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 Richard Seymour Jackson Sr
August 15, 2003
Richard Seymour Jackson Sr., 87, of York Harbor, Maine, former owner of radio station WBEC AM/FM in Pittsfield, died Friday at home.
He was a former chairman of the Pittsfield Planning Board, served on numerous civic and community boards, and was president of the Massachusetts Broadcasters Association.
Mr. Jackson bought WBEC in 1960 from the Miller family, former owners of The Berkshire Eagle, expanding the station’s operations and news coverage and acting as its editorial voice.
He also introduced the county’s first radio talk show, “Sound Off.†He stepped down as president and treasurer of WBEC Inc. in 1978, but stayed on as chairman of the board.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Dec. 16, 1915, son of G. Harry and Mae C. Clark Jackson, he graduated from Manhasset (N.Y.) High School, the Hun School of Princeton, N.J., and, in 1939, from Dartmouth College, where he was a member of the undefeated football team that had been invited to play in the Rose Bowl in 1938.
A Navy veteran of World War II, he served three years with the rank of lieutenant.
Mr. Jackson entered the media and broadcasting business in the 1940s, first as a cartoonist and junior editor with King Features Syndicate in New York City and later as a free-lancer from his home in Greenwich, Conn.
In 1949, he became special events director of WAVE-TV in Louisville, Ky., and produced and directed the first televised Kentucky Derby that year. In 1951, he became a vice president of the radio/television department of J.M. Mathes Advertising Agency in New York City.
While in Pittsfield, he was a member and senior warden of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church. He was president of the Berkshire unit of Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, a director of the former Pittsfield National Bank, and served on the boards of Berkshire Country Day and Miss Hall’s schools, the Berkshire Athenaeum and the Tanglewood Council of Volunteers. He also was appointed as the state’s representative on the Pittsfield Urban Renewal Authority.
Later in his life, he wrote an autobiography, a best-seller on the family dogs, two novels and a history of World War II.
He took up tennis and earned a national ranking in both singles and doubles on the senior tour. He spent winters in Vero Beach, Fla., for 15 years.
He and his wife, the former Mary Mathes, were married 63 years.
Besides his wife, he leaves two sons, Richard S. Jackson Jr. of Stockbridge and James M. Jackson of Albuquerque, N.M.; a daughter Mary French Jackson of Guilford, Conn.; three brothers, Harry R. Jackson, Franklyn J. “Jeff†Jackson and Thomas C. Jackson, and five grandchildren.
FUNERAL NOTICE -- The funeral for Richard S. Jackson Sr. will be Monday, Aug. 25, at 11 at Trinity Church in York Harbor, Maine.
In lieu of flowers, contributions may be sent to the Berkshire unit of the Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, 55 Pittsfield Road, Lenox, MA 01240 or the Richard (1939) and Mary Jackson Scholarship Fund, Development Office, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755-3555. He leaves five grandchildren, Elizabeth Werbe, Sara Jackson, Mary Katherine Jackson, Lucas Jackson and Benjamin Jackson.
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