Deceased December 23, 2009
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In Memory
It was the fall of 1947 a young man from Southern California, who had never been east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, met a young man who had never been west of Massachusetts, as freshman at Amherst. As freshman, we were across the hall in Stearns on the second floor, roommates in South College our sophomore year and became great friends and fraternity brothers in Chi Psi.
Geoff Jackson grew up in Chevy Chase, Md., and Washington, D.C., although his family originally hailed from Denver and Colorado Springs, where the family history is preserved at the Pioneer Museum. Geoff attended the Putney School in Kiski before coming to Amherst in the Fall of 1947. After graduation, he served in the U.S. Coast Guard as a medical corpsman and later received his master’s from Columbia University. He had a long career in hospital administration and was later involved with the medical refinement of coding for Cigna.
Geoff was married to Patricia Orsbonne in 1962 and had two sons, Joshua B. Jackson and Lincoln D. Jackson.
Geoff was a devoted father and grandfather who loved to play the piano, often entertaining his brothers in Chi Psi with music from classical to jazz and pop. He was also a sailor who raced throughout his life on yachts, large and small, but his true love was his Cotuit Skiff#60, a 14 ft. 6 in. class of wooden boat raced only in Cotuit. His sons continue to maintain and race the boat Geoff built in 1954, and in later years, Geoff enjoyed watching his grandchildren carry on this tradition.
William L. Plunkett ’51