Yvonne Elsie Jacobson
July 12, 1938-Aug. 18, 2026
Los Altos Hills, California

Yvonne Olson Jacobson of Los Altos Hills, acclaimed Santa Clara Valley historian and author, beloved mother and grandmother, who dedicated her life to preserving the past and cherishing her family, has died at 88 after a long struggle with Alzheimer’s Disease.

Growing up on a cherry farm in Sunnyvale originally settled by her Swedish grandparents in the early 1900s, Jacobson chronicled the disappearance of the family farm in a highly acclaimed 1984 book, Passing Farms: Enduring Values. In the book’s foreword, American novelist Wallace Stegner remarked:

But as Yvonne Jacobson fully recognizes, her book has more than local application. It is local history that casts a shadow longer than itself. The Santa Clara Valley is a microcosm or representative, it can stand for the once-virgin American continent, and what happened to it can stand for our entire history as a people.

Filled with personal experiences and memories, and Jacobson’s vivid photographs alongside those taken by Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lang, Passing Farms evokes a bygone era and captures an agricultural heritage filled with hard work, community, and heartbreak.

Jacobson was born in Sunnyvale, California, on July 12, 1938, to Ruel Charles Olson, a second-generation orchardist, and Rose Zamar Olson, operator of the family fruit stand. The youngest of three children, Jacobson was affectionately known as ‘Peppy’ for her boundless energy. On the farm, she worked with her siblings to sort cherries, cut apricots, gather prunes, and feed chickens.

Jacobson attended Fremont High School in Sunnyvale from 1952 to 1956. There she won several speech and debate contests, including one against future Supreme Court Judge, Stephen Breyer.

From 1956 to 1960, Jacobson studied at Stanford University, majoring in English and minoring in Humanities. While volunteering for the Stanford Foreign Scholarship Committee, she met her future husband, William Jacobson, newly arrived from South Africa to study for his MBA. After graduation, Jacobson earned a master’s degree in English from Columbia University in 1961, then lived in South Africa for a year before marrying William in Johannesburg in 1962.

Upon returning to California, the couple began raising three kids and built their home in Los Altos Hills. In the early 1970s, Jacobson began lecturing on the role of women in the Judeo-Christian tradition. These lectures made their way into courses she taught on religion and art at San José State University, De Anza College, and Foothill College.

In 1979, when her own family’s farm was among the remaining few, Jacobson set out with her tape recorder and camera to gather oral histories and document the end of an era. The project led to Jacobson’s 1984 book and to a photographic exhibit, installed in the California Governor’s Office in Sacramento before becoming permanent in San José’s History Park in 1988.

Photos and research for Passing Farms may be found in the Michelle Ann Jacobson Memorial Collection at the California History Center at De Anza College, named after Yvonne and William’s elder daughter, who died in a 1982 car accident.

Jacobson will be remembered for her welcoming personality, keen intellect, and quick wit. She loved hosting parties, spending time with family and friends, and traveling with William. She also enjoyed sewing, canning fruit, gardening, singing, making her mother’s Lebanese cuisine, and celebrating holidays and birthdays with her children and grandchildren.

A decade after battling colon cancer in the 1990s, Jacobson began to lose the memories she had so ardently preserved through writing and storytelling. She and her husband gathered many of her stories into a 2012 book Memoirs of a Farmer’s Daughter in Silicon Valley.

Jacobson kept her cheerful nature to the very end, lighting up a room with laughter, smiles, hugs and song.

Jacobson is survived by her loving husband of 64 years, William Jacobson; her son Mark Jacobson; her daughter Laura Jacobson (partner Anthony Wagner); her grandchildren Dionna Jacobson MacWright (husband Michael MacWright), Daniel Jacobson, Naomi Wagner, Kieran Wagner, and Jessica Jacobson; her sister Jeanette Louise Gottesman of Saratoga; her brother Charles John Olson of Sunnyvale; cousins, nieces, nephews and cherished friends.

Tags: arts/media, teacher/educator, public service