Theresa Sondra Jacobs

It’s hard to put words together that can accurately describe my mother. The best I can say is that she was the most amazing person I’ve ever known. She was the most loving and giving mother and grandmother. She put everyone else before herself; in the hospital, the days before her passing, she was more concerned about her family and their struggle with losing her than facing her last day with us. Losing my mother to cancer was the most difficult thing that I’ve ever had to deal with in my entire life. Watching a loved one go through the end stages of this horrible disease is something we pray no one will have to experience.
Unfortunately, we all have to experience challenges and loss in our lifetime. The Theresa Sandra Jacobs Foundation was created to help people who are going through their own struggles and difficult times. This nonprofit carries on her name, and we think of her with every smile we help create.
Theresa “Terry” was a Fairfax county teacher for three decades, she retired from Lake Braddock high school and taught art, art history, and photography. Her passion was acrylic, watercolor paint, photography, and pottery.

She loved photography and taught all aspects of exposure and working in the darkroom and creating beautiful pieces of art with a camera as well as a brush. She was loved by so many and inspired so many students. After her passing, we inherited all of her art supplies and used the skills and techniques she taught us to create the beautiful artistic props we use in our foundation to entertain kids and adults. My mother also taught my daughter and my wife how to draw and paint. She also came into my daughter’s Elementary school as a guest teacher and taught the students in my daughter’s class some art lessons. Below you’ll see one of the pictures that my mother drew and brought to my daughter’s classroom; this picture was taken in the classroom during one of the lessons.
My wife and daughter have worked together on projects for the foundation using all of her art supplies, and we think of her each time we pick up a brush. My mother knew (well) about my passion for Star Wars, you can say it’s more of an obsession, and created some of the paintings for me that you see below. Every time I look at them, I think of her.