By Matt Day, Bloomberg News (TNS)

Jackie Bezos, a fierce protector of her son Jeff before he founded Amazon.com Inc. and a deep-pocketed advocate for early childhood education, has died. She was 78.

Bezos died at her home in Miami on Thursday, according the Bezos Family Foundation’s website. In a tribute on social media, Jeff Bezos wrote that his mother passed away “surrounded by so many of us who loved her,” saying her death followed “a long fight with Lewy body dementia.”

With her husband, Miguel, Bezos was the first to invest in Amazon. Their two checks, totaling $245,573 in 1995, backed the startup that Jeff Bezos warned would probably fail. It didn’t, of course, and the investment – along with subsequent purchases of Amazon shares – netted them a fortune estimated to be as large as

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