By Sharon Salyer
Herald Writer
As one of the oldest brothers in a clan of seven boys and five girls, Harv Jubie distinctly remembers the day in January 1963 when he drove his pregnant mother to the hospital in Everett.
It was unusually cold, he said, and the heater in his vintage 1947 Ford pickup didn’t work. He had taken it out as part of an ongoing refurbishing project that still had the truck’s exterior covered in primer.
"I was 20," he said of the day his sister was born. "My Dad was working out of town. I remember Gail being in the hospital when she was a baby."
So when it came time for the family to find a way to honor the memory of a beloved sister whose life was cut short 37 years later, the victim of a vicious murder, it didn’t take long to decide.
The family made a $100,000 donation in her name to Providence Everett Medical Center’s new $56 million Pavilion for Women and Children, which will open in May.
"We had been discussing how we might remember her," brother Larry Jubie said. After meeting with representatives of the Providence General Foundation, "we decided this was an excellent way to do it."
"We were all born in the hospital in Everett," he said. "We all have ties with the community. We’ve lived here all our life."
Dottie Piasecki, executive director of the hospital’s foundation, said the money will help pay for the Gail Marie Jubie Newborn Nursery on the pavilion’s fourth floor.
"I felt it was an especially meaningful way they chose to honor her memory," Piasecki said. "I hope that (the family) finds comfort in knowing that new lives are loved and cared for in that environment."
Harv Jubie, 59, works as a contractor. Larry Jubie, 54, retired from City Bank as a senior vice president. Both live in Marysville.
The two brothers have long been involved in volunteer activities, including the Marysville YMCA and Rotary Club, and have made contributions to the construction of the city’s skateboard park.
Their sister, Gail Jubie, would have been 39 on Jan. 10. The youngest of 12 brothers and sisters, she "lived with my parents in their declining years," Larry Jubie said, in the house that had been the family home since the early 1960s.
The home on Sunnyside Boulevard and its surrounding three-quarters of an acre is near the east end of the Hewitt Avenue trestle overlooking the sloughs of the Snohomish River.
Gail Jubie took classes at Everett Community College and was interested in photography. She almost always had her camera in her car "within arm’s reach," her brother Larry Jubie remembers.
She worked in customer service at the Albertson’s in Frontier Village. She loved baseball, sometimes watching a game with her dad, and enjoyed spending time with her nieces and nephews.
In November 2000, her father died. A month later, Gail Jubie was murdered. A 20-year-old neighbor, Brandon Kenneth White, was convicted of stabbing Gail Jubie during a botched robbery at her home. White was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release in December.
"The last year was an extremely difficult time for my family, losing my dad and sister within a month of each other — especially the way my sister had to die," Larry Jubie said.
The donation made in their sister’s name "gives us an opportunity to help people out," Harv Jubie said. He recalled that when he and his brothers and sisters were growing up, a neighbor brought a food basket to the home when their father, who worked in construction, was unemployed.
"This is the way life should be," he added. "You make money and you give it way. You help people."
You can call Herald Writer Sharon Salyer at 425-339-3486
or send e-mail to salyer@heraldnet.com.
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