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Funeral Service For Blanche Jacobs This Saturday

Jacqueline Cleveland

Blanche Jacobs, passionate local advocate and long time paralegal for the Bethel District Attorney’s Office, passed away recently. Jacobs, 75, had made her home in Bethel after participating in the Vista Volunteer Program in Kongiganak in the early '70s.

 

At one time she worked at the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation, and though she spent periods away, Jacobs always returned to her home in rural Alaska. Her son, Andrei Jacobs, said that she was a humble advocate, making sure that the attention she garnered was always focused on the causes she was passionate about, like domestic violence prevention, and never about herself.

 

She spent the last several years of her life in Anchorage, cared for by her family. She suffered from a hereditary ailment affecting her heart.

 

“That was the primary illness,” said her eldest son Andrei, who is 41. “She had others, and they were exacerbated and made worse by the amyloids attaching to the heart. So it was a collection of things, but the primary thing was the cardiac amyloidosis.”

 

Along with Andrei, Blanche’s two other sons, Torin and Julien, will bring her ashes home to Bethel for a funeral service this Saturday at 2 p.m. at the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church off of Chief Eddie Hoffman Highway. The service is open to the public.

 
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