Final Salute

ELVIN ERICK “FINN” JACKSON our Mother’s life-long love, caregiver and provider, Father, Grandfather, Cousin, friend to many here now and gone, mostly gone left us in the early morning of March 28th. Dad was born on February 1, 1923 in his mother’s home city of Turku/Åbo. Upon Dad’s arrival to the States at age seven, he lived with the Jim and Minnie Kane family out on West End Road as Grandmother Elsa worked in the Hammond Mill office and Grandfather Erick was a tree faller out of Crannell. Dad spoke of a marvelous childhood growing up alongside the Mad River. He pitchforked salmon running up the river and then gave them to neighbors for a welcome meal during the Depression. He coasted on top of the Issac Minor Quarry flatcars down the tracks from the quarry. He rode his bicycle from West End to Samoa when he missed the company of his Mother. Grandfather Erick would visit him on weekends. Dad attended Mitchell School and then Arcata High excelling in football, basketball, and baseball. He was a member of the Arcata High choir under the direction of Ruth Carol. Even with Dad’s activities at Arcata High, he always tended to his responsibilities on the Kane farm, milking the Kane’s 16 dairy cows both in the early morning and evening. He graduated from Arcata High in 1941 and entered Humboldt State College in the fall of 1942 where he played basketball. Dad along with former HSU professor of Civil Engineering Jim Roscoe qualified for the Navy V-12 program and were assigned as US Naval Trainees to the University of Oklahoma. Upon entry to OU, Dad took a US Navy aptitude test that determined he should be either a surgeon or a civil engineer. As a Second Class Trainee (Junior), Dad made the OU football team as a starting blocking back. He played twice in the “Red River Rivalry” at the Cotton Bowl against Texas. Dad said seeing a crowd of some 24,000 souls for the first time in the stands nearly scared him to death. Dad graduated from OU in June of 1945 with a degree in civil engineering and his commission as an Ensign in the US Navy. He was assigned to the Seabees Naval Construction Forces and stationed on various islands in the Philippines awaiting to support the planned invasion of Japan. When the War in the Pacific Theater ended in August of 1945, Dad was assigned to the Seabee detachment in Tsingtao/Quingdao, China as a cargo officer in support of the US Marines repatriating the Japanese forces from China back to Japan. Once on leave Dad and fellow shipmates drove a US Navy Jeep to Beijing where Dad was photographed sitting atop the hood of the Jeep on Tiananmen Square with the Forbidden City in the background. Dad completed his distinguished service in the US Navy Seabees as a Lieutenant Commander and returned home to Humboldt County where he served in the US Naval Reserves for 17 years. Back home Dad hired on as a junior civil engineer with the California State Division of Highways where he spent his first five years working from the bottom up so he was aware of everyone’s tasks to eventually assume responsibility as a resident engineer and work as a team on numerous highway construction projects. Dad left his mark on the transportation landscape of Northern California as the resident engineer of the Samoa Boulevard/US101 “cloverleaf” interchange from 1964 to 1965, the Giuntoli interchanges on US101 and CA299 in 1968, and the realignment of CA20 and the construction of the CA29 freeway in Lake County during the 70’s. Dad was very proud of the fact all of his projects were completed on time and on budget. Dad was not all about work. He was an avid outdoorsman actively engaging in hunting, fishing, and skiing. He and friends would travel up to Crater Lake, hike up a steep mountain, have lunch, and then ski down. In the 50’s Dad and fellow skiers established a ski run up on New Prairie below the top of Horse Mountain using a blocked up model T Ford with a grooved tire to run the rope tow. In the 60’s and 70’s the family, thanks to Dad, were active members of the Humboldt Ski Club. Dad’s childhood friend Jack Piersall began cattle ranching up in Scott Valley in the 50’s where Dad, Jack, Earl Biehn, and other friends would hunt dove in Scott Valley in September, pack into the Marble Mountains to deer hunt in October, hunt pheasant in Colusa with the Huers in November, and over to Alturas in late November to hunt ducks. In 1949 Dad landed a 15 pound, 14 ounce steelhead on a bamboo flyrod out of Singley Hole on the Eel River that set a Field and Stream record. Dad said he quit fishing the rivers when he could no longer look up and down stream and not see a soul. With Dad’s “dairy blood” he never missed a low tide up at Clam Beach and the family was richly rewarded on those mornings with fried razor clams tossed in corn meal for breakfast. Dad had one of the Dean in-laws’ teardrop skull boats that he would regularly ply Humboldt Bay for many a successful hunt. During the 50’s Dad got to know Bill Hilfiker who supplied drainage pipe to Dad’s highway projects. Unbeknownst to Dad, Bill’s girlfriend Nancy Jacobson had a best friend since childhood who the two of them figured was a good match for Dad, so they set them up on a date. Mom and Dad were wed on April 2nd of 1955 by the Reverend Lewis at Christ Church Episcopal in Eureka. Within some two years a daughter and son arrived joining an elder brother to complete the family. Even though Dad just missed the celebration of his 60th year with Mom, his first act upon arriving home last Thursday from the VA hospital was to give the love of his life a soft peck on the noggin. Dad’s Finnish ways emboldened him to partake in many a construction project. In the 1950’s he built a garage on the alley of his growing family’s Victorian home. He remembers he paid 70 a thousand for the old growth redwood lap siding. In the 60’s as a member of the Humboldt Ski Club, Dad assisted in constructing the Horse Mountain ski “lodge” the ski club built to allow skiers to overnight on the mountain. Not believing he could afford a new home for his family, Dad remodeled our Victorian home, the “Old Barn,” by rewiring, building closets, a laundry room nook, and constructing a brick fireplace with the precision and perfection true to his Scandinavian heritage. In the summer of 1964 Dad laid the keel of a 16-foot outboard motorboat in Pepperwood while serving as the Resident Engineer on the clearing operation for the freeway bypass. Mom oftentimes joked Dad knew the flood was coming and was building his ark. Every night after Dad returned home from work during the winter, he would go right to work driving in wood screws by hand into every plank of that 16-foot boat thanks to those wrists that were strengthened by milking 16 cows twice a day. Upon the christening and launching, the family used that boat for waterskiing on Trinity Lake and salmon fishing out from the mouth of Humboldt Bay. Dad also built an El Toro sailboat that was used by his son to sail up and down the channels of Humboldt Bay. Thanks Dad. Dad always got his family out into the outdoors spending many a holiday or just a weekend camping at Trinity Lake, going skiing at Horse Mountain or Mount Shasta. With Mom and Dad’s numerous social contacts the family was always doing something in the outdoors, be it dove hunting and bucking hay up in Scott Valley, skiing, camping, or just having an outing at the beach at the mouth of the Mad River until sundown. In the early 70’s Dad got back into golfing and that was the beginning our Mom’s becoming a golfer’s widow. Dad truly enjoyed his days playing “pasture pool” with his golf friends at Eureka Muni up until his legs could no longer keep up with him in his mid 80’s. His several hole in one’s were God’s way of telling him he was playing too much golf. With retirement, Mom and Dad took advantage of Dad’s military retirement benefits and flew standby out of Travis AFB to Hawaii to play golf with friends, Australia to see their newborn grandson, and Europe to visit and reacquaint with Dad’s Finnish family roots. Mom and Dad also took their travel trailer on “one lap around the United States.” Dad always made it a priority to attend his grandson’s soccer, basketball, or baseball sporting events until he was physically incapable to do so. Dad never missed a single OU sporting event on television, especially OU football. He was a Giants fan through and through and over the past five years was thoroughly elated by their three World Series victories. Our father, husband, co-worker, and friend epitomized the American Dream. He experienced a childhood during the Depression that only strengthened his spirit and resolve later in life. Dad was truly one of “America’s Greatest Generation.” His youngest son signed him up for the third North Coast Honor Flight back to Washington D.C. When in the company of his peers who had experienced that same period of life, Dad’s introverted Finnish disposition disappeared as he openly recounted many experiences in the Philippines and China with his Honor Flight companions. Dad’s family would like to thank Honor Flight for giving him the opportunity to see the World War II Memorial. Dad’s family would like to thank the caregivers who so lovingly took care of Dad and Mom over Dad’s final years: Linda Damm, Dean Cleveland, Donna Jacobson, and the staff of Visiting Angels. Dad was preceded in death by his parents Elsa Josephina Isaksdotter (n‚e Viitanen) and Erick (Erik) Jakobsson P”rnull Jackson. He is survived by his loving wife of nearly 60 years Donna Gay, son Sherman and Mary (Gist) Jackson, grandson Jerimiah Martin Jackson and wife Sarah, and great-grandchildren Alexander and Abigail Adams, Jacob Hunter Jackson and Benjamin Sherman Jackson, grandson Robert Seely Jackson and great-granddaughter Noemi Peca Jackson-Levi, grandson Johnathan Dean Jackson and wife Marcawshuwa, and great-grandchildren Forest Ko-ka-know Jackson and Kikiya Marie Jackson, daughter Elsie Kathleen Rose and Gerry Carlson, and grandson Kelly Erick Rose, son Douglas P”rnull and granddaughter Elisabeth Ruth Aulwurm, and grandsons Erick Duane Jackson and Dustin Allen Jackson. Graveside services with full Military honors will be conducted on Saturday, April 11th, at 11:00 am, at Sunset Cemetery with a reception immediately following at the Bay Room at the city of Eureka Boat Basin at the Wharfinger Building, 1 Marina Way just off Waterfront Drive. Please sign the guestbook at www.times-standard.com under Obituaries.