Customers were Bob Jacobsen's No. 1 concern

With little retail experience, he left Washington in 1968 to take over his family's store in Northfield, Minn.

By Ben Cohen, Star Tribune

Last update: September 24, 2007 - 8:06 PM

In 1968, Bob Jacobsen left a lobbyist job in Washington to run his family's dry goods store in Northfield, Minn.

He never regretted the move.

Jacobsen died Sept. 6 in Northfield of complications from heart disease.

He was 82.

Jacobsen's Family Store provided more than clothes for families. It was a place to meet with neighbors on creaky wood floors, beneath an antique tin ceiling and where the owner ran the cash register.

"Father believed in the Golden Rule. If you would have come in and needed a pair of ballet slippers, size 13, he'd do his best to help you get what you needed," said his son Rollie, the store's third-generation owner, who sold the business in 2003.

The Jacobsens' motto was "The store with a heart." Customer and friend Ken Madole of Northfield said that was a fact.

"It was sincerely the way Bob wanted to operate the store. He was concerned about his customers," said Madole. "He was generous. If people had needs, but not the money, he would make sure they got it."

Jacobsen was proud of being an Eagle Scout, so he always carried scouting goods, added Madole.

Jacobsen got a taste of retail work while growing up, working summer jobs at J.C. Penney stores, where his father worked in South Dakota and Minnesota.

During World War II, Jacobsen served as a tail gunner on a B-17 in Europe.

After graduating from the University of Minnesota's College of Education around 1950, Bob Jacobsen taught school in Stillwater and Stevens Point, Wis. After a stint in the insurance business, he went to work for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington in the early 1960s.

In 1968, his father, Ralph, who ran the store he had opened in 1947, was ailing and hoped the business would stay in the family.

Meanwhile, Jacobsen wanted to get into a retail business and missed Minnesota, where the family had moved when he was a teen.

He once told his son of his reaction to the move from a drier, browner South Dakota to Waseca: "'The hogs smiled. It was green,'" said his son.

In addition to Rollie, he is survived by his sons Richard of Eagle River, Wis., and Russ of Hutchinson, Minn.; daughter, Roberta Peterson of Northfield; brother, Richard of Burnsville; seven grandchildren, and three great grandchildren.

His father, Ralph Jacobsen, died in 1968. His wife, Elaine, died in 2005.

Services have been held.

Ben Cohen • bcohen@startribune.com

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