff, of Carbondale, said he’s known Jacobs for the past 20 years, when both carpooled together while working at the Shawnee correctional facility, teaching art classes. It was in those days of carpooling that both discovered their love for motorcycles.
He said he felt extreme anger and wanted revenge when hearing the news of Jacobs’ death.
“I threw things around,” he said, but added that he has calmed down. “Bob’s at rest and he wouldn’t want any of us to do that.”
Hinchcliff said he would ride his 650 Honda motorcycle and Jacob’s would ride his 900 Yamaha around the area. Hinchcliff joked that their wives never wanted to ride with them. They sometimes raced each other.
“I could beat Bob on the straight-aways,” he said.
But when racing through the parks, it was Jacobs who would win, because being a larger man, he could shift into the turns better.
“We were bikers,” Hinchcliff said. “Every time I go out into the garage and look at my bike, I think of Bob.”
Dr. Geoffrey Spears led the local Boy Scout troops along with Jacobs when both of their sons were younger. He said Jacobs was a man that was always there, whether singing in the church choir or leading 30 Boy Scouts on camping trips.
“He was one of those behind-the -scenes guys,” Spears said. “He was a great, caring, honest guy.”
One of Jacob’s former employees, from the Shawnee correctional facility, said he always worried about his former boss living in Saudi Arabia. Douglas Wells talked about the nine years he worked for Jacobs as the director of the print shop at the correctional facility, in conjunction with Jacob’s design work at Southeastern Illinois College.
With a tear on his cheek, Wells said Jacob’s was a very fair man, respecting everyone’s viewpoints.
“It’s ironic, of all the people to be killed over there, it was him,” he said.
He remembered first reading about Jacob’s death and being in complete shock.
“I didn’t know whether to be more sad or more mad,” Wells said. “Of all people, it shouldn’t have happened to him.”
Meanwhile, violence continues in the Middle East, with new reports of more innocent U.S. civilians taken hostage in Saudi Arabia.
Wells said he doesn’t see how U.S. troops torturing Iraqi prisoners got national attention, when deaths like those of Jacobs are receiving little acknowledgment.
At the funeral, Jacob’s wife, Virginia Lowe, spoke of her husband’s desire to be of service to the world and learn of other cultures. She asked the congregation to bear no hate, but joy.
“Please remember Bob in fun,” she said. “I want you to bear his laughter into the world.”
Lowe recalled the days when Jacobs would wake her up every morning with a new joke, sometimes at four in the morning.
“He had a lot of quirks,” she said, with a hint of laughter in her voice.
The Rev. Earl Renshaw, in giving the eulogy, mentioned the knowledge and understanding that Jacobs brought to the Murphysboro area.
“Bob believed there had to be social justice in this world,” he said. “Even though there is no social just in this. In the long run, he wouldn’t want us to be bitter.”
One of Jacob’s sons, Aaron, also took a moment to speak at the service, saying he took for granted the time he had with his father.
“I just always thought there would be more time,” he said, with tears in his eyes, voice quivering. “I wish I had another chance to tell him to his face how much he meant to me.”
Then, Aaron and his brother Matthew, playing their guitars and singing, lead the packed congregation in one of Jacob’s favorite songs, “Will the Circle be Unbroken.”
Spears said in order for the violence to stop, the people killing and kidnapping Americans like Jacobs need to understand the quality of life.
“Life is short, life is precious,” Spears said. “He was always there. He was always there.”
The last time Hinchcliff said he saw Jacobs was when his friend was home visiting last September.
“We sat on the porch and smoked cigars together,” he said. “He was just at peace with the world.”
Robert Jacobs, lSB Class of 1959 (he attended approximately 1956-1958) was shot dead in the garage of his residence in Riyadh on Tuesday, June 8th. The event was videotaped and run on a sympathetic website; portions were also shown on al-Jazeera TV, based in Quatar. The clip shows Bob being shot 10 times, then the motion of him being beheaded, although this has not been confirmed. Two or three men were involved, and one or two of them are said to be among those killed or apprehended by Saudi authorities over the last couple of days.
I was in Bob Jacobs’ class of ’59 at 1SB, and we got together a few times after we were both back in the Washington, DC area in 1959-60. I spoke with him in about 1997 by phone at his home in Murphysboro, IL and found that he was planning to leave soon for work in Saudi Arabia. I called his home in 2000 to let him know about the Williamsburg, VA reunion, and reached one of his sons who informed me that he was in Saudia Arabia.
I am enclosing some material from the internet that may be of interest.
Best regards,
Bill Brink ISB ’59
Dear ISB Friends:
A death is always saddening to report. This death is particularly so, as this one-time ISB student was gunned down and apparently beheaded by Muslim extremists in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
The Southern Illinoisan – MURPHYSBORO MAN KILLED IN SAUDI ARABIA
WWW. TheSouthern. com
MURPHYSBORO MAN KILLED IN SAUDI ARABIA
BY KEN SEEBER and ANDREA MARIE KAMPWERTH THE SOUTHERN
[Tue Jun 08 2004]
MURPHYSBORO — A former Murphysboro man who worked for a U.S. defense contractor was shot and killed Tuesday in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. Robert C. Jacobs, 63, was an employee of Vinnell Corp., a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman Corp. Jacobs had lived in Saudi Arabia for seven years training members of the Saudi National Guard. “He was training people, but not in warfare,” said his mother, Oma Lee Jacobs of Murphysboro, “He was a graphic artist, so he was training Saudis in graphics work.”
An unknown assailant shot Jacobs to death in his home, said a spokesman for Vinnell Corp., based in Fairfax, Va. “He was found by another employee at his apartment and taken to a hospital, but did not survive,” said a company spokesman, Jay McCaffrey.
Jacob’s son, Matthew Jacobs of Murphysboro, said he learned of his father’s death Tuesday morning. The shooting happened around 8:30 a.m. Central time or 3:30 p.m. in Saudi Arabia. Matthew said preliminary reports are that someone followed his father home from work Tuesday. “It seems weird,” said Matthew, 26. “Whether he was stalked or this was random, we don’t know yet.”
Islamic militants have carried out a series of attacks on Westerners, government targets and economic interests in Saudi Arabia during the past 13 months. The government has blamed the attacks on people inspired by, or belonging to, the al-Qaida terror network led by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden. Jacobs’ sister, Janice Jacobs, is an official with the U.S. State Department in Washington who is working with Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge to institute changes to U.S. visas. Janice Jacobs told Oma Lee that because Robert was possibly killed by terrorists, the FBI will be leading the investigation into his death. Vinnell, which has several dozen Americans in Saudi Arabia training Saudi security forces, maintains a secure residential compound for its employees, but Jacobs chose not to live there. That’s because Jacobs easily adapted to living in foreign countries, Oma Lee said. Jacobs’ father, the late Robert Jacobs of Murphysboro, was a longtime employee of the U.S. State Department who moved allover the globe when his sonwas growing up.
“I remember him going on a lion hunt when he was 13 or 14 when we lived in Ethiopia,” Oma Lee said. “He adapted to Saudi Arabia and their cuisine. He even went to camel races on Saturday afternoons, and he loved the markets.” Before moving to Saudi Arabia Jacobs worked for the Shawnee Correctional Center in Vienna, teaching graphic arts photography to inmates.
“He made friends with the prisoners,” Oma Lee said. “He had a farm out on Town Creek Road and he rented the house to one of the prisoners after he got out. He was very sympathetic to people.
Jacobs’ sister-in-law, Sandy Jacobs, and her daughter, Jessica, reminisced Tuesday over wedding pictures of Robert and his wife, Virginia, who lives in Turkey. Sandy said Robert visited the family in September. She asked him then if he was afraid of living in a part of the world that was becoming increasingly hostile to Americans. “I asked him one time (if he was afraid) and he was not,” Sandy said. “He adapted very easily, he liked the food and the people.”
Except he missed eating pork, Oma Lee said. When Bobby, as she called him, would come for a visit, he always had to visit 17th Street Bar & Grill. “He was here last September,” she said. “He said ‘Let’s go out for dinner, Mom, and I said ‘I don’t think I want to be seen with an old, white-whiskered man,'” referring to her son’s beard. “When he was born, my husband and I naturally just thought he was the most beautiful child ever born,” she said.
The family lived allover the world. Robert and Janice were home-schooled in Ethiopia, and attended French grade school while in France. The youngest daughter, Linda, now in California, was born in Thailand. “He was just used to living overseas,” Oma Lee said Oma Lee’s home is filled with beautiful decorations accumulated while she was traveling with her husband. Some of her favorites, though, are souvenirs her son brought to her. The most recent exotic gift is an amber egg, cut with facets. The golden petrified tree sap holds prehistoric insects visible within the egg. Robert told her that when he saw it in a Saudi market, he knew she would love it and he had to get it for her.
“Sometime it’s going to hit me that he’s not coming home anymore,” she said.
— The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Robert Jacobs Loved Going to Camel Races in Riyadh
Barbara Ferguson, Arab News
WASHINGTON, 10June 2004 — Robert C. Jacobs, the American citizen who was shot and killed on Tuesday at his home in Riyadh, refused to live on his company’s heavily-fortified compound, preferring to live among Saudis in a middle class neighborhood.
“My son refused to live in the secure compound provided by Vinnell, because he enjoyed living among the Saudis,” his mother, Oma Lee Jacobs, told Arab News in a telephone interview from her home in Illinois. “He liked them, their cuisine, and enjoyed living there. He liked going to camel races and browsing in the markets there.”
Jacobs,63 , was an employee of Vinnell Corp., a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman Corp. He lived in Saudi Arabia for seven years, where he trained the National Guard in graphic design. “He was training people, but not in warfare,” Mrs. Jacobs explained to her local newspaper.
An unknown assailant shot and killed Jacobs at his home, said a spokesman for Vinnell Corp., which is based in Fairfax, Virginia. “He was found by another employee at his apartment and taken to a hospital, but did not survive,” said a company spokesman, Jay McCaffrey.
The Jacobs family has lived all over the world. Mrs. Jacobs said that although she had never been to Saudi Arabia, she has traveled to 108 countries, including several in the Middle East.
“My husband worked with the State Department,” said Mrs. Jacobs. “We lived all over Africa and Southeast Asia. Bob was very used to overseas living and got along very well with local people wherever he was.”
Their children grew up overseas, she said.
Robert and his sister Janice, an official with the US State Department in Washington, now working with Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge on visa issues, were home-schooled in Ethiopia and attended French schools while living in France. Mrs. Jacobs, who lost her husband 10 years ago, said their youngest daughter, Linda, was born in Thailand.
Mrs. Jacobs said that during the decades her son had worked overseas, she had occasionally visited him. Everywhere she went, people told her: “Your son is so wonderful.”
“Bob was friendly, outgoing and really liked people,” she said, adding he had grown a beard while living in the Kingdom.
Mrs. Jacobs said she had discussed the idea of her son returning home to the US, and the decision “was up in the air.” Yesterday, when she returned home from doing charity work in town, she said she thought her son had surprised her and returned “because there were so many cars in the driveway. I thought he was here because the last time I spoke to him, he told me: ‘I’ll probably be seeing you before too long,’” she said.
She is unsure when her son’s body will be returned to their hometown of Murphysboro, Illinois. She said her daughter told her that because terrorists possibly killed Jacobs, the FBI would take part in the investigation of his death. “We don’t know anything more. My daughter said the body has to go to Dover, Delaware, first because of the terrorist connection.”
from Arab News
Please send pictures (old and new), anecdotes, articles, stories and tributes to isbeings at gmail.com