Mary Christine (Alegre) Jacob

Christine Jacob, born December 25, 1948, passed away on May 1, 2018, after waiting for the lilacs to bloom - and refusing well into the final days of her life to respond to anyone who called her Mary, her legal first name. A woman of untold talents, Christine lived many lives. She came to the United States - the story goes - as one of the first children to fly unaccompanied on an Argentine airline. She claimed to have being called Sloopy, as in the song “Hang On, Sloopy” -  so dubbed from attempts to sneak back into her dorm room at Pacific University.

Christine lived in New York City, Whittier and Los Angeles, California, before moving to Newport, Rhode Island with her family in 1980. There, she was a leader in the League of Women Voters and the National Organization for Women, and many other civic and community matters. Returning to work in the mid-1980s, she worked in insurance, then in the small business banking and mortgage divisions at Fleet Bank and Bank of America. She joined the local Rotary Club at a time when not many women were members. For her entire life, she hated phony people and the patriarchy. She taught her daughter about feminism; she taught her son to respect women. She knit beautiful, warm things for family and friends, and was the creator of many Thanksgiving feasts to rule all Thanksgivings. No one left hungry from her table.

In later years, she lived and worked in Riverside, California, before retiring to Aldan, PA to be closer to her son. She is a graduate of Whittier (CA) High School, and studied sociology at Pacific University. She is predeceased by her father, John Alegre and her ex-husband, Paul Jacob. She is survived by her mother, Rosalie Alegre, her brother Edward Alegre (Glenda) her two children, Joanna Jacob (Ian L. Pritchard), and Andrew Jacob (Dana), family members in California, friends from all over the nation, and her fellow knitting crew from the Delaware County Library. She loved her granddaughter Amy the most.

The family would like to thank her neurosurgeon, Dr. Henry Kesler; the Mercy Fitzgerald ICU nurses on duty on Christmas and New Year’s in December 2017; the entire staff at PowerBack Rehabilitation; Sandra Gaston, without whose assistance and care we could not have made it through those final weeks, Amanda from Penn Caring Way; and Eleanor Miller and Dr. Stephen Bagley of the Abrahmson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania, who brought dignity to her when others could not.

A Celebration of Life luncheon will be held Saturday, June 16, 2018 at Trattoria Giuseppe, 4799 West Chester Pike, Newtown Square, from 12:00 to 3:00 p.m. Internment and other arrangements are private. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be either directed to Planned Parenthood Federation of America, or to the Christine Jacob Memorial Fund created to honor her memory with future gifts to youth programs and scholarship: https://www.gofundme.com/christine-jacob-memorial-fund.