WINNEMUCCA - Veterans looking for a friend need look no further than Philip Jacka, who has been associated with various veterans' organizations for decades.
A Navy veteran, Jacka, 68, has been involved with veterans' organizations since 1972 when he joined the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He was the first post commander for the reconstituted local VFW. He also was a member of the local American Legion where he was sergeant-at-arms and associated with the Vietnam Veterans of America as an officer plus the Disabled American Veterans for the Veterans Department. He was also instrumental in getting Battle Mountain's VFW back on its feet.
His father and mother were from the Reno/Sparks area and decided to move back after they served in World War II. Jacka and his brother, Wilson Jacka, served together in Vietnam with Wilson later dying of the effects of Agent Orange.
When he was about 5 years old, he remembers himself and a friend playing with matches under his house and catching it on fire.
"My dad's old school. You got that ol' hand," he said.
He attended Veterans Memorial School in Reno up through fifth grade and then went to Sparks Intermediate School through eighth grade before graduating from Sparks High School in 1963. He actually skipped the seventh grade.
"I still had straight As going through high school all the way up," he said. "My main thing was mathematics, which came in handy for the piping trades. Trigonometry, geometry, algebra, calculus, the whole thing."
Jacka enjoyed school not just for the math and athletics but the friendships that developed, like with former Gov. Jim Gibbons and Sparks Mayor Geno Martini.
"I went with his sister," he said.
Dating was usually to movies or drive-in restaurants like A&W and Dairy Queen, both of which started in Nevada with stores in Sparks.
"I liked mostly westerns," he said. It was in the 1950s and early 1960s and movies were a dime. Jacka remembers his father giving him 50 cents for cabs for three boys to go the eight-mile round trip to town to the movies.
"Now 10 cents got ya in the movie. Five cents got ya a box a popcorn and 10 cents got ya your drink or versa vice or whatever it was," Jacka said.
"Flash Gordon" was his favorite serial.
His brother Wilson delivered the morning Nevada State Journal and Jacka delivered the Reno Evening Gazette when he was in junior high. He was involved in gymnastics at Sparks Intermediate School doing flips and back-flips, rings, high bars, parallel bars and mat work.
"I just liked doin' it," he said. "I went into track when I went into high school. I could keep up with anybody no matter what their height or whatever was. I liked distance runnin'."
In 1962 he broke the record for the three-mile race, which stayed until a school friend broke that record shortly afterward.
Jacka said he was only five-feet, four inches tall when he was in high school and that it wasn't until he went into the Navy at 17 that he grew another five inches. He was stationed as a ship fitter on a new aviation fleet supply ship named USS Mars, the first of its kind in Vietnam.
Occasionally his name would be drawn to go with one of their helicopters and on one trip in country his helicopter was shot down, and as it rolled, everyone was thrown out. No one was hurt and they took off managing to avoid enemy soldiers the mile to their own lines.
When he got out of the Navy in 1970, Jacka went back into the plumbing, pipe fitting and welding business with his dad. Eventually that business grew into offices in three locations.
He worked on Reed High School in Sparks and the Tracy Generating Station east of Sparks when they were being built. He also worked for Tony Snyder Plumbing in Winnemucca for a while.
As his dad worked in plumbing and pipe fitting he grew up hearing about it all the time and he still remembers working on their family home welding before he was 10 years old.
Jacka really enjoys figuring out how the plumbing should go and making things come together properly. While working on the Ruby Pipeline, he encountered some complicated piping plans but put it together so it fit perfectly over some 70-feet of curvy pipeline. He worked on the Phoenix Project in 2006 where he was injured on the job.
"That was my last job an' I've retired since then," he said. "I've worked all but two states - Hawaii an' Vermont."
He has been married three times but Sondra was the last and the favorite.
"I loved her more than anything in the whole world. I'm still hurtin'," he said. She died in March of last year, a month short of their 25th anniversary.
His had been working with several veterans organizations when his wife took sick and he resigned from all his positions to be with her. After she passed away, he went back to the organizations.
He had been in the Winnemucca area off and on over the years with jobs like the Valmy Power Plant and outdoor sports that brought him into the area.
"I just loved it up here," he said. "We'd planned on retirin' here anyway." And they did in 2003.
Jacka was prominent in the Recology Landfill controversy.
"I actually got it started," he said.
He felt he needed to let people know that tons of California trash were going to be dumped in Humboldt County. He said discussions continue concerning the fees Recology will pay the county.
"I like the people in Winnemucca. I really do. I like all the businesses in Winnemucca. All the people in the businesses. I like our senior center a whole bunch. And I like our veterans here," he said.[[In-content Ad]]
