Obituaries Archive
Obituaries » Jerry Lee Tacoma
Check your settings when you are happy with your print preview press the print icon below.
Show Obituaries Show Guestbook Show Photos QR Code PrintBurial Date November 5, 2023
A visitation will be held at Joldersma & Klein Funeral Home on Sunday, November 5, 2023, from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. followed by a graveside service at Alamo Cemetery at 2:30 p.m. A Celebration of Life will be planned for the summer of 2024. If you would like to honor Jerry with a monetary remembrance please donate to SHALOM Kalamazoo (www.shalomkazoo.org) where his daughter Sheila works, an organization that serves adults with disabilities through the love and wholeness of Jesus Christ. To God Be the Glory.
Share your Memorial with Family & Friends
Jerry Lee Tacoma age 81, of Kalamazoo, Michigan passed away Saturday, October 28, 2023. Jerry was born in Falmouth, Michigan, migrated down to Kalamazoo as a teen and lived most of his adult life in the beloved home he helped build on Country View Drive in Alamo Township. He worked at Suburban Tank Company for a whopping 52 years as a Heavy Machine Operator and was an all-things Septic Tank / Dry Well expert extraordinaire. He spent his life serving Christ, his wife, his children and grandchildren. His superpower was loyalty, and his Kryptonite was Banana Cream Pie. He loved his box seat at the Kalamazoo Speedway and enjoyed cruising around town in his 1937 Ford Street Rod. He was known for loving his wife Ruth Anne with every fiber of his being, serving as an Elder at Faith CRC, for faithfully rescuing his two girls anytime their janky used cars broke down, for picking up his grandkids on their birthdays from school in his Street Rod, for going out for breakfast with his father-in-law every Saturday for decades and for occasionally pranking unsuspecting shoppers by pretending he had run into the glass exit door head first. He loved his nightly Kalamazoo Gazette; his weekly 60 Minutes and the Sunday afternoon beef pot roast he would get up early to make for his family almost every Lord’s Day his daughters can remember. He had a sweet tooth for butter pecan ice cream and refused to eat anything he considered spicy – which included black pepper. Jerry Lee Tacoma would enthusiastically talk to strangers, prayed and read his Bible every single day, had a little Kohl’s men’s department shopping addiction, and survived a near death car crash in his twenties where the surgeons saved his life by replacing his crushed forehead with titanium. He was a mall walker, a wood worker, a girl dad and irreplaceable to those who survive him which include, his sister, Joyce Noviskey; his daughters, Sarah (Mike Budzik) Tacoma and Sheila Brown; five grandchildren, Kloie, Quinn, Korie, Gideon and Kobie. We rejoice that Jerry lived a life of faith, love and laughter and we are thrilled he is finally reunited with his Savior Jesus Christ and the love of his life Ruth Anne Tacoma. ~ Obituary written by Sarah Tacoma.