By Gretchen Wing
A typhoon in Tonga pushed Dean and Carolyn Jacobsen to move full-time to Lopez in 1982.
When a loose 42-footer smashed into their smaller sailboat, Carolyn broke 15 bones and nearly died, so the recovery period gave them plenty of time to think.
Although they were adventuresome sailors, that experience nudged them toward land.
The couple had co-owned the Islander Resort since 1978, but remained in Seattle. After a thorough look at Lopez School for their three kids, the Jacobsens bought out their Islander partner and made the leap to Lopez.
“Leap and the net will appear,” is Dean’s mantra, but he is quick to explain that this “net” is always woven from careful planning and relationships.
The San Juans were known to them from sailing trips, and Carolyn had even stayed at the Islander in the 1950s during her childhood.
Dean’s hospitality business ideal had been formed from age 12, working summers at a Pennsylvania inn to provide respite from life in New York City, and a career in mortgage banking, following four years in Aviation Electronics in the Marines, had honed his confidence in making things happen.
Exactly what Dean made happen has been the only surprise — even to him.
“Music at the Islander was our form of advertising, and it really worked,” he said.
Dean started learning the Northwest jazz scene and calling agents. In the summers, “We did music seven days a week, sometimes two or three bands a day.”
One day in 1985 the Islander hosted 1,000 people, who listened to Queen Ida and the Bontemps Zydeco Band, and watching the Wenatchee Youth Circus trapeze across the lawn.
Even Chrysler Corporation joined in, bringing their “Hands Across America” tour to Lopez with 40 employees and a truckload of new cars to parade. Chrysler’s video from that Islander event appeared in an ad at the halftime of the 1985 Superbowl.
The Islander’s fame as a musical venue grew, until agents started calling Dean.
Over the years, “The quality of the bands was such that I’d say we had 30 Grammy-winning musicians here,” in every musical style.
When bluesman JJ Cale jammed with jazz pianist Overton Berry, the resort and the harbor were packed.
“You can imagine what all the people on those boats were saying about us — whoa!”
The Jacobsens sold the Islander in 1988, and Dean began commuting to Seattle to co-run a mortgage business. But he could already see the fraudulent banking practices that are now so notorious, so, at age 57, Dean left banking for good.
With his energy, “retirement” translated to a gig on an Alaskan fishing crew for the next six summers. His crowning moment came when, as a 64-year-old deckhand/cook, he was welcome to drink in the captain’s bar, and the oldest, grumpiest salt on the docks deigned to converse with him.
Back together on Lopez, Dean and Carolyn became music angels. At the funeral of Seattle saxaphonist Floyd Standifer, Dean was struck by how much Standifer had done through music for kids in Seattle, and began to wonder, “What could I do?”
Suffering from terrible nerve damage in his leg, Dean saw some art therapy on the hospital wall: “Leap and the net will appear.”
Before this, “there was always something that stopped me,” but this mantra reminded him of how minor his own obstacles were.
And so was born the Lopez School Music Advocacy Foundation.
Now in its fifth year, the LSMAF is dedicated to using music to infuse responsibility, self-confidence, and deeper awareness of academic subjects. “Music is a life skill,” Dean maintains.
Thanks to the constant Foundation fundraising, every Lopez 4th grader gets a ukulele to keep; three full days of every school year are set aside for music education, K-12; music teachers have their own aide; unused school instruments have been replaced with usable ones; and the Spanish and U.S. History curricula have been infused with Latin beats and jazz history.
The foundation is currently planning to sponsor a field trip to Cuba, complete with two scholarships. Dean and Carolyn stay hands-on in their musical support: for the past two years, they personally called every 4th grader weekly to remind them to practice!
Since visiting musicians need places to stay, especially for fundraising concerts in the summer, Dean is always looking for volunteers to donate space in vacation homes. The Islander still offers free rooms under current owner Bill Diller.
Dean’s latest dream is to see Lopez School used as a model for the state.
He has begun working with an advisory board of educational stakeholders, to see if the rest of Washington can learn to treat the Arts as Lopez does.
A musical angel who plays no instrument; a mortgage-banker deckhand: Dean Jacobsen might seem a study in contrasts. But when it comes to action, Dean, with Carolyn’s unflagging support, is Mr. Consistency: he leaps, and the net appears.
