He remembers roughly 90% of the girls said nurse, the boys firefighter or policeman.

Jacobs chose doctor.

He thinks that perhaps stemmed from when he had a severe asthma attack at a cottage in Crystal Falls that a doctor countered with an adrenaline shot.

“Within a few minutes, I could breathe again,” Jacobs said.

Dr. Don Jacobs, right, with Derrick Schinderle, a family nurse practitioner and doctor of chiropractic who began working with Jacobs at the Marshfield Medical Center-Dickinson offices in 2019. He was the last of many in the medical profession who Jacobs mentored over his 66 years in practice. (Submitted photo)

Such early goals often don’t carry to adulthood. Yet Jacobs never let it go.

In 1951, he hitchhiked 470 miles from Iron Mountain to Ann Arbor, bound for the University of Michigan after finishing two years at Northland College in Ashland, Wis. He had $35 in his pocket and his belongings in his Lebanese grandfather’s suitcase, he said.

He’d pay $25 for that first semester at Michigan. Jacobs gained his bachelor of science in 1954 and graduated from medical school in 1957.

After a two-year residency in Saginaw, Mich., Jacobs would return to Iron Mountain — and never leave again.

Now, after treating at least three generations of patients in the region, Jacobs has finally decided to step away due to health issues.

Dr. Don Jacobs in December 1988 receiving the first Upper Peninsula Physician of the Year award, presented by the Upper Peninsula Pharmaceutical Travelers Association. Making the presentation was Duane Johnson of Negaunee, then president of the association. (Ron Kramer/ Daily News file photo)

This is the story of how he came to have a medical practice that spanned more than six decades and touched on thousands of lives.

Don Jacobs’ family first appeared in the United States in the late 1880s. His grandfather, Jacob Nicholas Jacobs, made the trip from Lebanon at age 10 with two brothers, 8 and 6 respectively. Though aiming for New York, they instead landed in New Orleans, Dr. Jacobs said, and wound up walking rail lines north to Milwaukee, later settling in the Upper Peninsula.

They prospered in the region. One became a saloon owner in Mansfield. A fourth brother joined them as a candy maker in Crystal Falls. Jake Jacobs was a Crystal Falls jeweler who would go out to the lumber camps with his merchandise, Dr. Jacobs said.

All would take Lebanese brides they brought back to the area, he said. But his father, John M. Jacobs, would marry Doris Louis Dascola, an Italian immigrant, in 1928. They’d have three sons: Jack, Don and Paul. His father worked for 24 years at Ford Motor Co. in Kingsford, then opened a clothing store in Iron River after the plant closed.

The eldest, Jack, had an Army-Navy surplus store in 1950 that helped fund his own college education as well as for his two brothers, Don and Paul, who worked at the store. He became a longtime Ironwood attorney before retiring to Bradenton, Florida; he passed in January 2024 at age 94. Paul, an orthodontist in Iron Mountain, had a lifelong love of ski jumping, both as a competitor and a judge, including at the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. He passed in October 2023 at age 90.

Dr. Don Jacobs and family and friends during an event June 10 at Marshfield Medical Center-Dickinson to mark his retirement after 66 years in practice in the community. From left are Dominic Jacobs, his grandson; Sally Jacobs, his wife; Dr. Jacobs; Cheryl Jacobs, his daughter from Minneapolis; Shashi Mahadev and her husband, Dr. Vennar Mahadev. (Betsy Bloom/Daily News photo)

While home on Christmas break in 1953, Don Jacobs met Sally Turosky of Iron River at a New Year’s Eve dance at Silver Lake. They’ve been together since, marrying in 1954. They would have three children: John, a retired pipe fitter; Fred, a retired West Iron County math teacher; and Cheryl, who works at the University of Minnesota dialysis clinic and is responsible for getting donor kidneys.

Don Jacobs would set up his first Iron Mountain practice on Main Street, above Occhetti’s Jewelry, in 1959 before moving to a new office, the Credit Bureau building on B Street across from The Braumart theatre, which he shared with optometrist Dr. Robert Baker Sr.

For much of his time in medicine, Jacobs did it all — delivered babies, performed surgeries, made house calls for 30-plus years.

He’d bring more than 1,000 babies into the world — 529 boys, 518 girls — from 1959 to 1986. If a C-section was needed, Jacobs did that as well. Other common surgeries he handled included hysterectomies and gall bladders.

“There were no specialists in those days,” he noted.

A needlepoint showing how many babies Dr. Don Jacobs delivered from 1959 to 1986 was among the items on display at an event June 10 at Marshfield Medical Center-Dickinson to mark his retirement after 66 years in practice in the community. (Betsy Bloom/Daily News photo)

Dr. John Loewen, a primary care physician still in practice, was paired with Jacobs when he first came to Iron Mountain in 1976. They’d work together for 50 years, teaming up on surgeries.

Having Jacobs as an example taught him how to be more tolerant, how to deal with difficult situations, Loewen said.

Jacobs knew how to blend viewpoints rather than just challenge, he said. “Don’t make a big deal out of the event,” Loewen said. “Just do your job, go to work.”

But back then, medicine “was a totally different world,” Loewen added.

Jacobs noted he’d see people whether they could pay or not. He’d accept other forms of payment. Sometimes he’d send them home with money, tell them to get some milk or food for their children.

“That was the way you did things in those days,” Jacobs said. “We were trying to give to the community. Not to take, to give. The way medicine used to be.”

Perhaps his favorite part of the practice, he said, was being medical director at ManorCare, now Optalis Health & Rehabilitation of Kingsford.

He would provide daily care, making the rounds among the residents. He also was on call at all times.

“It was difficult, it was time-consuming,” Jacobs acknowledged. “But it was the best of medicine, because the older people really appreciated it … they didn’t want to feel neglected.”

Derrick Schinderle, a family nurse practitioner and doctor of chiropractic, began working with Dr. Jacobs at the Marshfield Medical Center-Dickinson offices in 2019. He’d shadow him on his nursing home rounds and marvel on how Jacobs would see 20 people, take no notes and then dictate patient records from memory, for hours. Schinderle calls him the most intelligent man he’s ever known.

“He really does have a photographic memory, back to age 8,” Schinderle said. “He’s just a wealth of knowledge.”

But the best lesson he learned from Dr. Jacobs was taking time to listen to patients.

“That was always his big thing — you treat one patient at a time and give them your full attention,” Schinderle said. Jacobs viewed his patients “like family,” he added.

In 1996, Jacobs would open the clinic in the Felch Township Community Center. Why Felch? “Number one, I liked the people,” he said, adding, “and, as you know, there’s enough Mattsons to fill a practice.”

The township was “very generous” in providing some of its office space for the clinic, Jacobs said.

Jacobs, in turn, did all the athletic physicals for North Dickinson County School, “free of charge, of course.” He set up a pharmacy in the practice so residents didn’t have to travel 20 to 30 miles to get a prescription filled. The parents of a child with an ear infection, for example, could immediately be given antibiotics to start treatment, Jacobs explained. A flu shot could be easily obtained.

The clinic was open Monday evenings — which Jacobs took — and Thurdays with Linda Opsahl, a nurse practitioner. While they would set appointments, walk-ins were welcome and it was not uncommon on Mondays to see a line of people sitting outside the office, knowing they would get in eventually.

The Felch clinic has about 1,000 active patients as a base — not just from Felch but Sagola, Ralph, Breen and West Branch — when it was closed at the end of May 2018 amid Dickinson County Healthcare System’s financial struggles, before it became Marshfield Medical Center-Dickinson in 2022.

It was part of what Jacobs described as worrisome changes he’s seen in his profession, the rising costs and pitfalls navigating insurance requirements.

“It’s hard for me to treat people who are poor and they charge those prices,” Jacobs said, adding, “I feel nobody should pay for being sick.”

More in medicine today is done with scans and tests, less with one-on-one interactions. “With the computers these days, all the patients see are their (provider’s) backs,” Jacobs said.

“It’s not the compassion and caring (as in the past), and that’s the part I miss the most,” he said.

Yet he’d still be practicing, Jacobs said, were it not for his health. He’s in kidney failure, requiring dialysis three days a week.

Yet Jacobs told Loewen, “God has been so good to me.” How, his fellow doctor asked — Jacobs has had chronic back problems that left him increasingly stooped, an aneurysm that almost killed him and now the failing kidneys.

Jacobs’ answer? “‘To me, life is a win-win,'” Loewen said he was told.

He could have retired long ago, gone to Florida, Loewen noted. Yet he “kept looking after people, taking care of people … dedication to the community … he’s just a full-blown demonstration of that.”

A celebration of Dr. Don Jacobs and his retirement is planned for 2 to 5 p.m. July 26 at Pine Grove Country Club in Iron Mountain. The public is invited to attend.

Betsy Bloom can be reached at 906-774-2772, ext. 85240, or bbloom@ironmountaindailynews.com.