Ami Jaqua
May 5, 1934-Nov. 30, 2023
La Honda, California
Ami (Anne Marie Isenberg) Jaqua passed away peacefully in her sleep early in the morning on November 30th, 2023. She was 89 years old. Ami was born in the old Stanford hospital in Palo Alto California, on May 5th, 1934, to Gerda and Ruolf Isenberg. She was the youngest of four children. All four spoke fluent German with their parents until sometime during the second world war. Ami was the last survivor of her siblings including two sisters, Dorothea Shick and Gerda Hyde, and one brother, Carl (Mathew) Isenberg. Ami attended Palo Alto schools and lived in Los Altos Hills and Palo Alto during her childhood. When Ami was 9 years old, her parents bought and renovated an old homestead in the Santa Cruz mountains to where the family eventually moved a few years later.
Ami graduated from Castilleja high school in Palo Alto in 1952, then attended art classes at San Jose State college. She met Richard Jaqua - a Stanford University engineering student and folk musician from Kentucky - one summer while volunteering at the Duveneck’s Hidden Villa annual Fair Play Picnic. Ami and Richard married four years later. They enjoyed a long and loving marriage until Richard’s death in 2019. Together they had five children, Wendy, Aaron, Paul, Daniel and Rebeka. Ami and Richard suffered the loss of their eldest child, Wendy Boone, in 2011. Ami is survived by her four living children, twelve grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Ami was a champion for the environment and took pride in being a responsible “owner” of her stretch of South Skyline Blvd. Under her leadership, Ami and her team voluntarily and courageously kept the road litter free for many years. She was also an advocate of clotheslines - pinning up her own laundry outside to dry all year round. Captivated by the beauty of clotheslines she had seen in Europe and other places around the world, she produced a series of paintings celebrating this old and earth friendly method of drying clothes - while humbly hoping to inspire others. This collection was put on exhibit in several Woodside venues and was featured in the Woodside Almanac Newspaper.
Ami developed a love for riding horses as a young child and shared this passion with many others late into her life including her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She took in and cared for retired horses from a horse therapy center in Woodside and later found pleasure in volunteering at the very same center - the National Center For Equine Facilitated Therapy, NCEFT, an organisation dedicated to facilitating healing to thousands of children and adults with physical and cognitive disabilities and mental health challenges.
Ami’s worldview was strongly influenced by her German-born mother, Gerda Isenberg - a renowned native plant nurserywoman and a recognised humanitarian member of the Palo Alto Society of Friends - and by her husband, Richard Jaqua, who - in addition to memorising and reciting Shakespeare plays among other great classics - took tremendous pleasure in engaging Ami in his deep philosophical questions concerning the human condition. Ami had an impeccable memory and continued to recite the many poems, songs and quotes she and Richard shared, until the end of her life. When asked, Ami could give up-to-date news of every single one of her close relatives and friends.
The years she spent living in Palo Alto played a significant part in Ami’s life - most importantly her lifelong friendships that she and Richard made during those years. And while her love and loyalty to her friends and family never faltered, her heart and soul belonged to the land her father bought in the 1940s and to the house which she and her husband eventually built on a slice of that same land - overlooking the redwood canyons and sweeping hill-scapes into the pacific ocean off of Skyline boulevard between La Honda and Woodside.
Ami will be remembered and dearly missed by all who knew her. She was a devoted and beloved daughter, sister, cousin, spouse, mother, aunt, grandmother, great-grandmother and friend. She was well known for her free-spirit and generous heart, her beautiful artwork - that hung on every wall in every room in her home and the way she made an art out of living simply and authentically, her adventurous nature and love of wild swimming and walking and folk dancing with her friends, her homemade bread (miraculously always fresh from the oven!) her glowing beauty and the hospitality she showed to so many who came to visit her in her handmade house at the end of the road, where she lived since 1980 until the end.
The family would like to give special thanks to the healthcare providers at the Satellite Healthcare in Menlo Park and to all her cherished friends and family who helped keep her smiling through these last challenging years.
