Jacob Robert Coles

Jacob Robert Coles was born on February 11, 1988, and died at the Olathe Hospice House with his parents at his bedside on January 5, 2025, after a nearly three-year fight with cancer.

The majority of his adult life he worked cooking barbecue, mostly at Jack Stack and Joe’s KC Bar-B-Que. He loved going to Chiefs games. Quick to smile, he made friends easily. He valued loyalty. He would defend you. He would cut people some slack and forgive them. He had a host of close friends, coworkers, and health caretakers who supported him and visited him at his parents’ house where he convalesced before deteriorating in the weeks before he died. He was quite lucid until January, holding court as folks sat around him. Even when he was very sick, he joked with people and laughter surrounded him. Deeply spiritual, although not religious, Jacob loved reggae, ska, his dreadlocks, and the Rastafarian lifestyle.

He was born during a blizzard and he died during a blizzard, giving his friends and family some time to mourn without life going on as normal. Many of us viewed that as a final blessing. He is survived by his wife, Lesley Nelson, parents, Tad and Cindy Coles, sister, Cassidy Coles and her children Felix and Poppy McGuire, grandfather, Bob Cooley, and a host of friends who treated him like he was family.

Please join us in celebrating Jacob’s life on February 1, 2025, from 12 – 3 pm, at Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que, 11944 S Strang Line Rd, Olathe, KS  66062.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests financial donations to the Mark Foundation for Cancer Research and financial or volunteer donations to Hospice House of Olathe.