By Ken Stone
Times of San Diego
SAN DIEGO — Joan Jacobs was praised Monday as a woman of “grit, grace and glamour” whose “joyful generosity” — along with her Qualcomm founding husband, Irwin — made San Diego a cultural powerhouse amid her “unwavering commitment to make the world a better place.”
Even down to the color of The Rady Shell’s folding chairs.
At her celebration of life at the concert venue’s Jacobs Park, some 800 people sat on cushioned seats that were “tropical red” – a color Joan had picked out for the San Diego Symphony’s summer home.
Two dozen family members and leaders of arts, education and the Jewish community sang her praises and revealed her secrets in the venue’s first ever memorial event.
During the pandemic, when the Jacobs Medical Center was off-limits to everyone but staff, Joan and Irwin secretly snuck into the hospital they helped build to see how a Jeff Koons art installation was going.
“I kept the secret until just now,” said Patty Maysent, CEO of UC San Diego Health.
Maysent told of Irwin Jacobs being among the first adult patients at the hospital built in 2016 (“I’m not breaking HIPAA rules,” she said, having gotten his permission.)
“There’s no hospital in the country like the Jacobs Medical Center,” she said, noting its Joan-influenced art works and “soothing wall colors.”
The Jacobses’ $100 million life-saving gift to the San Diego Symphony was called “unequaled in the annals of symphonic music.”
Martha Gilmer, the orchestra’s CEO, recalls how she shared the news of Joan’s death at a concert a week earlier at age 91. (Her family funeral was Friday.)
“The audience gasped as one,” she said. “Everyone knew the enormity of the news” and silently wished “Please say it isn’t so.”
Before Monday’s 2 1/2-hour event, which included four musical performances, Rep. Scott Peters described Joan and Irwin as “probably the biggest benefactors in San Diego since Ellen Browning Scripps.”
Said former Rep. Susan Davis (whose Congressional seat is now held by Joan’s granddaughter Sara): “She was this strong woman that we all looked up to. … I always enjoyed being where she was. She kind of lit up the room.”
And state Sen. Toni Atkins, possibly the next California governor, called Joan a “true philanthropist of the old-school type — never sought fame or to be acknowledged.”
On stage, a succession of friends and relatives, ending with husband Irwin, shared stories of the family matriarch.
How she marched into Qualcomm offices one day and told Irwin’s assistant to make sure he had time for lunch.
How she broke a leg biking during a German trip but ignored the pain until she’d finished showing her friends the cultural sights.
How she picked out the land where a future Jewish Community Center would be built in La Jolla, which once barred Jews from buying homes.
How on a trip to China she insisted that a severely jet-lagged friend visit the home of a woman, where (against orders) she broached the topic of that nation’s one-child policy and later told the friend: “See, you would have missed all that.”
How she taught her sons things big and little, including (said son Paul): “Don’t bus the table until everyone was done eating.”
How “rumor had it there was no pink left in San Diego” after Grandma Joan had bought it all to celebrate the birth of her first granddaughter, Sara. (The San Diego congresswoman said her job was to make San Diego better as a result of “all the privileges I got.”)
How when Irwin was away once, she and her friends binge-watched “House of Cards” for three days, with Joan fighting for the remote.
How in one week she cut through “delays and delays and delays” to push state officials to allow the famous teetering house be placed atop UCSD’s Jacobs Hall.
How she showed up for Christmas Eve dinners with her homemade chopped chicken liver (as well as caviar).
How she provided the UCSD chancellor’s home better guest paper towels after judging the old kind “terrible,” (“We just ran out a year ago,” the audience was told.)
How, in 1966, two days after Irwin turned down an offer to set up the Engineering Department at UCSD, Joan found a home in La Jolla that prompted Irwin to ask if the job offer was still good.
And how, in December 2019, her family was told that her diagnosis of cardiac amyloidosis would be fatal in six to 12 months — but Joan held on almost five years because “she didn’t want to leave Dad alone,” said son Hal.
The last speaker was Irwin.
He told of how he and Joan, both teen sophomores, met at Cornell University in New York but she graduated two years ahead of him because he switched from a hospitality degree to a five-year engineering program (ignoring a counselor’s admonition that a science or tech degree was worthless).
Joan would graduate in 1954 — with Ruth Bader (later Ginsburg) in her Cornell senior class. She married Irwin that September.
An overcome Irwin paused only once or twice in his 20-minute remarks. But he smiled when a La Jolla Playhouse group sang the couple’s favorite song from “Jersey Boys” — “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You.”
As they sang, on a sunny day with light breezes and high clouds, a passing bird’s feather gently floated down, finally landing near the front of the audience.
“Her love knew no bounds,” said emcee Rabbi Avi Libman of Congregation Beth El. “Her legacy lives in you. Your light will forever shine in our lives”
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Ken Stone is a contributing editor for Times of San Diego, with which San Diego Jewish World trades stories under auspices of the San Diego Online News Association
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