Peacefully passed away at home in Half Moon Bay at the age of 84. Born in Hibbing, Minnesota, he grew up during the Depression in Moorhead and Duluth where he graduated in 1944 from Denfeld High School and was captain of the football team. Jack immediately joined the U.S. Navy and served in World War II from 1944-46 as a Seabee. On his way to Okinawa, Jack did his boot camp training in California and vowed to return some day. After the war, he returned to Minnesota and earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota in Duluth and his master’s in Minneapolis. During this time, he developed a passion for folk music and square dancing whereupon he became a professional square dance caller. He moved to Arthur, North Dakota, where he got his first teaching job. Jack finally made his way back to California, where he landed a job teaching in Petaluma. He had an opportunity to teach in Germany in the late 1950s at the U.S. military bases. There, he married and started a family and returned to California where his family settled in Burlingame. During his teaching career in the San Mateo High School District, Jack taught math and coached the wrestling team at Burlingame High School. During these years, he used to take his two daughters all the time to Half Moon Bay on the weekends, and he always expressed a desire to live on the Coast. He retired in 1986 and moved back to Duluth where he enjoyed golfing with his friends, travelling around the world, and going for hikes and backpacking trips where he and his close buddies would solve all the world problems. Jack moved back to California in 2005 where he spent his last years living in comfort at the home of his daughter, Claudia, and his son-in-law, Chris, in Half Moon Bay.
While living in Half Moon Bay, Jack loved bicycling along the Coastal Trail and playing golf at Sharp Park Golf Course in Pacifica. Every weekend, he would accompany his daughter, Claudia, to the Lazy H Ranch to help with her horses. He often walked into town to drink coffee at the Half Moon Bay Coffee Company.
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Survivors include his daughters, Sabine Middlemass, and her husband, Thomas Middlemass, of Burlingame, Calif.; Claudia King, and her husband, Chris Hermoso, of Half Moon Bay, Calif.; his granddaughter, Elena Middlemass; his sister, Marjorie Berry, of Duluth, Minn., and his nieces and nephews. A sincere thanks to his caregiver, Kim Montgomery from Half Moon Bay, for treating Jack with such love and compassion for the past two years.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to Mission Hospice in San Mateo, California (www.missionhospice.org ).
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