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In 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a 17-year-old girl gave birth to a son. The school administrators had told her she couldn't finish high school. She pushed back anyway.
Her name was Jacklyn Gise. And the baby she was determined to raise would one day become one of the most influential people on Earth.
Being a pregnant teenager in 1960s Albuquerque wasn't just difficult — it was scandalous. When Jacklyn tried to return to school after giving birth, the administration told her no. She didn't accept that answer.
"I pushed back and I kept on pushing back," she would later recall. "Eventually the school relented."
But there were conditions. She couldn't talk to other students. She couldn't eat in the cafeteria. She had to arrive and leave within five minutes of the bells. She agreed to all of it. And she graduated.
Her marriage to her son's biological father, Ted Jorgensen, didn't survive. They were both teenagers when they married. He struggled with alcohol. They divorced before Jeff was even two years old.
Suddenly, Jacklyn was a single mother with no money. She found work as a secretary, earning $190 a month. It was barely enough to afford rent. She couldn't even pay for a telephone. Her father rigged up a walkie-talkie system so she could check in with her parents every morning at 7 a.m.
"That's how we were able to stay in an apartment," she later explained. "Because I didn't have to pay for a phone."
Determined to continue her education, Jacklyn enrolled in night school. She chose her classes based on which professors would let her bring her infant son to class. She would show up with two duffel bags — one filled with textbooks, the other with cloth diapers, bottles, and toys to keep baby Jeff occupied.
It was in one of those night classes that she met a young Cuban refugee named Miguel Bezos. He had arrived in the United States at age 15, fleeing Castro's regime with almost nothing. They fell in love.
Mike, as everyone called him, adopted Jeff and gave him his name. Together, Jacklyn and Mike built a home where hard work, education, and big dreams were the foundation of everything.
Jacklyn never stopped learning. Even after putting her college dreams on hold to raise her family and support Mike's career, she went back. In her late thirties, she enrolled again. She was relentless. At age 40, Jacklyn Bezos finally earned her college degree.
"When I graduated from the College of Saint Elizabeth at the age of 40," she said, "I had never been more proud of myself."
Then, in 1995, her oldest son came to her and Mike with a proposal that sounded risky. Jeff wanted to quit his stable Wall Street job to start a company selling books on the internet. Most people had barely heard of the internet. Almost no one was shopping on it.
He told his parents there was a 70% chance the company would fail. They invested anyway.
Jacklyn and Mike put approximately $245,000 into their son's startup. It was an enormous leap of faith. If Jeff was right about the odds, they would lose everything.
The company was called Amazon.
By 2018, that investment had grown to approximately $30 billion.
But the money was never the point for Jacklyn.
Jeff Bezos has spoken publicly about his mother countless times. He called her story "incredible." He credits her not just for the financial investment, but for the foundation she built — the values she instilled, the example she set, the sacrifices she made when he was too young to understand them.
Jacklyn Bezos never sought the spotlight. While her son became one of the most recognizable people on the planet, she worked quietly behind the scenes. She co-founded the Bezos Family Foundation, donating hundreds of millions to education and health causes. She championed opportunities for young people, especially those who faced obstacles like she once did.
She passed away in August 2025 at the age of 78, after battling Lewy body dementia. Her son announced her death with a simple tribute: "She pounced on the job of loving me with ferocity."
Jacklyn Bezos's life proves something important about parenting.
The most valuable gift you can give your children isn't money. It's showing them what's possible by refusing to accept what others say is impossible.
She was a teenage mother who society might have written off. Instead, she raised a son who changed the world — and she did it by changing hers first.
