'Doc' Jackson - A Giant of a Man

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Peter Germann:

For several years I had the honor to represent the interests of F2B pilots all over the world as an F2B expert under Dr. Laird Jackson in the F2 subcommittee of the FAI / CIAM and I was privileged to contribute to the current state of the rules. During this time I got to know Doc Jackson not only as a highly integrative leader but also as a valuable human being. His contributions to our common cause will endure.

Peter Germann
SUI Member F2 Subcommittee
FAI F2B Working Group

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Les McDonald:

My Friend "The Doc"

I don't remember the first time that I actually met Doc Jackson but it was probably at some contest in the early seventies. He was easy to miss. Unassuming, he spoke in a quiet mumbling sort of way, almost shy. The first thing that I remember about him were the satirical, almost comic stories that he wrote for the magazines describing the events and people during the most recent World Championships. The stories were more for the folks that had attended the contest but for the rest of us it was like being part of some "inside joke" so we could draw our own conclusions. Years later, when he pointed his stick at me I reveled at being part of it. He made us all out to be "Knights In Not Very Shiny Armour".

My first real connection with The Doc was to be in Miami in late 1975. What transpired at that meeting is pretty well known because that was the time he informed me that I could be on the 1976 Team. I remember just about everything about that adventure. Obviously winning the World Championship pops up first but the trip after the contest to Switzerland with The Doc and Billy Werwage was just plain epic. I also remember his talk with Gene Schaffer during the competition. Gene was struggling but after whatever Doc said to him his flying improved enough for the US to once again bring home the F2B Team Trophy. Doc pushed a button that no one knew that Gene had.

Another big Doc moment for me was right after I had won the 1982 Championship in Sweden. My wife Nancy had accompanied me on this trip and at the banquet The Doc had asked me what our plans were before heading home. I told him that after all those years of Nancy putting up with all that she did she deserved a nice Scandinavian vacation. Doc then handed me the keys to his rental car and just told me to return it to the airport in Stockholm when we were leaving. Several times during the next year I tried to repay him but he ignored all my offers.

I just enjoyed being around Doc. He had a very dry sense of humor, so coupled with my sarcasm we laughed a lot!

He did so much for all of us but for me he was a very special guy and it was my privilege to know him.

Les McDonald

The one photo shows myself, Bill Werwage and Doc exploring Mt Pilatus and the other is Doc and I doing a live BBC radio interview in Woodvale England.

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Ingemar Larsson

Memory of Doc

Back in 2001 the Euro Champs were held in Valladolid, Spain. Doc Jackson was part of the FAI Jury while Guido Michiels, Vernon Hunt and Ingemar Larsson formed the F2D Judges Team. Doc’s wife, Marie, came with him and it just so happened that she had her birthday while we were in Valladolid. Marie and Doc invited the Combat Judges to a downtown restaurant for a birthday dinner. The two F2C Judges Derek Heaton and Luis Petersen were also invited. As we had time to prepare before the dinner we bought some gifts for Marie, I made some books and also made ties/bow ties for all out of combat streamers.

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Walt Perkins:

I first became aware of Doc from a photo in an Aeromodeller Magazine as the US Team Manager at a World Championship, in the early 1960's. I met him in person in the 1970's while were both pursuing a place on the US team. He was teamed with Henry Nelson while I was working with JE Albritton. Our common use of the Nelson engine led to a co-operative idea sharing and joint practice session arrangement to benefit both teams. Eventually, the four of us joined the 1980 WC US Team. When their best model was damaged a few weeks before leaving for the WC, I re-painted one of our back-up models and they used it in Poland (in the lead-up to 1980, we made a lot of models to try out a variety of design ideas).

Doc was a great teammate and worked as hard as anyone to improve the competitive edge we tried to develop with Henry's engines. I also think he was very instrumental in advancing the WC participation among American modelers in the early 1960's, although he was modest in talking about those early days. He will be missed for sure.

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Doc Jackson - Renowned in Genetics Research

10 October 1930 - 17 October 2019

WE LOST A GIANT

Recently, we learned the sad news that LAIRD JACKSON – the CdLS Foundation’s first medical director passed away. Before the founding of our beloved Foundation there was the Reaching Out newsletter. Those early pioneers sent out a request to the medical community asking for help to better understand the little-known genetic disorder of Cornelia de Lange Syndrome. One man answered the call – Dr. Laird Jackson.

Dr. Jackson was dedicated in his efforts to not only understand the genetic causes of CdLS, he was equally interested in pursuing what complications led to the death of those with the condition. He published many articles and unselfishly shared his research in pursuit of that understanding.

Dr. Jackson’s passion for teaching others about CdLS was contagious. He mentored two important figures in our community – Drs. Ian Krantz and Tonie Kline. Dr. Krantz is a leading clinician and researcher at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Dr. Kline among her many other accomplishments, went on to succeed Dr. Jackson as the Foundation’s second medical director.

Perhaps, Dr. Jackson’s greatest legacy is the love, care and hope he provided for so many in those early years. We offer the family and his many friends our deepest condolences.

Warmly,
Bonnie Royster, Executive Director
CdLS Foundation

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Laird G. Jackson, a medical geneticist before the specialty even existed

Before the field of genetics began, Dr. Jackson collaborated with two researchers to discover the Philadelphia chromosome. Intrigued with that experience, he began exploring the genetic underpinnings of the diseases in patients he was seeing. Soon, he became a geneticist.

Laird G. Jackson, 89, of Philadelphia and Lambertville, N.J., a physician-scientist who was one of the country’s earliest practicing geneticists, and who went on to advocate genetic counseling as an important part of patient care, died Thursday, Oct. 17, of complications from a stroke at his home.

Dr. Jackson’s introduction to the nascent field of medical genetics was serendipitous. In 1960, while seeing patients at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, he met a 7-year-old girl with chronic myelogenous leukemia.

Curious about what caused the illness, he collaborated with physicians and researchers David Hungerford and Peter Nowell, who were just then discovering a link between the disorder and a chromosomal mutation that became known as the “Philadelphia chromosome.”

The connection was a landmark finding because it proved for the first time that a defective chromosome was consistently present in any kind of malignancy, wrote William J. Shiel Jr. on MedicineNet, a health-care website.

"That experience got me looking into chromosomes," Dr. Jackson told an interviewer for the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics in 2017. "I was soon noticed by pediatricians who worked in the newborn nursery, who asked me to come check on a child who appeared to have Down syndrome. And pretty soon I became a geneticist before there were official geneticists."

Not only did Dr. Jackson become an expert on medical genetics, he also championed genetic counseling as a critical aspect of ethical and effective patient care long before the field existed.

Born in Seattle, Dr. Jackson graduated from high school at age 16. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., in 1951 and entered medical school at the suggestion of an adviser who said that his age would be advantageous in a field that required so many years of training.

"That was my guidance into medicine, without any relatives or family friends who worked as physicians," Dr. Jackson recalled in 2017. "It was serendipitous."

He earned a medical degree in 1955 from the University of Cincinnati School of Medicine. With three years of Air Force service behind him, he served an internal medicine residency in 1959 at what was then Jefferson Medical College.

Dr. Jackson completed a series of leukemia research fellowships and taught medical students at Jefferson in 1969 and 1970. His focus, though, was shifting to pediatric genetics and prenatal genetic testing.

At first, amniocentesis was the testing mechanism for genetic defects. When questions arose about its safety, an alternative was developed — sampling of cells taken from where the placenta attaches to the uterine wall.

Dr. Jackson spearheaded a clinical trial to test it in the United States, leading to a landmark paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1989. He generated the proposal for a multicenter trial comparing various types of chromosomal testing. The results were published in the same journal in 2012.

In 2017, he collaborated with researchers developing tests to sample fetal cells from the mother's circulating blood.

Dr. Jackson is best known for his work on Cornelia de Lange syndrome, a rare developmental disorder that affects multiple parts of the body. As medical director for the Cornelia de Lange Syndrome Foundation, he traveled worldwide to get blood samples, said his wife, Marie.

At Jefferson, Dr. Jackson rose from instructor in 1962 to professor of medicine, pediatrics, and obstetrics and gynecology in 1978. He ran the division of medical genetics from 1969 to 1998.

In 2001, he was appointed a professor of obstetrics and gynecology in genetics at Drexel University College of Medicine, and a research associate in pediatric human genetics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

In 2017, Dr. Jackson received the ACMG Foundation for Genetic and Genomic Medicine’s David L. Rimoin Lifetime Achievement Award.

Nancy Spinner, chief of the division of genomic diagnostics at Children’s Hospital, once said of Dr. Jackson that he “shares his ideas freely, encouraging everyone around him, and in all of the time I’ve known him, I’ve never seen him seek recognition for the ideas he generates."

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