In Memory of Jackson Edwards

On Saturday August 29th, 2020, Jackson Edwards passed away in an aircraft crash. His passing leaves a hole in many lives, he was a friend to so many people. I'm devastated by the loss of one of my longest and closest friends. My heart goes out to his wife and my friend, Kate, and the rest of his loving family who have always been so welcoming.

I've known Jackson for practically longer than I can remember. We first met in Kindergarten at Lava Ridge Elementary School. I remember watching a family video a few years ago and spotting him in a school musical show from probably first grade. Despite being in different classrooms in second grade we'd meet up at recess to play and chat.

We ended up at different schools from 3rd-7th grade, but I was welcomed back into his friend group in 8th grade without missing a beat. It was like I had always been there and more than a few comments have been made forgetting there was ever a time I wasn't involved in what Jackson, Chase and Austin were up to. That group of friends has expanded and grown over the years. I'm so grateful to have kept in touch with so many as we've grown up. Who knows how many LAN parties we had through the years (LAN is short for Local-Area-Network, and are where everyone would bring their computers together in one house and play video games). For a long time Jackson would lug around this massive old Apple CRT to play on, turns out the top of it was pretty good at keeping pizza warm. We would rotate around whose house we had those at, but most frequently we invaded the Edwards' household. That was fitting since often Tom and Jake would join in as well. We had to carefully spread out power draw to avoid blowing a breaker wherever we were. There was always a couple people who hadn't downloaded the game we were playing and so had to manage some combination of downloading updates and transferring the game files between PCs. Probably the game we played the most together, both at LAN parties and just over the internet was a game called Team Fortress 2. In high school we shared many classes together, and we did group projects together whenever possible. More significantly though was our time outside of class. Jackson, Chase, Austin and I all ended up working in the school cafeteria during lunch. Chase moved to morning shifts at some point but the other three of us ended up working on making tacos, perks of that job being making our own over-loaded tacos after the line cleared and a second meal or snack card. We'd grab our food and spend the rest of lunch in Todd Andresen's classroom, which was always filled with a bunch of robotics team nerds. Jackson would spend plenty of time in that room working on e-Bike stuff. At one point he was messing around with some lithium batteries that had gone bad and ran outside to let the bad cell pop in a spout of flame, which left a permanent mark on the sidewalk and fortunately only some temporary concern from an adjacent classroom.

Between the friends we made on the robotics team and those we nagged into joining we ended up with a large friend group there. During the season we'd spend an increasing amount of time in the physics/robotics classroom, staying late into the night and coming in on weekends. Robotics team was where many of our friend group met Kate. I'm honored to have called Kate one of my friends for longer than Kate and Jackson have been together. I know the two of them have been a couple for the longest of anyone in my age group. Many nights we'd end up at the Edwards family shop to work on some aspect of the robot or other personal projects. I recall helping Jackson design and weld a metal frame to hold our team sign over the booth at competitions. Travelling to the several competitions at the end of the season was some of the most fun we had in high school. One trip Jackson and Tom had set up an inverter running off of some deep cycle lead-acid batteries they had from their houseboat. We set up our laptops and played the video game Halo on the bus ride. My laptop was such a power hog that plugging it in with anything else would cause the inverter to start angrily beeping at us. I'm now remembering one outreach event the robotics team went on to Lava Ridge, our old elementary school, to show off our robots to some younger kids. Jackson brought one of his custom built recumbent trikes and was fiddling in the corner with the battery while someone was talking. He shorted the battery across the frame releasing a massive bang, arc-flash and small cloud of smoke, managing to keep most of his cursing under his breath. Instead of the kids being able to ride around on the trike with the power turned down low, a few of us took turns pushing younger kids around on it.

Jackson pulled many people into his EV projects. My gmail profile picture was taken by him, with me holding a couple battery packs we had been working on together for one of his electric bikes. I remember one of his early models he got permission from the teacher to use in a PE biking class we took together, on the condition that he gave the teacher the key to the electric mode. Of course Jackson had also installed a secret hidden switch that bypassed the key lock for when he wanted to use the electric motor. It probably worked out about even in terms of exercise when you consider having to haul the batteries and motor around when not in electric mode. He may not have been the most dedicated school student, but Jackson always managed to impress me with just how much he could do when it came to his projects. Chase and I went off to Oregon State to get degrees in electrical and computer engineering, while Jackson took some COCC classes and then dove into advanced electromagnetic modeling and math that I wouldn't want to try. Over the years I've bragged about my friend Jackson to many co-workers, telling people how he built an electric motorcycle from scratch, and then I made sure to clarify that when I say from scratch I mean everything from welding the frame to designing and hand winding the electric motor he used for it. For anyone not familiar with an electric motor, there's thousands of loops of copper wire precisely looped and packed, and deviation from those tolerances have significant negative performance impacts. Chase can talk more about how this culminated in the two of them building and racing electric motorcycles.

While I was finishing my degree Jackson was turning his passion and self-driven expertise into something he got paid to work on, starting at an e-bike shop in Bend, then onto working for a battery company in the bay area, to doing his own consulting work. Regardless of where he was we kept in touch over video games and our group hangouts chat. In the near decade since high school rarely has it been more than a few days between us exchanging messages. While I was working at Garmin on avionics software Jackson and I would frequently talk about planes, avionics, and his progress getting a pilots license.

Jackson and Kate's wedding, and Celia and I's wedding, were just two months apart in the summer of 2017. I have fond memories of sitting around a fire out in the Alvord desert at Jackson's bachelor party, drinking beer, talking, and listening to Jackson's Pandora station on his phone. He mentioned having spent years tuning that music station, calling it eclectic several times. I hadn't realized how similar some of our music tastes had become over the years since high school. Apparently the middle ground of country and techno is Alt/Indie Rock? I mentioned a somewhat less known artist from England, called White Lies, I thought he might also like. Celia had introduced me to them after hearing one of their songs in a movie, but he already knew of them and had them in the station as well. Both weddings were fantastic opportunities to catch up with old friends for all of us. Jake, Chase, Austin, Josh C, and I were all Jackson's groomsmen in his wedding. There's a great picture of us all raising glasses in a toast. Chase got a funny photo of Jackson and Kate running in at the last minute before Celia and I's wedding started.

Over the past few years I've made many visits to Jackson and Kate's house in Redmond. One visit, a bit over two years ago, I remember they had just seeded grass in the backyard and my very pregnant wife didn't want to step on it. We've visited them several more times after my daughter was born. The last time I saw him was late 2019. Jackson, Kate, Austin, Emily, Celia, and myself all stopped by my parents house to see my daughter to bed, then we went to Jackson and Kate's to have some drinks, chat and play some card games late into the night. It was a great evening. Celia has lost a couple close friends in the last couple years and commented to me how all those happy memories now also bring sadness. I'll have to make sure to remember the happiness and friendship from many occasions like that.

Jackson was always cheerful, easy to smile, and happy to see you. I know he managed to quickly make friends in so many of his various side projects. From his range of electric vehicle projects, and many non-electric, to most recently astrophotography, he was impressively adept at jumping into things and making amazing things.

I'll miss his big bear hugs when we'd greet each other or say goodbye. I'll miss hearing about all those crazy projects and toys he'd get into. I'll miss playing video games over the internet late into the night and just chatting about what we were up to, often joined by Chase, Austin and Jake. I'm glad for all those times we made that happen during the pandemic. Playing Satisfactory, Halo, and other games.

I weep for all those memories from all those years we knew each other, and for all those even longer years ahead I'd expected to remain his friend. I'm sad that I won't get to know any kids he would have had. I feel so bad for Kate, Jennifer, Tom, Jake, and many more who knew him even better than I did and I know are feeling even more loss than myself. I'm so grateful Austin, Chase, and I could be there on Sunday to see many of Jackson's family, and see each other. I'm sure we'll only hold onto this and our other friendships all the tighter after this.

Thank you for reading my rambling thoughts and remembering Jackson with me.

- Brenden Hatton, September 1st, 2020