MANKATO — Longtime Katolight CEO Lyle Jacobson guided the Mankato-based company as it grew into a major source of diesel generators. And after the family-owned business was sold, his attention turned to providing a financial spark for the development of a downtown children’s museum and funding community charities.
Jacobson died Tuesday. He was 79.
“Lyle ran his company in an extremely fair way. He was a really nice guy. Lots of people lost a really good friend — the community lost a really good friend, too,” said Randy Berkland, of Mankato.
His friend, Berkland said, was a very successful businessman who wasn’t snobbish.
In 2005, when Katolight purchased the vacant former Shari Candies building, Jacobson told The Free Press his company had run out of warehouse space.
“With the growth we’ve seen in our business, we were originally looking at expanding our building here on Power Drive, but after analyzing it more we realized what we really needed was storage space and then we’d have more room on our production floors,” Jacobson said.
The company built its new plant in the Eastwood Industrial Centre in 2002 and moved from its old plant on Third Avenue. But it soon reopened the old plant to handle extra business.
Business continued to grow. Major blackouts on the East Coast early in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina’s damage to New Orleans’ infrastructure in 2005 created surges in orders for Katolight’s generators, used for backup by companies during power outages.
Jacobson and his wife, Kay, announced in 2007 their business had been sold to Tognum, a worldwide supplier of diesel engines based in Friedrichshafen, Germany. Katolight was renamed MTU/Onsite Energy Corp.
The Jacobsons, who were married for 55 years, met when they were college students.
“It was a blind date, set up by mutual friends,” Kay said.
Her husband was someone who was sure of himself, introspective and down to earth.
Charles Andresen, of Duluth, described his lifelong friend as a person with the patience of Job. The two first met at grade school in Duluth and continued to regularly keep in touch, most recently at Thanksgiving.
In 1987, the two men enjoyed a ride in the Concorde during a flight home from their golfing trip to England. In 2017, they toured the beaches at Normandy together.
“Lyle was just a regular guy, despite his wealth. He didn’t put on any airs,” Andresen said.
Kay said her husband had studied aeronautical engineering before he received a master’s degree in mechanics and materials. He received his training for management while working for IBM at Rochester.
“Dad was wonderful with math, no problem could stump him,” said daughter Lori Gardner.
Her father had a calm demeanor and a certain facial expression that was used when parenting his daughters when they were teens. Gardner said if she and her sister, Amy Jacobson-Peters, arrived home past curfew, they knew what to expect.
“We would get ‘The Lyle Look.’”
Kay said her husband kept a 40-hour work week when he was their company’s president. His hobbies included gardening at their Lake Washington property, golfing with friends and annual fishing trips to Montana and Canada.
“We’d go fly fishing near Missoula and we always had a contest to see who caught the biggest fish of the week,” Berkland said.
More than once, Lyle would win that prize during the last hour on the last day of the trip. Berkland said his buddy would just shrug his shoulders and say, ‘Guess I’m just lucky.’
The Jacobsons often traveled with other couples, including Denny and Carole Dotson and Dr. John Norris and the late Pat Norris, to destinations throughout the world. Berkland and his wife, Linda, accompanied them on trips to Europe, South America, Australia and New Zealand.
When they returned to Mankato after trips, the Jacobsons concentrated on civic involvement and philanthropy. In 2014, the Children’s Museum of Southern Minnesota became a reality, thanks in part to their $1 million donation.
“He was in a position where he knew we could help grow and develop nonprofits,” Kay said, describing Lyle’s reasons for their becoming large donors to several causes.
Through a family foundation and personal financial gifts, the couple provided assistance to Mankato Symphony Orchestra, Mankato Area United Way and MyPlace, a nurturing drop-in site for youths that opened in 2015, and many others.
“Oh my, such a treasure,” said MyPlace Executive Director Erin Simmons describing Lyle.
“He was one of a small handful of people who funded us when we didn’t even have a building. They essentially allowed us to open and made our dream a reality.”
The Jacobsons recently turned distribution of their donations over to Mankato Area Foundation.
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