Bob Jasse, 79; owned orchard popular with brides
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A swath of land overlooking the Connecticut River presented a visual feast to Bob Jasse when he stood in Walpole, N.H., years ago, contemplating the fruit that could spring from the soil.
"It was virgin ground. It never had apples," he recalled in a 1995 interview with the Globe as he sat in the driver's seat of a Land Rover, overlooking the sweeping hill that had become his orchard empire. "This land is a drumlin, which is a unique feature. It's the remainder of earth left by glaciers that pick up earth as they move."
Beginning in the early 1980s, he and his wife, Susan, created Alyson's Orchards, a place of tranquility where apple lovers pick bushels of fruit and couples marry amid views of the river and Vermont's distant mountains. Mr. Jasse, who helped found the Woburn manufacturing company Chomerics, died Nov. 2 in Cheshire Medical Center in Keene, N.H., of pulmonary fibrosis. He was 79 and lived at the Walpole orchard for about 15 years.
"People just loved him because he built this really beautiful spot here in New Hampshire, and he loved what he was doing," his wife said. "He had a great enthusiasm for life and was always making remarkable comments. I swear if I had written them down, I could make a million dollars."
The hundreds of acres that would become Alyson's Orchards were vastly distant from Robert F. Jasse's childhood on the streets of Revere, which he said was anything but bucolic.
In the 1995 interview, he looked back at years as a young tough whose father was sent to jail. Flunking out of Medford High School, Mr. Jasse was arrested before turning 17. The Medford police chief, he said, gave him a choice.
" 'Reform school or one of the services,' was how he put it," said Mr. Jasse, who chose the latter and enlisted in the Navy.
The experience helped form his patriotic spirit and turned his life around. After his stint in the Navy, Mr. Jasse finished a high school program in Boston, and then graduated from Boston College before earning a master's in business administration from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
By the early 1960s, he and some colleagues at a chemical engineering company in Boston decided to form Chomerics, which made electromagnetic interference shielding and insulation materials for the military, aerospace, computer, and telecommunications industries.
In March 1985,
For 25 years Mr. Jasse was married to Ann Regan, who died 29 years ago. He named Alyson's Orchards for the youngest of his seven children, who died as an infant.
Mr. Jasse married Susan Toye in 1981.
A lifetime trustee at the Boston Museum of Science, he also kept an apartment in the North End for many years, where his Italian-American neighbors called him Roberto, his wife said.
"Bob loved the North End," she said. "His big thrill was giving apples away. He gave tons of apples away to people in the North End each fall."
From his days in the Navy Mr. Jasse retained a strong sense of patriotism. At the orchard, "he's had a flag at half-mast ever since the beginning of the Iraq war," his wife said. "People asked him why, and he told them it would stay that way until the war ended. And he started every dinner party by singing 'God Bless America.' That became a tradition at the house, and that's how we started out his memorial service."
Over the years, Mr. Jasse and his wife worked with orchard specialists to expand their offerings to include about 50 varieties of apples, along with berries, grapes, peaches, pears, and plums in season.
"It started out as a retirement hobby, but it was a big hobby," Susan Jasse said of the orchard. Among the hundreds of acres, "80 acres are planted in trees. And we also have lodging for about 30 people and do weddings."
The wedding sites on the land, overlooking the river or Walpole, are named for Mr. Jasse's daughters and a stepdaughter.
There's Rachel's Pond, Ann Marie's Point of View, Ilze's Point of View, and Martha's Point of View.
When couples visited to scout out the wedding facilities, Mr. Jasse "loved showing the brides around Walpole," his wife said. "That was his job, showing her the sights with our black lab, Jack, in the back of his car."
The orchard's spectacular scenery, a draw for weddings, has one drawback, however. The hill along the river occasionally falls prey to high winds and hail, which Mr. Jasse countered by giving an old prayer a new twist.
"I never actually say the word 'hail' when I say Hail Marys," he said in the 1995 interview with the Globe. "I always spell it out."
In addition to his wife, Mr. Jasse leaves four daughters, Ann Marie of Palo Alto, Calif., Elizabeth Pack of Springfield, Martha of Austin, Texas, Jean Jasse Naman of Naperville, Ill., and Rachel of San Diego; a son, Robert Jr. of Manchester, N.H.; two stepdaughters, Ilze Melngailis and Sarma Melngailis, both of New York City; two sisters, Joann Austin and Andrea Blanchard; and 10 grandchildren.
A service has been held.
