Coosada, AL : Bill Jackson, Weld County's voice of agriculture, dies in Montrose traffic crash Sunday September 27 2015.

Bill Jackson was, among many things, the voice of agriculture in Weld County.

When his close friends and sources of his more than 30-year career at The Greeley Tribune heard of his death in a traffic crash following a weekend of golf Sunday morning outside Montrose, that they could agree on. Well, that and Jackson’s sense of humor.

“When you mention his name, I have to admit, I start smiling ear to ear just thinking about everything we did together,” said Don Ament of Iliff, Jackson’s longtime friend, a former state legislator and former Colorado Commissioner of Agriculture.

Jackson, 71, traveled to Montrose on Friday with his lifelong friend Bob Thomas and their wives for a 4-H golf tournament, one of his favorite pastimes. While there, Thomas and Jackson met with old classmates from Yuma High School before waking early Saturday to eat breakfast and play golf.

While playing golf, Jackson said he didn’t feel well, but continued to play through. With six holes left, Thomas convinced him to go lay down at the clubhouse after his condition worsened.

Thomas and his wife left Montrose on Sunday morning a couple hours ahead of Jackson and his wife, Cheryl, who decided to drive home on U.S. 50. The night’s rest had him feeling better, Thomas said.

The Jacksons packed up their car and headed out. Cheryl texted Thomas’ wife to let her know they were on the road.

Shortly after, things went awry.

In the hospital after the crash, Cheryl told Thomas she called out to Jackson as the car drifted off the roadway, down an embankment and through a few fences toward the river. He couldn’t respond.

On the busy highway, many motorists stopped to help, calling 9-1-1 and performing CPR on Jackson, who was unresponsive, Thomas said.

The lack of skid marks and response to his wife’s warnings points to a natural cause of death prior to the crash, he said.

“Near as we can tell, it was something physically wrong with him,” Thomas said.

Thomas and wife didn’t know about the crash or its tragic outcome until Jackson’s daughter, Amy Hanks, called them at about 10:30 when they were east of Glenwood Springs. They immediately turned around to drive back to Montrose and keep Cheryl company until Hanks and Jackson’s son, TW Jackson, arrived later that night. Cheryl has a bone chip in her lower back as a result of the crash.

The crash came at the end of a weekend that embodied many of the things Jackson most loved: his family, fellow graduates of Yuma High School, golf, 4-H, and biscuits and gravy, Thomas said.

Jackson’s legacy includes many of those things as well.He had a true love of the county he lived in,” said Sean Conway, another longtime friend of Jackson’s. “Everything he did, he did right first. He was a class act.”
Conway remembers the bets he and Jackson would place on the Air Force and Navy football games. For a long time the bet was the loser had to wear the other team’s baseball cap.
He was widely known for his professionalism and talent for writing about water issues and agriculture, and ranked as the only member of the print media inducted into the Colorado Agriculture Hall of Fame.
He was willing to stick his neck out and get into some contentious issues,” Ament said. “He was recognized, that’s why I think he was recognized, because everybody saw him as the voice of agriculture.”
His ability to groom relationships with the agricultural community despite controversial topics set him apart from others. As Jackson said in his retirement column in 2011, the most important part of his job was the people.
I never heard a bad thing about Bill Jackson from the ag community,” Ament said.
Even after his retirement following his 33 years at The Tribune, Jackson was seen at local water board and 4-H meetings and viewed as a pillar of agricultural knowledge in Colorado.
Ament remembers Jackson’s library of jokes he would tell, and poking fun at his curly hair and big smile that filled a frame outside his office.



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Bill Jackson, Weld County's voice of agriculture, dies in Montrose traffic crash Sunday