Windsor Obituary: Raymond Jacobs, Sr., 94

According to the 1940 Weaver High School yearbook, his neglected homework was due to enjoying a game of baseball. He was wounded in action twice during the Allied invasion of occupied France in 1944. During his life-long work as a painting contractor in his family's West Hartford business he was the one driving the paint truck with a handmade Rosedale cigar (that he never inhaled). When the Beatles premiered on TV in 1964, he would mimic Ringo's head bob to his children. And in 2001, when asked if the attack that sent him and over two hundred thousand other Americans into World War II was as bad, he stated 9/11 was worse. This was Raymond Jacobs, Sr., who passed in the early morning hours of October 3, 2016, at the age of 94.

Born on September 9, 1922, in New Britain, Connecticut, his parents, Samuel and Rebecca Jacobs, were Assyrian immigrants, uprooted from Urmia, Persia (Iran) following the outbreak of World War I.Ray enlisted in the Army in 1942 and was part of Company M 315th Infantry. Ranked Sergeant and an expert rifle and pistol sharpshooter, he participated in battle campaigns in Normandy, Northern France and Rhineland. He received Victory and Good Conduct Medals, two Purple Hearts, and ribbons for the European Theater and American Theater Campaigns.

In 1949, Ray married Mary Ann Fago in Hartford and had five children. The family moved to Windsor and, in 1967, Mary Ann and Ray divorced. Ray continued living in Windsor and, after the painting business was closed in 2009, he retired and eventually returned to the town of his birth to live with his son and his family.

Ray is survived by several children; Douglas Michael Jacobs and his wife, Maria, of New Britain, Susan Register and her husband, Michael, of Windsor, and Stanley Jacobs and his wife, Ping, of Los Angeles. His surviving grandchildren are Amanda Marie Jacobs, Rebecca and Samuel Jacobs and Patrick Mitchell. His surviving great-grandchildren are Jeremiah and Jazzeah Mitchell-Rivera. Ray is also survived by his sister, Elizabeth Baranski, of Newington. He was predeceased by his brothers, William, James B. and Edward Jacobs.

Quiet but not indifferent, hardworking while not obsessively driven, Ray was a man with an always-present surface calm anchored by a deep emotional foundation.

A graveside service with military honors will be held Monday, October 24, 2016, 11:00 AM, in the Windsor Veterans Memorial Cemetery, Windsor.

Carmon Windsor Funeral Home has care of arrangements.

In lieu of flowers donations may be made to the Veterans of Foreign Wars (vfw.org).

To leave on-line condolences please visit www.carmonfuneralhome.com.