Barbara Tietjen
Jacobs
1919 ~ 2010
Barbara Tietjen Jacobs was joyfully reunited with her eternal sweetheart, Briant Stringham Jacobs, on March 19, 2010. The second child of H. Roland and Genevieve Willardson Tietjen, Barbara was born in Payson, Utah on May 16, 1919 but was raised in Monroe, Sevier County. She was involved in orchestra, band, drama, debate and leadership in high school and college. She began studying the violin when she was 10 years old and won first place awards in state music contests and a National Federation of Music competition. She met her husband, also a violinist, at a state music event when they were both 16. For many years she taught private violin lessons and provided music for social and church occasions.
After attending BYU for two years, Barbara and Briant were married in the Manti Temple on August 28, 1939. Barbara worked as Secretary of the Child Welfare Department of the State while Briant worked on his PhD at the University of Iowa and taught English at the University of Utah during the time Briant served in the Navy during World War II.
When Briant accepted a professorial position at BYU, they returned to Provo in 1946 to build a home just south of the Marriott Center.
Barbara went back to school after having four children and graduated from BYU with high honors in 1957.
Active in community service, Barbara chaired the county March of Dimes drive and presented innumerable programs on a multitude of subjects to various groups. As director of a Provo home-stay program for Japanese students sponsored by the Reader's Digest, she also took American teens to Japan. For several summers Barbara taught classes in etiquette, wrote and directed the show for BYU's Youth Academy and lectured throughout the Western States as part of BYU's Education Week program. She served as President of BYU Women, Bonheur and Literary League clubs and was a longtime member of other organizations, including Silver Slipper, Dine Orators and Dr. T. L. Martin's Sunday Night Group.
Barbara co-authored a teenage etiquette book called WHAT DO I DO NOW?, wrote SO YOU'RE
GOING ON A MISSION and co-authored MISSIONS FOR MARRIEDS with her husband. She has also published in the Ensign as well as national magazines, written lessons for the MIA program and served as a free-lance editor. Teaching school for a year at Xian Foreign Language University in China proved so rewarding that Barbara and her husband returned for an additional year, next instructing at the Shanghai Institute of Tourism.
Always active in the LDS Church, Barbara held positions in all organizations and served on several stake boards. A highlight in her life was the mission she served with her husband in the England London South Mission. She also loved her part-time Hosting Mission at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in Salt Lake and her part-time Service Mission at the Mission Training Center in Provo.
Barbara Jacobs loved life and people. She was the consummate hostess and reveled in entertaining at her home in Provo and in the mountain cabin she and her husband lovingly created at Sundance. Excelling in masterminding and producing unusual parties, Barbara was known for her desire and ability to have fun and bless others' lives. She had a magnetic personality and frequently found total strangers embracing her or inviting her and her husband into their homes as she traveled around the world, proving to be an ardent emissary for BYU, her Church and her country. The Daily Herald once ran an article entitled, "Barbara Jacobs Has an Adventurous Spirit." With her drive to "see and do," she convinced her husband to take four children on two separate, year-long sojourns to experience Europe and the Middle East. With and without her children, but always with her husband Briant, she travelled all over the world and lived for periods of time in England, Spain, Italy, Austria, Hawaii and China. She was eager to take trips until her 90th year.
However, Barbara considered her greatest challenge and reward to be the rearing of her family in a happy home, a goal she magnificently achieved. She is survived by her five children: Jeniveve Wahlquist, Orem, UT; Marilyn (Stan) Heiner, Modesto, CA; David (Chris), North Salt Lake, UT; Janeen (Tom) Aggen, Lenexa, KS; and Bob (Jerie), Livermore, CA. Her adoring posterity also includes nineteen grandchildren, eighteen great-grandchildren and numerous nieces and nephews. An additional survivor is her brother, Melvin E. (Gail) Tietjen of Mesa, AZ. Barbara's husband of sixty-six years, three grandchildren and her sister, Bernell Cloward Simpson, predeceased her.
Funeral services will be held at 2:00 p.m., Friday, March 26, 2010 at the Oak Hill Stake Center, 925 East North Temple Drive, Provo. Friends and family may call at the Berg Mortuary of Provo, 185 East Center Street, on Thursday evening from 6-8 p.m. or at the Stake Center on Friday, from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. Interment East Lawn Memorial Hills Cemetery, Provo.
Condolences may be emailed to info@bergmortuary.com