Roll Call Tribute

[Photo accompanies article below obituary.]

Hillier Funeral Home obituary

Jack Wilbur Jernigan
December 2, 1934 - January 4, 2015

Jack Wilbur Jernigan
12/2/1934 – 1/4/2015

Jack Wilbur Jernigan ‘56, age 80, of College Station, passed away on Sunday, January 4, 2015. Visitation will be 6-8 PM on Thursday, January 8, 2014 at Hillier Funeral Home. Funeral Services will be held on Friday, January 9, 2014 at 11 AM at Grace Bible Church on Anderson Street in College Station.

Jack was born on December 2, 1934 to Hobson and Lula (Merchant) Jernigan in Port Arthur, Texas. He attended Texas A&M University to study chemistry and was part of the Aggie Band.

Jack enjoyed playing chess and teaching his grandsons the art of the game. He also enjoyed solving puzzles and playing cards. Jack was involved in several church mission building trips. He also taught Sunday school to young boys.

He/She is preceded in death by his parents; Hobson and Lula.

Jack leaves behind his loving wife of 60 years, Marilyn; daughter, Brenda Grimsley, and numerous grandchildren, nieces and nephews.

Cemetery Details

College Station Memorial Cemetery
3800 Raymond Stotzer Pkwy
College Station, TX, 77845
___________________________________________________________
Aggie Jack Jernigan, who had a heart attack at Kyle Field in 1994, dies at age 80
By Jordan Overturf jordan.overturf@theeagle.com | Posted: Wednesday, January 7, 2015 12:00 am

[Photo caption] Jernigan
Jack Jernigan, class of 1956, died Sunday at the age of 80.

Twenty years ago, in the middle of a centennial celebration for the Fightin' Texas Aggie Band, Jack Wilbur Jernigan, class of '56, dropped dead from a heart attack. Luckily, he was in the middle of 800 former band members who were reaching their block formation on Kyle Field.

"I never heard Kyle Field so loud before," Lt. Col. Jay Brewer, director of the Aggie Band, said on Tuesday, recalling the halftime of the game on Sept. 24, 1994.

"And I never heard it so quiet before. Jack died several times on that field."

Jernigan's revival at Kyle Field made headlines and touched every Aggie who heard his story.

"I had so much Aggie spirit, I just popped," Jernigan told The Eagle a couple of months after his recovery from the halftime scare.

Jernigan's spirit endured for 20 years after the infamous health scare. He died Sunday in a College Station hospital from heart failure caused by complications with pneumonia. He was 80.

Jernigan's family said he had two great loves in his life: church and Aggieland.

Marilyn Jernigan -- Jack's wife of 60 years, five months and two days -- said Tuesday that she truly felt connected to the Aggie family ever since that first heart attack at Kyle Field.

She was touched that her husband's name was at the top of an international Aggie prayer list for a year after the event. And she was equally moved last September when the two met up with friends from Jernigan's days in the Aggie band for the first Aggie football game of the season.

"Jack would describe his time in the marching band as so meaningful, so fulfilling," his wife said.

"It was a golden time. He was living the dream with all his buddies."

Marilyn recalled meeting Jernigan when she was 12, two years his junior, as middle school students in Port Arthur. They both played alto saxophone in the band.

They began dating in high school and their courtship continued for the first two years Jernigan was at Texas A&M as a chemistry student. They married on July 2, 1954, after Marilyn's high school graduation.

She worked for the forest service, while he continued his studies in chemistry and marching in the band.

"It was the thing to do back then. Everyone was getting married young," Marilyn said. "Women also dressed up to go to football games. They wore dresses and heels."

They would sit together in the stands, while Jernigan played with the band. Marilyn likes to say she is the first woman to play with the Aggie band because she would commandeer her husband's saxophone.

"I'd tell him, 'Give me your sax. I want to play the next song," she said, laughing about the smile she would receive from then-director Col. Edward Adams.

After graduation, Jernigan became a successful researcher with Dow Chemical in Lake Jackson, where he lived for 30 years. Among his achievements in chemistry are two patents for epoxy resins. Marilyn said her husband was inspired to study epoxies more after attending Texas A&M because his textbook only contained a single chapter on the synthetic adhesive.

Jernigan's love for A&M and the Aggie band never faded.

He had two daughters: Janet Smith, the youngest, and Brenda Grimsley, Aggie class of 1981. Three of his seven grandchildren went on to graduate from Texas A&M -- two of them marched with the Aggie band. One of them -- Paul Kapavik, class of 2010 -- rose to the bugle corps his senior year and marched in the same spot his grandfather held in the halftime formation half a century earlier.

Brewer offered his condolences to the Jernigans on Tuesday, saying "Jack marches on with the rest of us."

Marilyn said she still hasn't gotten over the shock of his death.

"I feel lost without him, without his unquestioning love," she said.