Jack Paquette was a writer, so it shouldn’t have surprised those who knew him that, 15 years ago, he started to write his own obituary.
“He wanted to tell a story and wanted the story to be right,” said his son Mark Paquette.
Just last week, the elder Paquette updated his lengthy, and impressive, obituary to reflect the recent passing of his wife, Jane.
On Dec. 5, in his bedroom under hospice care, with his two sons at his side, Paquette died of esophageal cancer. He was 89.
“When he gave us the diagnosis, we had a conference call, and he said, ‘I want to tell you something. I’ve gotten this diagnosis, but I’ve lived a good life, and I’ve had no regrets. I don’t want you to worry about me, I’ll be all right,’” Mark Paquette said. “He gave us strength to the end.”
Writing played a major part in Jack Paquette’s life. Because of his interest, he was able to write several books, including a memoir about his life detailing six years in an orphanage.
He earned a journalism degree from Ohio State University and worked briefly as a journalist before being hired by packaging manufacturer Owens-Illinois Inc. in 1951. At Owens-Illinois, starting as a creative writing specialist, Paquette worked his way up to vice president of the company.
“He began in an orphanage, and he climbed up to the top in the business world, and he was very proud of that,” said Linda Tippett, a longtime family friend. “And he should be.”
Paquette was born Aug. 14, 1925, in East Toledo, Ohio, the youngest of seven children, to Hector and Nellie Paquette. When Jack Paquette was only about 2 years old, his mother died.
In 1933, his father, unemployed and unable to care for his children, placed Paquette and two of his brothers, George and Leo, in the Lucas County Children’s Home in Maumee. In 1939, Paquette was adopted by G. Edward and Louise Lemon of Fremont.
“I heard one sad story about his time in the orphanage, but he didn’t really talk about it,” Mark Paquette said. “I think it was kind of cathartic for him to tell the story [in writing]. He could tell the story … tell the truth and the facts.”
The elder Paquette said in interviews that he valued the time in the orphanage.
“I really feel strongly that if I had not gone there I probably would have had a difficult living,” Paquette told The Blade in 2009. “Things were that bad.”
In 1942, Paquette began dating a woman named Jane Russell, a fellow student at Fremont Ross High School. When Paquette shipped off with the Navy in 1943, the two continued their relationship, primarily through Victory Mail, until he returned. Paquette, during his three years of military service, served aboard a Liberty Ship, a mass-produced cargo ship, in the Pacific Theater.
After the war, Paquette, with the help of the GI Bill, enrolled at Ohio State. There he earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in political science.
Russell was also a student at Ohio State. The two married in 1947 and were together until her death Aug. 3.
Paquette’s time in journalism was brief — he worked as editor of a monthly newsletter for the state’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles, as news editor of the Lantern, Ohio State’s student newspaper, and as a copy editor and assistant city editor of the Ohio State Journal, a morning newspaper in Columbus.
In 1951, after deciding journalism wasn’t the route he wanted to take, Paquette was offered an interview with two Owens-Illinois executives.
“I had never heard of the company,” Paquette told The Blade in 2002.
For 33 years, Paquette worked his way up the ranks of the company. He was elected vice president in 1970. He retired in 1984.
Even in retirement, Paquette was hardly “retired.” He opened a high-end antiques shop, the Trumpeting Angel, on West Bancroft Street. The store was open for only a few years, said Mark Paquette.
The younger Paquette did not know what spurred his father’s interest in history but said he and his brother, John, inherited the same curiosities about the past.
Jack Paquette often spoke to various groups about different events or bits of history, including, at least once, the history of the toy soldier. Paquette, as he put it, “had an army of toy soldiers numbering in the thousands, which he displayed in his Sylvania Township home.”
The Paquette was a patriotic man; he enjoyed an Honor Flight trip to the World War II memorial in 2010.
Mark Paquette said his father was visiting Maine, where Mark lives, about 10 years ago when a Liberty Ship came to port, so the two went to look around. Because the ships were all built the same, the elder Paquette was able to show his son which room would have been his bunk and where the crew ate.
“Even more amazing … we were walking outside on one of the decks and he recognized and talked to someone he served with on his Liberty Ship in 1944,” Mark Paquette said. “He even called him by his nickname.”
Throughout his life, Jack Paquette maintained his love of writing. In addition to his memoir, he wrote five other books, including one called “Small Town Girl.” Until last week, Paquette was working on a sequel to “Small Town Girl,” which his children now plan to publish for him.
“He told me his greatest achievements were raising a family and being a good husband and, secondly, was his book ‘A Boy’s Journey Through the Great Depression,’” Mark Paquette said. “He was so proud of that book.”
Surviving are his sons, Mark and John Paquette; daughters, Jan Eriksen and Mary Beth Paquette; and grandchildren, Sage and Hope Paquette-Cohen and Emma Paquette.
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