Mack Jobo

Mack Jobo age 73 of Harriman, Tennessee passed away on Sunday August 22, 2021, at Roane Medical Center. He was born September 19, 1947, in Sarah Ann, West Virginia. He was the youngest of the three sons and two daughters of John Jobo and Sophia Jobo. He was of the Protestant Faith. He was preceded in death by his wife, Pamela Jean Jobo, parents, John Jobo and Sophia Jobo and sister, Sylvia Jobo. Mack did most of his growing up in the community of Omar, West Virginia. It was a wonderful place for a child to grow up and he led a very active and eventful life all throughout his youth. Especially in his youth, Mack was one astonishing individual! He could run faster, jump higher and hit harder! He could outsmart, outplay, outmaneuver, outwrestle and outfight! He was the quickest, fiercest and toughest big bad bull this side of anywhere! He was like the real-life Pecos Bill! He was highly intelligent, thought very logically and was very good at quickly being able to see the best way to do just about anything! No matter what the thing was that he set his mind to, he did it with high skill and was the best at it! Even at a very young age he was of a superior intellect; being able to comprehend and grasp things on a level of someone far beyond his years. This gave him great understanding and a clear picture of the world in which he lived. Having this God given gift, is likely in part, what soon led him to take great interest in events such as the 1952 and or 1956 presidential elections: and there was great maturity and wisdom in his reasoning for why he wanted a particular candidate to win. Still being a young man of no more than thirteen, he was the first person in a crowd of people to shake John F. Kennedy’s hand, on one of his stops in West Virginia, on his campaign in 1960! This most likely happened when JFK stopped in Mack’s hometown of Omar, when Mack was still only twelve. School came very easy to Mack, and naturally, as a result, he made mostly straight A’s. It was like he already knew and didn’t even have to learn it! He was especially good at math and could quickly come up with answers to problems in his head. If he ever didn’t make an A in school, it was most likely due to the fact that he was much more interested in extracurricular activities such as sports. To say he was highly athletic and good at sports would be a vast understatement… He was truly gifted and a force to be reckoned with! He had this explosive energy that fueled and highly contributed to his incredible power and almost superhuman abilities! One evening he just took off running. He started to run so fast that he felt if he were to run any faster his feet would leave the ground! At basketball he was so skilled and had so much jumping ability, that at no more than six feet tall, he could jump up and dunk two balls at once; one ball with one hand and one ball with the other, on a rim that was just shy of ten foot! He enjoyed playing football, basketball and baseball and was extremely good at all three but his true passion was for baseball. He was a switch hitter, with a unique and truly remarkable bat swing! His superior quickness and agility combined with excellent technique, in turn, generated tremendous bat speed! This made him an incredibly powerful hitter, who hit countless massive home runs! He swung for the fences every time and still managed to have great accuracy! He could hit anything, and was rarely, if ever, struck out. He was so fast around the bases, that even the ones he didn’t manage to knock out of the park, would often be inside the park home runs! He was so fast in fact, that when he would hit a ground ball to shortstop, they could never throw him out at first base! At one practice, Mack was running all the way in from left field at blazing speed, in hot pursuit of a ground ball that his coach hit to shortstop. Just before or just as he was fielding the ball at shortstop, he heard his coach holler “Mack!” followed immediately by the crack of the bat. The instant that he heard his name hollered and or heard the crack of the bat, Mack turned on a dime and started running as fast as he could towards the tall grass (that was used in place of a fence) at the back of the outfield. Incredibly, Mack would catch this fly ball that he somehow managed to beat to the tall grass boundary: robbing his coach of a home run! Another truly remarkable feat of his was that in one game, he struck out twenty five out of a possible twenty seven batters! One of the main reasons this occurred was because of his curveball! The curve effect was so exaggerated and pronounced, that no one could hit it! But they had to try and hit it, because even with the extreme curve, he could place it right over the plate with incredible accuracy! What makes this feat even more remarkable is that this may have been the first game that he ever pitched in! He mostly just practiced pitching with his friends and maybe at practice. And If it weren't for some bizarre, hellacious and downright horrific physical illness he contracted, that would rob him of much of his physical ability, he would’ve surely gone on to play in the major leagues and likely become one of the all time grates! Mack still had his tremendous intellectual prowess though and he was about to go to college when he learned that it would be paid for by a local church. He couldn’t accept this gift, so he didn’t go. Sometime later, when he was no more than nineteen or twenty, he went up to Cleveland Ohio where he worked various jobs and where he would soon meet the love of his life Pamela (Pam) at a party she was having. They went on to have so many good times together on dates and on double dates with friends. They dated for four years before eventually getting married. Less than a year after their honeymoon, their first son Bryan was born. Mack was truly and deeply in love with Pam and he really cherished her. This Love stood the test of time and only grew throughout all the years they were married and continued on all the years after Pam passed away in late 2002. After Pam passed away, Mack really felt and realized just how much she meant to him and how much he needed her and he missed her terribly! He couldn’t wait for when it was his time to leave this crazy world, so he could go be with her. Mack would never remarry. At some point he got hired as a welder to make absolute precision welds, on a certain part or on certain parts for subway cars, of the New York City Subway. The weld was crucial for the safety and proper function of the cars. If it had any flaws at all, it could break and cause the cars to wreck! This weld was so tedious and required so much skill, that out of countless other welders, he was one of, if not the only,,, one, that they could find that could consistently make this weld that had to be absolutely flawless! And those parts, with his welds, are likely still there today! He then got hired as a welder at the Y-12 National Security Complex located in Oakridge, Tennessee in early 1977. This is where he had very import jobs, like welding on a nuclear bomb! He rode atop and straddled that sucker, so he could be in the best position to make the welds that he needed to make on it. Sometime later during his time at Y-12 he became a Welding Inspector. He would hold this position until he took an early retirement due to medical conditions in 1993. During his time at Y-12, he was highly regarded by his coworkers for his skill and knowhow and his likable, easy to get along with personality. He was also one of the main workers that brought attention to various unsafe working conditions, namely in regards to toxic chemical and or radiation exposure. The effects of which, was why he ended up having to take an early retirement. His efforts highly contributed to much safer working conditions and procedures being established. Sometime likely in the late 70’s Mack had an accident where a piece of glass nearly severed his achilles tendon in two. He recovered from the injury but contracted tetanus from it. He suffered with the symptoms for a long time and knew he was about to die a horrible death! But God miraculously healed him! This event led to him accepting Jesus as his Lord and Savior and he was born again! From this point forward Mack stayed in the Word: feeding on it and growing as a Christian. Not long after he was born again, another miracle happened and he received the Holy Spirit, which in turn, would supercharge him as a Christian! Having this miraculous gift combined with the already brilliant mind that God had already given him, Is likely what allowed him to have great insight into the scriptures and their meaning. Oftentimes with his wife and family he would study the Word; diligently comparing scripture with scripture and took into account the whole bible. He gained an understanding of the Word and certain things about God that likely could only come from revelation knowledge: likely through all his time in the Word and with God. He went beyond faith and into the knowledge of the truth! Mack had a true passion for the one true God and His Word. And he truly loved God with all of his heart and all of his being! And he had a passion for leading others out of the dark and into the light that is Jesus and God’s Word. He also had this purity to him: and You could feel and tell that it was genuine and that it really was who he was and that he was a true man of God! He was also very compassionate and when the opportunity presented itself, he went out of his way to help people. One example is there was this old man that had no means of transportation to get to the store and back: so, he had to make the very long trek by foot! This man appeared to be half past dead and it seemed as though no one would have anything to do with him. Mack would see him out walking the streets often and knew he had a very long and arduous journey ahead of him to get home, so Mack would always try to give him a ride whenever he could. This man used to be a pastor and they would have good Christian conversations and Mack enjoyed his company. Mack loved to do things that he enjoyed with his family. Some of those things included fishing, swimming, hiking, biking, picking berries and camping. Especially before the toxic chemical exposure took its toll on him neurologically, he enjoyed and was good at figuring out puzzles: especially the kind that math could be used to solve them. If there was a way that math could be used to solve something, he could almost immediately see it, apply the math and solve it! He also liked to play and was good at various games including video games: especially the kind that takes intelligence and skill. He also enjoyed watching good movies and TV shows: especially the ones that don’t just end abruptly or end with many things unexplained. He also really enjoyed watching sports: especially football and especially the UT Vols, WVU Mountaineers and Cleveland Browns but he also really enjoyed watching the Olympics as well. He also liked vegetable gardening, fixing up the yard and some home improvement projects, like building a back porch for the house. He figured out how to build a pretty well constructed back porch with no construction experience! This was before the internet and only had occasional help from a friend, to help him build it! Mack was also a great cook! Pierogies, cabbage rolls and Kapusta were some of his specialties as he was a second generation American, who was half Ukrainian and half Polish. But he also made awesome pork roast, barbecue ribs and he could make the best soul food! One of his best dishes was ham and beans and cornbread. The cornbread, being the star of the show, was likely the best on the planet! He learned how to make cornbread from someone he used to work with at Y-12. Mack usually only made the dish once a year, on New Year’s Day but when he did, he was always experimenting always trying to improve upon already awesome cornbread! He was always adjusting and refining the recipe: trying to get it to come out as good as he remembered his former fellow coworker’s being. Then eventually he made a cornbread that was so good, that he thought it was even better than his former coworker’s! Mack was a great father that really loved his two sons and they meant more to him than words could express! He wanted the best for them and wanted them to be happy. He did his best to raise them up right and instill strength and good Christian principles into them. He took great interest and really wanted to be a part of and involved in their lives. He taught them how to play baseball, basketball and football, and really hoped they would enjoy and excel at sports. Right around the time that Mack took an early retirement, him and his wife decided to take their second son David (who was still in second grade) out of public school and enroll him in Family Christian Academy. It was basically the equivalent of homeschooling because all of the teaching was done by the parents at home. The early retirement made it so Mack could teach his son alongside his wife. Since Mack was especially good at math, he took care of that department, while Pam taught everything else. David went back to public school briefly for about one semester for the start of his junior year in high school. He returned to Family Christian Academy the following semester. Due to Pam’s recent passing, Mack would go on to teach David all his subjects until he graduated in 2004. Like Pam, Mack was an excellent teacher! He had enough common sense to assume that the students knew nothing. He figured and understood that the only way to be a good teacher is to break things down to simplistic terms so the student can easily grasp what’s being presented to them. To be able to teach his son algebra 1 and 2, Mack was even able to teach himself most of those subjects straight out of textbooks! As they didn’t teach much, if any, of those subjects when he went to school. Like Pam, Mack was also a part of and involved in a lot of David’s other extracurricular activities: he coached one of his city league baseball teams, helped out with certain 4-H club projects like the horse project and was a volunteer leader at different 4-H events like the wildlife camp and Tennessee 4-H Congress. Mack was the greatest husband, father, and grandfather and besides Jesus, was the best friend someone could ever have! He was most extraordinary! He was one amazing man! He is remembered, loved and dearly missed by his son, Bryan Anthony Jobo of Anderson, South Carolina; son, David Aaron Jobo of Harriman, Tennessee; brother, William Jobo of Jacksonville, Florida and sister, Mary Magdalene Spurlock of Harts, West Virginia.

Mack Jobo

September 19, 1947 - August 22, 2021