Jerome "Jerry" Siebert

Jerome "Jerry" Siebert passed away on December 30, 2022, at the age of 84. Jerry was born October 6, 1938 in Los Angeles, CA to Marjorie Baechtel Siebert and Edward Joseph Siebert, the second of three sons. In 1944, the family relocated to Willits, a small rural town in Northern California and his mother's former birthplace and hometown. He attended primary school in Willits, played trumpet in the high school marching band, and developed a talent for running track that later led him to become a US Olympian. Jerry won the 1956 California High School State Track Meet his senior year by running the second-fastest 880 ever at the high school level. On scholarship at UC Berkeley (Cal), Jerry was a two-time US Track Team Olympic Athlete as the number one qualifying American, running the 800 m event in the 1960 Olympics (Rome, Italy) and 1964 Olympics (Tokyo, Japan). Jerry won the NCAA PAC-12 880 title as a sophomore and helped set a new world record in the 2-mile relay. Jerry repeated as PAC-12 conference champion in 1960 and took second in the NCAA finals. The following year he was named All-University Athlete for all sports and all UC campuses (Berkeley, UCLA, etc.), and simultaneously he was inducted into the two most prestigious academic honor societies at Cal: Phi Beta Kappa (physics) and Tau Beta Pi (engineering). Later he was inducted into the Cal Hall of Fame. Jerry was truly one of the best student athletes to come out of Cal. Jerry was equally successful professionally. After receiving his PhD from Cal in 1968, he spent three years as post-doctoral research at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. This is where he met his future wife, Linda, whom he married in 1974. His professional history includes working as a thin-film physicist at Bacharach Instrument Company and then at Varian Associates in California in the early 1970's. A long-time Boulder resident, Jerry worked at Ball Aerospace from 1977-1995, where he was responsible for managing and technically contributing to all R&D involving cryogenically cooled instrumentation. He was also tasked with setting up a state-of-the-art integrated circuit fabrication facility at Ball. Jerry was named Ball Aerospace "Engineer of the Year" in 1984 for his unique contributions to NASA's Gravity Probe B space mission, which was designed to test Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Later, Jerry formed his own company, UniFilm Technology, where he designed, fabricated, and sold custom high-value physical vapor deposition (PVD) systems to the hi-tech industry. Sadly, his wife Linda passed away in 1994, after only twenty years of marriage. They had no children. Extremely talented and always busy, Jerry loved a challenge. He maintained his Northern California roots through land acquisition and a cabin near Branscomb, CA and remodeling the old family home in Willits, CA. He also remodeled and added to his home in Boulder, CO, but unfortunately it was totally lost in the Marshall Fire on December 30, 2021. Jerry is survived by his younger brother, James Siebert of Willits, CA and his girlfriend of 28 years, Rosann Jurestovsky, of Golden, CO. He will be sorely missed by his family and many dear friends. No services or life celebrations are planned at this time.