Remembering Jack Christensen: columnist, teacher, family man, hybridizer
Jack Christensen, the longtime gardening columnist for this newspaper chain and devoted husband and father, died March 10 after a long illness. He was 72.
Christensen is survived by his six children — five sons and a daughter — and grandchildren, and by his wife of nearly 51 years, Jeanie. Jack and Jeanie met in church as teens and were friends before getting married — and after, too. “Jack was my best friend,” Jeanie said, adding that they’d known each other for 66 years.
A third-generation Californian, Christensen was born in Glendale. His grandmother was a member of the American Camellia Society, and young Jack displayed an early interest in the natural world.
“I think Jack was born into gardening. When he was a very young boy, he was a great observer. He loved bugs; loved birds. Loved anything that had to do with nature,” said Jeanie. “Jack knew where the beehives were.”
After winning a scholarship to UCLA with plans to be a doctor, Jack decided instead to answer a different calling, studying botany at Cal Poly Pomona. Armed with his degree, he took a job at Armstrong Nurseries where, Jeanie said, “he hoed weeds for a year.”
Soon enough, however, he rose to become vice president of research and a noted hybridizer of fruit trees and roses — somewhere between 80 and 100 of the latter, including “Gold Medal,” “Modern Magic,” “Henry Fonda” and the All-America Rose Selectionswinning “Voodoo.” “Jack, in his own quiet little way, was very famous,” said Jeanie.
At 52, declining to relocate from their Ontario home for the job, Jack reinvented himself when Jeanie pitched him as a gardening writer to an editor at the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. Jack submitted a writing sample and “they immediately took him,” said Jeanie.
He also became a biology teacher at Chaffey High School, where he taught for 20 years. “He has a lot of students who loved him, absolutely loved him,” said Jeanie, who recalls students coming up to hug Jack years after he’d taught them. “He loved the interaction with the kids, loved to open up their view of plant life and bugs and just give them a better view of what’s in the world.”
In his 25 years of writing about gardens, Christensen was known to newspaper readers for his tips on what to do in the garden each week, and whether it was preparing for rain or transplanting roses, he had the answer. His great skill, said Jeanie, who served as his first and best editor, was that “he was able to write on a level people understood,” she said. “More like a friend.”
Jeanie said Jack Christensen will be remembered for his love of family and his faith. “He was just a good man that lived a good life,” she said.