Lawrence “Larry” M. Jessen, Jr.

December 14, 1943 – October 09, 2025

Our beloved brother and uncle, Lawrence “Larry” M. Jessen, Jr. was born December 14, 1943, in Boise, Idaho. He was born with the most serious type of spina bifida, called myelomeningocele.  The doctors told Larry’s parents to take him home and “love on him” because he would not survive. What the doctors couldn’t know was how resilient this baby would prove to be! Still alive at 6 months old, his mother, a nurse, took him by train to the Shriner’s Crippled Children’s Hospital in Portland for the first of his many surgeries during the 1940s and ’50s.

By 1951, the family, including his older sister and younger brother, had settled in Portland. PPS provided Larry with a home teacher when he was unable to attend school.  Thus, Mrs. Facer came into his life, and it was a “match made in heaven”. In Larry, Flora Facer found a highly intelligent student with almost total recall who wanted to know everything about what interested him, especially history, but math not so much. Following graduation from Lincoln high school in 1962, Larry attended Portland State and Western Oregon College of Education, now WOU.

Larry used Canadian crutches for many years before transitioning to a wheelchair, and he had a compact auto equipped with hand controls. During his 20s he drove almost every dirt road (most of which were not created equal regardless of how they appeared on a map) as well as “roads” that actually didn’t exist in the western United States, often becoming stranded for one or more reasons.  If Larry couldn’t winch his car free, he waited – sometimes several days – until someone came along and helped him out. His family would only hear about his adventures after the fact.

In 1973 Larry met Mary Westgate, a lovely blind woman, in a bowling alley! They married the following year on November 9, 1974, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the church. Now with his partner and a van and Larry acting as Mary’s eyes, they continued adventures together, primarily in the unpopulated areas of central and eastern Oregon.  Sometimes they slept in the van, other times on the ground in the middle of nowhere. They got stuck more than once and, again, someone eventually came along.  Mary had 5 seeing eye dogs during their marriage, and Larry loved those dogs. Sadly, Mary passed in May 2001.

Larry’s other love was fly fishing. Year in and year out, as long as he could scoot from his van to a riverbank he was in business. Each summer he usually went on a one-day float trip down the John Day; on one trip he caught and released 97 fish. Larry was renowned for his fish stories, most of which were true.

Larry was a positive “character”.  He lived a full and amazingly independent life of service with patience in spite of his disabilities. Larry passed unexpectedly on October 9, 2025, at 81 years old. Preceded in death by his wife, Larry is survived by his sister Judy and brother Steve, 4 nieces and nephews and 10 grand nieces and nephews.

Donations to the St. Michael and All Angeles church Memorial Fund would be a wonderful and much appreciated tribute to Larry.