Five weeks is not a lot of time to get used to big changes in a person’s life but it is a very significant time frame for Lisa and I. We first met on Friday 13th April in 1990 on the way to the Winton 24-hour race and spent a fairly intense week end together. This was a preview of the following 20 years and 8 months we would spend together. Within 6 weeks we’re engaged and the following February we were married.
Neither of us ever wasted much time in making a decision! The past 5 weeks have been much the same in as much as there little time to adjust to such a life changing situation. Lisa was faced with the fight of her life with little chance of victory, at best, this would only be manageable. Who would have thought, we would be gathered here today, to celebrate such a dynamic and vibrant person. Lisa still had so much to offer!
Lisa was one of the most dedicated, committed and passionate people you could meet. She would fiercely stand up for what she believed in, regardless of the cost.
Lisa had an ability to communicate with people on every level and age. She was comfortable with any company or situation.
In the time we have lived in Warragul she was involved in many community groups and causes. The most prevalent of these was the save the Warragul pool group. During this time, she developed a report with many people, including the press and media. The impact she caused will be remembered for some time to come. More often than not, whenever she would address, or more accurately lecture Council she would get a standing ovation! The last time she did this, she actually went dressed in a chaff bag claiming they would taking the shirt off the back of small business. Protesting at the 33% commercial rates increase and again she made her point, and, along with other speakers had a successful protest!
Her passion and loyalty for family and friends was fierce. There have been many times when she went into support or defend family, friends, and customers on different issues, every time it was with complete and total commitment. Her latest passion was junior football and as usual she threw herself into with all the enthusiasm imaginable. Amazingly she even got me to go to the games most weekends. I quickly found myself being volunteered for a variety of jobs.
If nothing else Lisa certainly made her presence felt and has stamped her mark on the people fortunate enough to have known her.
The 30 or so pages dedicated to her on various international forums, the proposed dedication of an event in the US this year, and fund raising at that event for breast cancer research, shows just how far and wide she is respected!
Lisa (Gregory) Jacobson, only child of John and Jean Gregory, loving wife and partner of Mike Jacobson, and cherished mother of Tom (19), Charlotte (14), and Billy (12), passed away from what must be one of the quickest and most aggressive bouts of cancer on record. From discovery, to diagnosis, to admission, to treatment, to poor prognosis, to it taking her away … all within about 5 weeks… It’s was a shock.
Lisa was car girl. More over, a Porsche girl… see a little of the family history: http://www.spyderautomobiles.com.au/history.html
I met Lisa through her email inquiries about the Early 911S Registry message board; that was April of ’05. Her first of 557 posts was a few days after that.
Lisa, Mike and I started emailing about Porsche stuff and car clubs and stuck up a great friendship….. About the same time Lisa was also helping start the Australian TYP901 Register.
By Sept. of that same year of ’05 Lisa wanted to make her first trip to California to attened the German Auto Fest in Ventura. Mike had to hold down the shop so she came out with a couple of TYP901 guys. Andrew from Australia and Michael from New Zealand…
When I first met her in person my reaction was WOW!!!… What’a ‘spark plug’, her energy was simply infectious, and hard to keep up with…
For that trip and her next two, for the Lit Fair/Swap in ’08 and ’09, I played the willing role of contact person, driver, and hang out pal.
My blue car’s shotgun position started to be called ‘Lisa’s seat’
We could all go on about how unfair it is that this wonderful woman was taken… but instead we should think of what a great time we all had, and what a privilege it was to be a part of it all with her.
And also,
Please let’s start looking at this ‘pink ribbon’ stuff in a VERY real way…
Let’s be as supportive as we can to all the ladies in our life that need to keep a vigil and get checked regularly and help KEEP THIS MONSTER AWAY!!!!!!!!!
Though we didn’t always agree our friendship never faltered through all these years…
She was a cherished friend… I will miss her, I miss her now…
If Lisa could return as a car, it would probably be an early Porsche, like the black 356A Speedster that her well-known father John Gregory drove hard and fast, day and night, after he bought it new in 1958.
John was seriously passionate about Porsches. His fascination with the marque grew from his admiration of their technology and engineering after arriving from his native Lebanon in the early 1950s. It was his sixth-sense expertise in tuning and repairing them led to his company Spyder Automobiles being accredited as an official Porsche service agent from the early 1960s until the late 1970s.
During this period literally hundreds of 356s passed over his hoists and it was into this Porsche world that John and Jean Gregory’s only child Lisa was born on May 4, 1965. It is rumoured that she was conceived in a Porsche, but as neither of her parents are now with us, it will have to remain a good but plausible story.
It is fair to say that Lisa was John’s surrogate ‘son’ and she inherited her unmitigated love of the Stuttgart sports cars from him. The family home resembled a Porsche shrine, with magazines and spare parts contesting space with other household items and Lisa absorbed the ‘Porsche patter’ that reverberated around home and workshop.
Lisa carried her early enthusiasm through to her adolescent and early adult years so much so that she was known to use the stray Porsche lying around at home to impress the opposite sex in a unique reversal of a typically male role.
The first Porsche she could truly call her own was a red 356 Cabriolet, followed later by an Ice Green 911 2.7S with a unique set of close-ratio gears that her father installed. Like Lisa, it went everywhere fast!
Certainly from an early age she was authoritative and outspoken on all things Porsche and had no hesitation correcting any challengers. Not everyone appreciated her forthrightness, but Lisa saw her passion and ability to speak her mind as an important part of life. “Never let your voice be silenced,” she later instructed her children.
Lisa met her husband Michael Jacobson when he was preparing to run with well-known Porsche repairer Mike Tankard in the Winton 24 Hour race in 1990. Six weeks later they were engaged and the following February they were married.
The death of her father John in March 2003 followed by her mother Jean June 2007 devastated her. “She said they were the only people who really understood her”, recalled Michael.
Christmas 2006 the Jacobsons and their three children Tom, Charlotte and Billy, moved to Warragul – a relocation that surprised many of their friends – and she became actively involved with a range of school and community issues.
Despite the distance from her Porsche roots, she also maintained her passion for Porsches, initially being involved in the formation of the Type 901 Register while maintaining the administration of Spyder Automobiles, which Michael carried on after John’s death.
In early September 2011, Lisa was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. She died on October 26, aged 46, with many PCV members and Porsche friends attending her funeral to pay their respects to her and the Gregory family.
“Five weeks is not a lot of time to get used to big changes in a person’s life,” said Michael, “but like a Porsche, everything for her happened fast.”
The 30 or so pages dedicated to her on various international forums included the proposed dedication of Targa California (formally the no frills Iron Bottom Rally) in the USA this year in her honour, combined with fund raising for breast cancer research. She would have been pleased with that final achievement.
