Jack Turnbull

72, North Hills

Last Thanksgiving, Jack Turnbull picked up the karaoke mic and belted out one of his favorite tunes, Fastball’s “The Way,” an elegy to love enduring against all odds.

“Where were they going without ever knowing the way?” he sang, cheered on by his friends, his children and, most important, his wife, Jesserel.

She was his love, and the story of their meeting, she said, was a fairy tale. She was a 25- year- old server at a small hotel on Subic Bay, and he was a 62- yearold guest on a two- week vacation in the Philippines. Their smiles brought them together.

It was 2009 and the first of nine trips to the Philippines that Turnbull took that year before proposing. Marrying Jesserel marked the beginning of a new chapter in a late- blooming life.

Born in Springfield, Mo., Jan Paul Turnbull, whom everyone knew as Jack, escaped the small- town atmosphere of the Midwest not long after his parents divorced. He was 21, and as much as he had grown up with values that celebrated community, he now found himself without one.

“He was a vagabond living out of his car,” said his cousin Patrick White. It was a time when the country was reeling, with a war in Vietnam and protests at home.

Touring in old knockabouts, he played in a rock ’ n’ roll band, making ends meet as a school photographer and briefly opening a studio, first in Missouri, then in Florida. When times got hard, he had his brother, Reginald, who was an assistant attorney general for Missouri, to help him out.

From the chaos of the road, Turnbull eventually found stability in Los Angeles, first working behind the camera and then opening Actorsite, a studio in the San Fernando Valley dedicated to teaching acting.

Turnbull found his “sweet spot” in the community he’d created, White said, adapting skills he had learned photographing children to the fundamentals of acting and refining what he had picked up from high school and from any stage he stood on.

For 25 years, Turnbull committed himself to developing talent and watched as students discovered their careers. Alumni include Holly Taylor (“The Americans”), Mackenzie Hancsicsak (“This Is Us”) and Braxton Herda (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”).

Turnbull, said Kimberly Crandall, who started working with him in the 2000s and is now running Actorsite, “embraced how everyone is different and unique, and through that acceptance, really allowed all the different actors to feel comfortable in their own skin and blossom.”

Whether he was drilling students with tongue twisters or walking parents to their cars at night, Crandall said, Turnbull developed a safe and caring atmosphere for children and adults.

Classes and workshops were conducted in the afternoons and evenings, and on weekdays and weekends. Days often began with email blasts of encouragement and reminders to persevere and could end with pizza parties and karaoke nights.

Celebrated for his silliness, his kindheartedness, his exuberant personality, Turnbull was committed to the success of his students, and as much as he gave to them, they gave to him something of their spirit and energy.

“He was a natural- born teacher,” said Susan Bernhardt, whose daughter, Jillian Clare, started taking classes with Turnbull in 2000. He believed that if his students followed their hearts, they would find their way.

Turnbull eventually followed his heart, adopting not only Jesserel’s daughter, Venise, but also having two children with her, John Robert and Zayne. In 2017, he and Jesserel bought their first home, in North Hills. Turnbull had found his community and family late in life, but happiness doesn’t often follow a clock or a calendar.

“He wanted more babies,” said Jesserel, who tried to take care of him when he started getting sick in May. They didn’t know where he had contracted COVID- 19. Later, when he was in the hospital, she Face Timed him and played him the music that he loved so much.

Turnbull, 72, died in the intensive care unit on June 14. He is survived by his wife and three children.