Oral History Program Dee V. Jacobs, Hugh R. Jacobs David K. Jacobs, & Kimball L. Jacobs Interviewed by Jamie J. Weeks 27 March 2013 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Dee V. Jacobs, Hugh R. Jacobs David K. Jacobs, & Kimball L. Jacobs Interviewed by Jamie J. Weeks 27 March 2013 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Weber State College Oral History Program was created in the early 1970s to “record and document, through personal reminiscences, the history, growth and development of Weber State College.” Through interviews with administrators, faculty and students, the program’s goal was to expand the documentary holdings on Weber State College and its predecessor entities. From 1970 to 1976, the program conducted some fifteen interviews, under the direction of, and generally conducted by Harold C. Bateman, an emeritus professor of history. In 1979, under the direction of archivist John Sillito, the program was reestablished and six interviews were conducted between 1979 and 1983, with additional interviews being conducted by members of the Weber State community. In 2013 the campus prepared to celebrate the 125th Anniversary of Weber State University in 2014. In order to document the student experience, interviews were conducted with Weber State College Alumni on an ongoing basis. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Jacobs, Dee V., Hugh R., David K., and Kimball, L., an oral history by Jamie J. Weeks 27 March 2013, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Dee V. Jacobs, Hugh R. Jacobs and David K. Jacobs March 27, 2013 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Dee, Hugh, David and Kimball Jacobs. The interview was conducted on March 27, 2013 by Jamie J. Weeks in order to gather the Jacobs brother’s recollections and experiences with Weber State College. In this interview, the Jacobs brothers also give an account of their parents, Heber Grant Jacobs and Erma Valentine, and the time they spent at Weber State. Stacie Gallagher, video camera operator, is also present. JW: This is an oral history interview with the Jacobs brothers, held on March 27, 2013 in the Stewart Library. The subject is their time spent at Weber State from 1948 to 1957 and the time that their parents, Heber Grant Jacobs and Erma Caroline Valentine spent at Weber from 1921 to 1927. Let’s move through this interview in a chronological order beginning with some basic logistics. Where and when was your father born? DJ: He was born in Ogden, Utah on April 6, 1904. He was born in the big house on Monroe Boulevard between 26th and 27th Street. It was the Eastern reaches of Ogden at the time. KJ: I was there today looking at his footprints in the sidewalk. The address is 2652 on the east side of the street and they’re still there. They were put there when he was two years old in 1906. DKJ: He was the first boy after five girls in a row by his second wife Emma Rigby. His father, Henry Chariton Jacobs, was so excited that he was a boy. 1 JW: Was your father the first of your immediate family to begin the Weber tradition in 1921? DKJ: There were 13 children from two wives and 12 of them went to Weber. JW: In 1912, it would have been Weber Academy. It became Weber Normal in 1918, so Heber’s sisters, Mary, Emma, and Vilate, would have gone to Weber Academy. DKJ: These pictures, I think are wonderful. I thought it might be in a Weber yearbook somewhere, but it might not be. (App. 1-2; Jacobs Family History) DJ: He actually started Weber in 1920, and went all four years. He graduated in 1923. He had been a freshman, sophomore, junior and senior at the old Weber Normal High School. JW: In 1922, the name changed from Weber Normal to Weber College. As they migrated from Weber Normal to Weber College, it looks like Heber appears as a junior and senior high school student. Does he then go on and become a freshman in the college? DJ: I understand the transition years were 1922 and 1923. The high school ended with graduation in 1923 and he then entered as a freshman in college in the fall of 1923. JW: This picture is from 1922 and it is the first image we have in the archives of Heber. He attended the original campus, is that correct? (App. 3-5; 1922 Acorn) DJ: Yes, we have a 1920 Acorn yearbook that he appears in. (App. 6-8; 1920 Acorn and App. 9-10; 1921 Acorn as Grant Jacobs.) 2 JW: In the 1923 yearbook, it does make reference to his time here in 1921. I love that he was in so many different activities. DJ: We don’t know if he ever went to class, but he was sure in a lot of activities. JW: He was on the Acorn staff. (App. 11-12; 1922 Acorn) DJ: He was the photographer. He did it before and in the 1924 yearbook, which was when mother, Erma Valentine, came. There were 11 pages from the roving photographer. He had a big chunk of the yearbook that he was working with and we’ve seen so many of the pictures that are in these yearbooks in his personal scrapbooks. DKJ: He has done two lovely scrapbooks that we have at home. DJ: He chronicled the historic hike that went to Mt. Ogden to erect the flag pole, which was a very big event of Ogden. JW: We have an oversized image of the hike that he donated to the University Archives. DJ: That hike was really amazing because they carried a 300 pound flag pole in sections and all of the concrete, all of the sand, and for a long way the water because there isn’t any water on the 10,000 foot peak. We’ve all been there. The dedication was given by David O. McKay, who wore a white shirt, tie, and suit at 10,000 feet. It was another day in time. JW: Heber was always called the snap editor. Obviously, he took all the images, but did he also edit them and get them ready to go? DJ: We don’t know that much detail on that. 3 DKJ: I don’t think he developed them himself, I think they took them to the developer at that time. JW: In going through all of the things that your father did, I see that he was in the glee club, and an excerpt from the Acorn says, “Bernard DeVoto from the American Legion invites us to join in the Armistice Day celebration. Heber Jacobs, assisted by the Boys’ Glee Club, shows us how the rooster “goes.”” (App. 13; 1922 Acorn) DJ: I can believe it. DKJ: I haven’t heard some of these and it’s just wonderful to hear them. Dad had a wonderful high tenor voice. JW: Let’s go on to 1923. I think this is probably an image that you have here where you can see the list of everything he did. (App.14; 1923 Acorn) KJ: He was very involved. JW: What can you tell me about being a yell master? DKJ: He was very involved and had lots of energy and he was short. DJ: He was 5’5”. DKJ: His mother was only 4’11”, so he felt pretty good that he was as tall as he was at 5’5”. She had eight children and was a tough little pioneer who took care of five other children when Chariton’s first wife died. What he told me about his experience was that the girls had purple skirts and white blouses and the boys just wore dark pants and white shirts. He thought that it ought to be equal opportunity regarding yell leader’s attire. With a big game coming up he wanted to have an outfit. So, he got together with a seamstress and got some corduroy 4 pants with trim, buttons trimmed in purple corduroy, and a white sash with fringe made for him. Everyone else was out cheering and the game wasn’t going so well. He came out to lead this big cheer and when he came out dressed like that, everyone went crazy. I’m sure he really acted very cleverly. He got the crowd going and he said he really helped the game. They didn’t win, but they sure did better than if he wasn’t there. When I was back in Washington D.C. at a dedication of the Washington D.C. Temple talking with J. Willard Marriott, a friend of Dad’s, he said, “I want you to know that your dad was the best yell leader that we’ve ever had at Weber College.” DJ: Dad had the moves. In 1945, when I was going to Weber High, a couple of the senior girls wanted me to try out for cheerleader, which I was very reluctant to do. Dad tried to teach me and at that point I don’t know whether we’d seen him demonstrate before. He did stuff that seemed impossible. He was down, and up, and around and he had the moves. It was just hilarious. Over the years, people would say, “Your dad was something at Weber.” It was just amazing. His younger brother, Rigby, was also a cheerleader there and he was an energetic guy, but nowhere near Dad on the unique form. Dad had the moves and nobody could touch him. His younger brother, Smith, was also a cheerleader. DKJ: He was in his ninth decade when he got these things out and put those pants on for us. We have a picture somewhere of him wearing that outfit and he could still get into them. He really took care of himself physically. He almost killed himself working at the gas station on 36th and Harrison. He was in his nineties and still walking one mile each day. So, he took care of himself. 5 JW: He was only 5’5”, so what did he do on the track team? DJ: He ran the mile. His legs were short, but he was pretty speedy. He was very fast with his fists too and Hugh got those genes. He ran the mile and the thing he was most proud of was that he came in second in the big BYU track meet one year. He played a little basketball, but mostly ran the mile. JW: One of the things it says under his name is, “Plays, yelling contests, track and glee club, all are lost without Hebe.” That was his nickname, right? DJ: Yes, Hebe Jacobs. JW: What is the Barker contest? (App. 15; 1923 Acorn) DJ: That was a speaking contest between Ogden and Weber endowed by a prominent Ogden citizen named Barker. He was not a great public speaker. He was very expressive and outgoing, but as far as formal speaking, his brother, Rigby, did better in the Barker contest. JW: He didn’t get first place, but his team won. DKJ: He would be a very good influence because Dad was always positive, always smiling and always treated everyone very well. That was how his father was. He was a very well thought of man and knew people all over the West. HJ: Dad got his name because his father was a personal friend and brother-in-law of Heber J. Grant. Henry Chariton Jacobs sent a letter to Heber J. Grant laboring in England asking if he could name his newly born son after him. Heber Grant wrote a warm letter of reply and told Chariton how it pleased him. So, his name is 6 Heber Grant Jacobs. His other brother is William Rigby Jacobs, who settled the Rexburg area. His third brother was Joseph Smith Jacobs. DJ: Guess what church they belonged to? JW: Exactly! What instrument did he play in the band? DJ: I think he played the drums. JW: He was involved in several plays. Two of them, Merely Mary Ann and Charm School. (App. 16-17; 1923 Acorn) DJ: Charm School was with Mom. (App. 18-19; 1924 Acorn) JW: Is that where they met? DJ: Weber was a small school, so they got to know each other. She was a cute little chick and a Brigham City Peach. If you see his scrapbooks, you wouldn’t believe all the girls’ pictures that Mother allowed to stay in the scrapbooks. DKJ: He dated a lot. DJ: He had a lot of friends. Mother was popular too, she dated J. Willard Marriott before he went on his mission. She was very fond of him and they dated a bit, but that didn’t get taken up again when he returned from his mission. JW: There is a quote here that talks about “Round the World Flight” and it says, “Up to a late hour, no word has been received from Heber Jacobs.” (App. 20; 1924 Acorn) 7 DJ: He was the guy on campus everybody knew. He was just that kind of a campus character. He always did character parts in the Weber plays and later in the Ogden Community Theater. The leads would get a little write up, but it never failed that they’d mention that Heber Jacobs did some special bit part. JW: Did he go on a mission? DJ: Yes, to England. JW: He returned to Weber again in 1927? (App. 21; 1927 Acorn) DJ: Yes, briefly and still probably a freshman because he didn’t excel as a scholar. DKJ: I thought he began his sophomore year. He studied some. JW: One of the clubs he was in was called “The Friars.” This was a group of returned missionaries and it lists him as “British,” which is where he went on his mission. Do you know anything about the Friars? (App. 22-23; 1927 Acorn) DKJ: No, but I have a big picture in an album of the Pink Elephants, another club on campus. Did you ever hear about that? JW: No. DKJ: They were all in their suits and ties. Ray Poulter was in there also. He was a great guy. They were actually baptized together. I asked Dad, “Why didn’t your father, who was the bishop, baptize you?” He couldn’t remember, but I saw Ray Poulter in the last decade of his life and he asked, “Did your dad tell you why we were baptized by brother Middleton?” I said, “No.” He said, “It was because that man had been baptized by the prophet, Joseph Smith.” So, my grandfather wanted him to be baptized by the man who had been baptized by Joseph Smith. 8 JW: That’s a great story. Do you know about some of the professors that were here with him? DKJ: David O. McKay, who was his high school principal, and H. Aldous Dixon. Did he teach here at that time also? JW: Yes. DKJ: Ernest J. Wilkinson taught him as well. DJ: Aldous Dixon and David J. Wilson, who became a very prominent federal judge, boarded at Grandma’s boarding house. Grandma and Grandpa had the big house and when she was widowed, dad was just ten years old. So, she took in boarders and these two fine men came. Aldous Dixon remained a very close family friend. David Wilson married one of the land lady’s daughters. DKJ: Aunt Mary. JW: Did he know President Tracy? He was such a great friend of students. DKJ: He’s talked about Aaron Tracy, but I don’t remember anything specific. JW: I only know things I’ve read about him. He’s such an interesting man. I would have loved to meet him. I can’t believe the things he did for Weber to keep it going. DKJ: I was thinking my Aunt Emma was secretary to him, but she was secretary to President H. Aldous Dixon. However, Dad knew President Tracy. DJ: He knew all the students, but I think Dad had a very special relationship with him. JW: Did Heber graduate with an arts and sciences degree? 9 DJ: As far as we know, he only graduated from high school, but not from Weber College. Have they got him listed? DKJ: I think there was something that happened where he had too many credits in the arts and not enough in the sciences, but he had enough credits. So, I wasn’t sure if he graduated or not. JW: In 1927, it shows his picture and his name as a graduate in Arts and Sciences. JW: That’s a terrific picture. (App. 24; 1927 Acorn) DJ: He always wore a little mustache because, as a kid, he had his lip cut and he had a scar. DKJ: A kid smacked him with a shovel and he had a little scar there, so he was self-conscious and that’s why he wore the mustache. JW: This is when he came back after his mission and it looks like he made a push to finish. DJ: We’ll buy that. Now, I’ll tell you why we’re a little reluctant. When Dad retired in his early 1950’s, he and Mom moved to Provo and BYU where some of us were at school and Dad took some classes. David was getting his Associate Degree from Weber that year, Hugh was getting his bachelor’s from BYU and I was getting my master’s. We put a freshman beanie on Dad for a church newsletter with his graduating sons. Now we’re down in history as having fibbed. He wasn’t a freshman. JW: Let’s move on. Where was your mother born? 10 DKJ: Brigham City, Utah. JW: What was her date of birth? DKJ: January 4, 1905. JW: She was a student in 1924. (App. 25; 1924 Acorn) DKJ: She had a beautiful alto voice. DJ: Later, she went to Utah State and got a teaching degree up there while Dad was on his mission. JW: She only attended one year here, from what I found. She was assistant editor for the newspaper and in the play Charm School with your father. (App. 26; 1924 Acorn) DKJ: They were also in an operetta. JW: There are these wonderful quotes. You’ve probably seen them. They came from the Acorn. It mentions her on the “Giant Ship.” With “Erma Valentine in toto.” There are also embarrassing moments. This is from a student who was sitting in Doyle’s eating a chocolate sundae. He says,“Irna Cram, Virginia Neuteboom and Erma Valentine all came and sat by me. They all said, “Oh, Van, I want chocolate ice cream too!” I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life.” (App. 27- 28; 1924 Acorn) How many children did your parents have together? DKJ: Six. One passed away at birth. Five boys and a girl. 11 DJ: One between Hugh and David. I’m the oldest, then Hugh, then Heber Grant, who died at birth. DKJ: The girl is between me and Kimball. Judith Ann. JW: You all grew up on 36th street? DJ: We lived in town at first. We didn’t move out until 1938. Dad had a gas station at 26th and Jackson across from the old 12th Ward there. He ran that well after we moved out while he was building a gas station one cinder block at a time. We made our own cinder blocks. DKJ: We made two at a time and I sat on top of the frame to press it down. I had to be there for at least ten minutes, which was the hardest thing I remember doing, especially when the dog would come by and lick me or something. DJ: Dad ran both of them, with hired help at the one on 36th. He eventually moved out in about 1941. Tidewater Associated Oil said to him, “Hebe, you’ll be crawling back to us in three months.” That gas station went broke within a very short time and was never really run again. It was about a year after he left. Later, it was torn down and sat as a vacant lot for many years. By the way, he started that station during the depression. He worked 14 hours a day from seven in the morning until nine at night. The first month, with mother helping him, he cleared eleven dollars. That was depression time and he was glad to get it. He built that into a very fine station in town and came out and built the other one on 36th Street. JW: We found this advertisement in several newspapers. This one is from the 1950’s. (App. 29; Signpost) 12 DJ: It wasn’t originally Heber Jacobs & Sons until Hugh and I got old enough to help a little. JW: This was a pretty common advertisement that was in The Signpost. DKJ: I only helped when they needed help shoveling snow in the morning before school. I helped on busy days and on Saturdays when I was ten or eleven. I stood on the running boards of cars and washed the windows and checked the tires and oil. Sometimes I couldn’t get up high enough to check the oil. Dad opened the first “serve yourself” in Ogden. He had three pumps in front of the old station and he put in nine more out to the south and it was the first “serve yourself.” Slim Olson did it in the Bountiful area, but Dad was the first in Ogden. I worked out in that little “serve yourself” in summers during high school. DJ: Do you have any advertisements with the little man with the oil can? That was what he was noted for. Mother was very clever with writing and Dad had a clever sense of humor. They composed an original poem each time. Over the ditty was a combination photo and cartoon of Dad wearing a service station hat that said, “Hebe,” and carrying his little oil can and kicking up the dust. HJ: There was a guy at the Standard Examiner at the time that wrote an article called, “Sol’s Sunshine and Shadow,” and that’s where a lot of Dad’s advertisements were. Recently, I attended a funeral at the Lindquist Mortuary and old man Lindquist, who is well into his 90’s, said, “I remember the little man with the oil can.” DJ: Most of the older Ogdenites do. 13 JW: What schools did you attend growing up? DJ: I went to Quincy, which was a block down the street. We lived on Jackson. I went to Quincy for the first and second grade. The year we moved, we lived temporarily on 26th near Polk School, so I went to the third grade in Polk. I went to the sixth grade at Birch Creek and then Weber Junior High in Riverdale, then Weber High School, on Washington and 11th Street, where Weber was in those days. HJ: I went to Polk School in the first grade. My teacher was President Henry Aldous Dixon’s daughter. We moved and I went to Birch Creek, then Riverdale Junior High, and then Weber High School. We lived right on the borderline of Ogden City and in the County. We lived a mile from Ogden High School and went across town to Weber High School. I went to Weber Junior College, then went into the service, then got a degree in marketing at BYU and came back to work at Weber College in 1960. I took a year of leave and got my coursework completed for my MBA at Utah State. DKJ: I attended Birch Creek for first, second and third, then I went to Quincy because all of the kids in our ward went to Quincy. I went to Quincy for the third grade, but my uncle, Smith Jacobs, became the superintendent of the Ogden City Schools, and there was a big article in the paper that he wanted to make an example that he had no favoritism and that his nephew was sent back to Birch Creek School. I spent the rest of my time in Birch Creek. Amelia Knott was my teacher in the fifth grade and she was an angel. I adored her. Then, I went to Riverdale Junior High until they tore it down and the new South High School was built where I went to 14 the eighth and ninth grades. Then, I went clear out to Weber High School and to Weber College. JW: Kimball, did you have a normal school experience? KJ: I went to a little pre-school across from the cemetery on 36th Street and it was called Cook School. Then, I went to Grandview Acres for the first and second grade, then to the new Wasatch Elementary. I went to Washington Junior High for three semesters. I taught at Quincy Elementary. JW: Dee, you’re the oldest. Where and when were you born? DJ: I was born September 27, 1930 in the Thomas D. Dee Hospital. We were all born in the Dee Hospital. JW: One of the things I found in my research was mention of your mom and dad a few times in the Dee Diaries. On New Year’s Day, 1938, it says, “Mr. and Mrs. Heber Jacobs, Dee and Hugh were in attendance.” In another, they are talking about Ambrose, who had passed away, and your mom and dad were there to help, and drive Maude home. Is that why your name is “Dee”? DJ: It’s partly the Dee family relationship, but also the River Dee in Scotland. Hugh Ronald is also a very Scottish name, so that also came from Dad’s mission. We participated as children in David’s name selection and Kimball’s. Elizabeth Dee Shaw Stewart was a very close friend of Mom and Dad. Elizabeth got married in the 40’s to Donnell B. Stewart. The folks were very close friends with Elizabeth. She was in our home many times and quite often we went out to Elizabeth Shaw Stewart’s childhood home. 15 DKJ: Mom Shaw’s. DJ: We always called her Mom Shaw. It was a beautiful home on Washington Boulevard. It had wood panels and they had little child-sized seats done in very fine material. She was married to Ambrose Shaw, who ran the coal business and he also had a big farm in Ogden Valley. He gave us a beautiful Jersey calf at one time. Dad named the calf, “Amshabeth,” after father and daughter. That was our cow for many years. We had a warm relationship with the Shaw’s and with Elizabeth especially. DKJ: Mom and Dad were at Elizabeth and Don’s wedding and Mom had their wedding picture. I remember going Mom Shaw’s with Mom, Dad and Judy. Elizabeth had a collection of breathtaking dolls that were the kind of dolls that you would see in museums. She would have them on little furniture and going up the big wooden stairway. I always thought it was wonderful to stop at Washington Boulevard to visit and see those things. I didn’t realize how special it was at that time. JW: Dee, here you are in the play Our Town. (App. 30-31; 1941 Acorn and App. 32- 33; 1942 Acorn) DJ: I got my stage debut in Our Town directed by Thatcher Allred. His son, a very close friend of mine, Dr. Gordon Allred, just finished 40 years of teaching here at Weber. We were at Weber together and in Phoenix together. We have been good friends over the years. Dad was in quite a few community theater plays, but that was a very rare experience for me. 16 JW: The curious thing is that you’re in these plays in the yearbook in 1941 and 1942, but you don’t actually attend Weber until 1948, so how did you get to be in the plays before you came to Weber? DJ: Dr. Thatcher Allred needed a kid and knew us as a “theater family.” He was Weber College’s legendary English and drama man, and he directed plays along with Mrs. Eber Piers in Ogden. I wasn’t at Weber then, of course. I was just an eleven year old kid that played Wally in Our Town. JW: I didn’t know the community images were in the Weber College yearbooks. I thought it was interesting that you were in the play. DJ: I am not knowledgeable about the Ogden Community Theater and Weber College theater relationship. I would imagine that was some kind of joint production. All of the plays were held in the Moench Building. DKJ: The community and Weber College did some of those things together because that was the big thing in Ogden. Culturally, there was Weber College, then when they brought in the symphonies and the choir, they would be in Ogden High School, but other things took place in the theater at the lower campus of Weber. DJ: I attended in 1948-1949 and 1949-1950. JW: Were you the student body business manager? (App. 34; 1949 Acorn) DJ: In 1949, I was assistant yearbook business manager to Dee Ward Hock, who was a national debate champion for Weber and then became famous in the business world as the founder of the Visa credit card system. I became the student body business manager the next year. 17 JW: Were you involved in the activities of preparing to move from the old campus to this one? DJ: Yes we were. That was a transition year. Just as Dad had been in the transition year from the high school to the college, we felt that we were in a significant transition year. The student body had several activities on the newly acquired upper campus. We have some pictures of us as we came and raked a big field on Harrison and 37th Street. We filled the ditches with a tractor because it was pastureland. We worked and then we had one big party. This was H. Aldous Dixon’s great dream and we all felt part of it. The 1949-to-50 year was the transition year where we started the move. The student body didn’t physically do much more than get the ground ready to the first plant grass and smooth out the field on Harrison, but it had significant symbolic meaning for us and Ogden. JW: It sounds like the way he involved all of you made it so that everybody cared because you were all doing the work together. DJ: This was a big thing. It was a really big thing because we had outgrown the lower campus and we were looking forward to becoming a four year school sometime. That was in the background, but at that time Weber was a very prominent junior college in a town that was proud of itself. This was a big move for Weber and for Ogden. JW: You were on the awards committee. What did that entail? (App. 35-37; 1949 Acorn) 18 DJ: With my ancient age, I can’t even remember the details, but we were responsible for a lot of awards to different people or organizations in the school. DKJ: Especially at the end of the year when they graduated and they had awards. DJ: That picture was the 1948-1949 school year because there was Alan Johnson who was the business manager preceding me and coach Milt Mecham and a friend and fellow debater, Shirley Kinsey. JW: It looks like from there you are on the Acorn staff again. DJ: The Acorn staff, I was just the assistant to Dee Ward Hock. I canvased the businesses downtown to put their ads in the Acorn. I don’t know why, but you will find me in probably four of five of the ads, because I sold these ads as a paying job. They were a substantial support for the yearbook. Dee Ward jokes that I was paid five dollars and hour—not so. JW: That’s actually a lot of money back then. DJ: That was a lot of money then because Dad was paying me 50 or 75 cents an hour at the gas station. JW: We talked about the play you were in with Thatcher Allred. DJ: The social clubs put on the best assemblies and Phoenix did Hamming Up Hamlet. In this particular version, the hemlock poison is poured in the ear to kill one of the main characters. Jerry Nilsson, who became a very fine surgeon later, had this five gallon oil funnel in my ear and I wore bright yellow tights. The idea was that with a couple of chemicals, smoke would come shooting up when he poured the hemlock. In practice it was pretty good, there was a little smoke. Jerry 19 thought a lot of smoke would be better, so he put far more chemicals in it. I was lying there and a huge cloud of smoke went up, and this acid rained down on my head and burned holes in the tights. As soon as the curtain came down they rushed me to the doctor. We had some pretty fancy stuff in those assemblies. I still have the scars, but they were great assemblies. HJ: It’s thinned out your hair also. DJ: Well, you noticed? JW: Who were some of your professors while you were here? We talked about President Dixon. DJ: I could quickly tell you some of them by looking at their pictures. Mr. Lambert was our geology teacher and I wasn’t much of a physical science guy, so I took 12 hours of geology and loved him. O. M. Clark in economics was great. We knew a lot of these people. Wayne Carver, who went on to spend his whole life at Carlton College in Minnesota was our Phoenix Club advisor. Dr. Monson and E. Carl Green in debate were extremely talented and dedicated teachers. Merlyn Stevenson was a legend. Those were some of them. JW: Is there anything else you would like to add to your part? DJ: Weber was a fantastic school. Weber has a great deal of importance to me. I’d like to read something from Dad’s yearbook from the senior class which he outlined in ink himself. It is pretty sentimental; I might even get sentimental reading it. This is when they terminated the Weber Normal: 20 And now, four years of happiness and friendship are ended. Although many of us will come back to Weber College, there will be some who will leave us for a while and some who will go away for good. Like other true ties of affection, however, the spirit of class, which is the spirit of the school, will never be lost. Though the members be scattered over the Earth, it is an undying fire, and perhaps it may at some time be the inspiration for some man or woman to do something great. We close out life at Weber with the hope and prayer that she may still go on and succeed and instill in the hearts of future Weberites, the same ideals and ambitions that we have obtained. When they talk about, “maybe someone in that class would go on to do something great,” a pretty good start was J. Willard Marriott, who was then the student body president of the new Weber College. Secretary of the Treasury and Ambassador, David Kennedy and Elizabeth Shaw Stewart made their mark and many others since. I have no claim to fame, but went on to be one of the wanderers from Weber and lived overseas for 18 years as a Foreign Service officer and missionary. We’ve lived a lot of different places, but never back to Ogden in all those years. We were based in Washington D.C. for 30 years and California the rest of the time. I went to the “U,” to BYU and to Harvard Business School for the Advanced Management course, but I am so grateful for Weber. It was the foundation of so many things. It was a small, personal school, and just 21 outstanding. I wouldn’t have wanted to change to any school in the country for those two years at Weber. JW: That is a wonderful report. DKJ: He didn’t say it, but he speaks many languages, probably seven or eight languages very fluently. DJ: That’s quite heavy to say “fluency” of most of those. I have studied a number of languages and I am fluent in a few. DKJ: You can speak in those countries. Swedish, Danish, German… DJ: Spanish, Portuguese, a little Russian, a little Egyptian Arabic. Anyway, those are the tools of the trade in the Foreign Service. It is part of what you do. JW: I appreciate that testimony of Weber. We all kind of feel the closeness of it. DJ: It is special. It certainly was special here. Ogden wasn’t very big then, it was a much smaller town and the relationships were close. The teachers knew your parents and your parents knew your teachers. You might have been a little bit more cautious than if you had been away at Utah State of someplace further from home. It had a wonderful spirit with great leaders. In all due respect, it was a parochial school under the LDS church until 1931. A lot of those ideals of integrity, honesty, service, and sacrifice just came along with it. They should be the foundation for any school or any society and we had them in good measure. JW: Hugh, when did you begin school at Weber College? (App. 38-39; 1951 Scribulus) HJ: The Fall of 1950. I graduated in the spring of 1952. 22 JW: You were the student body treasurer, is that right? HJ: Yes. That was my second year. I did some things before that. In the first place, I probably am not as eloquent as my two brothers and I’m a little mentally challenged in my old age, so I probably want to put a disclaimer on the authenticity of anything I say here. I was one of the few people that ever got a boxing scholarship at Weber College. I had one for two years. The color of my uniform, you can tell I went to Weber. Coach Mecham helped make me enjoy boxing. He offered me a scholarship and it was a huge scholarship. It was 50 dollars a year. It helped out at that time. I was working at the gas station and it helped out a lot. In my boxing situation, I boxed in many smokeless smokers that they had, and although we didn’t have a team, we got together and had what they called, “smokeless smokers.” Some of the matches were held at the Weber gym and some down at the Berthana rolling rink. I boxed in the golden gloves and the AAU. There was a man named Walter Wall over the A.A.U. and he encouraged me to qualify for the nationals in the AAU in Chicago. I was able to qualify for that and just before the tournament I got yellow jaundice and had to drop out. I couldn’t make that. I was freshman class president my first year. Here is my old boxing picture and this is me on the side, boxing for Weber. I’m sure we did a lot of very worthwhile things. I was a member of the Phoenix Club. I also participated in some music classes. JW: We have you listed as participating in Shop at Sly Corner and New Moon. (App. 40-41; 1951 Scribulus and App. 42-43; 1952 Scribulus) 23 HJ: In New Moon, I was able to have a duel for the honor of some desperate damsel, against Mark Ballif, who had gone to Ogden High School. I remember the fight and everything. One of my favorite instructors at Weber was a man named Roland Perry. He was a wonderful man and he loved boxing. He’d come to all the matches I was in, and when we would pass in the hallway, quite often, he’d come up and hunch up and put a few boxing moves on me. We’d laugh and talk about that. One day, he came to me and said, “You know, with the coordination you have for boxing, you’d make a great tap dancer.” About that time, Gene Kelly was in a movie production called, An American in Paris, and I thought, “That would be pretty nice.” I said, “Mr. Perry, how would I learn about tap dancing?” He said, “I’ll teach you.” So, that was a wonderful opportunity and we went and the first lesson lasted about two hours and after the lesson, he said, “You know, you ought to stick to boxing.” That was the last tap dancing I ever did. I did act for him again in a production that he and his dear wife wrote and produced. It wasn’t Weber College, but he was Weber College, and that was All Faces West. It was held at the Ogden City Stadium. I participated in that as I think some of the other family members did as well. JW: That is a pretty famous show here. Tell me why they referred to the Phoenix Club as “The Sisters.” (App. 44; 1951 Scribulus) HJ: Dee explained that to Denise, so I’ll defer to Dee. DJ: We were the only major club that didn’t serve beer at the rush parties. The Excelsior guys were a little less conservative. The Sigma club had quite a few beer drinkers. The Phoenix “Sisters” were guys that didn’t smoke and drink, 24 although they weren’t all LDS. Most of us were very strong in academics and we had a lot of student leaders. So, we became, “The Sisters,” and we accepted it and laughed about it. We did not mind being noted as a basically straight arrow bunch. JW: Did you know Reed Swenson? (App. 45-46; 1951 Scribulus) HJ: Yes. In fact, when I came back to work for Weber College in the spring of 1960, I worked for Reed. I knew him very well and I knew all the athletic people. In Phoenix, I participated in quite a few of the intramurals. I played water polo, football, and diving. One year, a guy named Doug Brian, who was in Excelsior, a good friend of mine and a fine diver. We were in the finals of the diving competition. This is the first time I’ve admitted this in many years. He was a much finer diver than I was, but the judges gave me first place. I’ve felt guilty about it ever since, but now I feel clear about it. As student body officers, Fred Ball, was the president, Norma Creer was the secretary and Carol Barker was vice-president. There was a mistake on that picture in Scribulus, because I was the treasurer and LaMoyne Garside was the business manager. In fact, LaMoyne was a good friend and a member of Phoenix. He did all my pictures and campaign advertising when I was running for treasurer. He was a great caricature artist and had done a lot of things in the yearbook and Scribulus. (App. 47-50; 1952 Scribulus) One of the signs was when I went down to the Army Navy Store and bought a surplus parachute. It was a huge big piece of white cloth and Lamoyne drew a picture of me on both ends of a dollar bill and I was stretching the dollar 25 bill and it said, “Make your dollar stretch, Hugh Jacobs for treasurer.” Without permission, we hung it on the old gym wall and hung it out the window. We got in a little problem with some of the administrators. He also drew a picture of a cow, which I guess would be appropriate for the dairy man to call it a well-endowed cow. It said, “Vote for Hugh Jacobs, there’s no udder man for the job.” We were noted, and Dee might find criticism with this. One thing we did, and I can still visualize the picture, but I couldn’t find it, we were student body officers when they broke ground for the opening of the college. DJ: That was probably the formal ground breaking. We went up and did some of the preparatory work. JW: The formal ground breaking with President Dixon. HJ: Of course, that was just right across the road and two blocks south of our house. The other thing that we did was donated money and had the idea of the sign at the bridge down on 19th and Washington that went over Ogden River. The first sign there was, “Ogden, Home of Weber College.” We did a lot of fun things and those were two of the accomplishments that I was able to remember. JW: As I look at your name in the signpost, they’ve given you a nickname, Hughie. Did it stick? HJ: I’ve been called lots of things and that was one of them. DKJ: Growing up we called him Hughie. DJ: I think I called you Hughie once today and I haven’t done it for years. 26 HJ: During my stay at Weber College, the Korean War was on. I had broken my ankle playing church ball one year and they called me up for the draft because of the ankle they deferred me for the time being. About the only way that you can stay out of the service was to go to school so I tried it. The third year, I raced in on opening day of enrollment at the lower campus and signed up and when I came back one of the guys that worked for us was out there in front waving my card from Agnus Christe from the draft board. I grabbed that thing and went right down and withdrew. I couldn’t stay out of the Army by going to school. Weber College was a great experience and I made lots of friends. Most of them I can’t remember and half of them are dead, but it was a great experience. JW: It looks like you came back in 1961 as the Phoenix advisor and the football team business manager, is that right? (App. 51-53; 1961 Acorn and App. 54; 1962 Acorn) HJ: Correct. Actually, it was March of 1960 when I was hired. I was hired as the business manager of the athletic department. I worked for Reed Swenson. A couple of months after they hired me they hired Dick Motta as the basketball coach. Bruce Larson had been the basketball coach before that and he had a great rapport with everybody and a guy named Bill Mann took his place. Then, Motta came in from Grace Idaho High School. I traveled with the team and did many different things as a business manager all the way from fundraising at businesses downtown to preparing and selling hot dogs at the stadium for football games. 27 One year, the custodian and I were cleaning up the stadium after a football game and we found some guys fighting in the parking lot. They were fighting over a girl and we asked them to leave campus. One of them went to his car and came out with a double barrel shotgun and put it right in our face and said, “We’ll stay here as long as we want.” I thought that he was kidding, but finally we got them to leave the campus and just before he put his gun back in the car he opened it up and took two shells out. That’s when I got sick. I did a lot of things and I worked in the athletic department for a couple of years. We were a junior college and I lived through the time that we became the junior college and the senior college. I went twice back to Hutchinson, Kansas to the National Junior College Basketball Finals with the basketball team and I think we placed 8th in the nation one year and second in the next year. Anyway, Motta became a super well-known college and professional basketball coach and I had an opportunity to work with him. He couldn’t find his way around as we traveled to the games, so I was also the navigator for the team when we drove to away games. We had those great big, long hot dog cars that we got from mortuaries I think. JW: One of the things that I missed at the beginning of the interview was when and where you were born. HJ: In the Dee Hospital in Ogden on Harrison Boulevard on July 30, 1932. JW: Is there anything you want to add to yours? HJ: Well, if you want me to talk just a minute about my employment here. 28 JW: What was the campus atmosphere from 1960 to 1974? It looked like it was a really interesting time to be here. HJ: It was really fun and there were a lot of things going on. I think the union building at the time, was the old barracks building and Farrell Shepard was the manager of it then too. When I started, there was a physical plant building and just four classroom buildings. I worked two years in the athletic department, then became the assistant director to Dr. Wendell Esplin, who was the director of the continuing education program. I worked there for a few years and took leave and went back to Utah State and did my coursework for my MBA. I came back to Weber as the director of placement under Dr. Alan Daley. I understand he is still here. Dr. Daley was the Dean of students. The Dean of Men was a fellow named Rolph Kerr who became President of Dixie College, a Vice President at BYU, commissioner of higher education and a general authority in the LDS church. We had several departments in student personnel and I was placement director for seven years. Our office was located in the old LDS Institute building on campus. I found opportunities elsewhere and I left Weber in January of 1974. It was an exciting time at Weber. I saw a lot of positive things happen and lots of growth. JW: You also went through a president change from Miller to President Bishop. HJ: Yes. I went to school with President Miller’s daughter and knew the family personally. I also found out that President Bishop was an L.D.S. missionary in Argentina where my uncle, Lee Valentine, was the mission president. The president’s home at the time was the old Ferrin home on top of the hill on Harrison. Part of the campus was a dairy farm owned by the Mills’, and most of 29 the rest of it was owned by the Ferrin family. The most famous member of the Ferrin family was Arnold Ferrin, who became an All-American basketball player at the University of Utah. They had a business called the Edge Hill Dairy. They had converted some of the old buildings, chicken coups, and farm buildings into apartments. I lived in one of those apartments with my wife and three children. One evening, late at night, I heard all this noise nearby and I went out to investigate and there were a bunch of the football players and most of them I knew because I was in the athletic department at that time. They had gone up to about 46th and Harrison where there was a large turkey farm. They confiscated some turkeys and brought them down into the washroom where the dairy was and cleaned them. They left the residue there and nobody noticed it for two or three days until the stench got so bad, then I had to report my findings. That was an interesting experience. A lot of things were going on in the transition to a senior college and it was fun. JW: Okay, David. When were you born? DKJ: I was born Friday, the 13th of August 1937. Hugh always said, “Oh that explains it all.” My grandmother Jacobs’ birthday was on the 14th and they wanted me to be born on her birthday so it could be a nice celebration, but I got bored and was born about 10 minutes before midnight. Conrad Jenson delivered me and delivered all of us up at the Dee hospital. He was terrific and had a son, Conrad Jenson that just retired from the University of Utah medical school. JW: According to my records, you were here from 1956 to 1957. DKJ: I started in the Fall of 1955. 30 JW: So, everybody started school a year before their pictures are in the yearbooks? DKJ: Yes. I graduated from high school in 1955 and started Weber that September when I was 18. JW: Here you are your freshman year. (App. 55; 1956 Acorn) DKJ: There I am with my fuzzy haircut next to Marilyn Jackson. Marilyn Jackson and I took tap lessons together when we were in the first grade down in the back of the Catholic Church downtown in Sophie. Rhead’s Studio was really good and I really loved it. I wanted to take it the next year, but Dad didn’t want me to, so I got a horse instead of tap lessons. The horse was named Mule Ears. JW: It looks like you two were on the social committee. What was the social committee? (App. 56-57; 1956 Acorn) DKJ: We threw the parties, dances and the activities. There was always a lot going on. It was a split campus then because we were the first year when everything was finished with those four buildings on upper campus, and they moved into the temporary union building which we called, “The TUB.” It was an old Army barracks, but there was one big room with offices for the student body in the end of it and there were white boards. It was anything but glamorous, but we thought it was so great because we could buy stuff there without running down to our gas station, because that was the closest place to buy goodies in those days. It was a lot of fun and we enjoyed it. We held our dances on lower campus and we held a lot of my classes because I did theater and speech things in the Moench 31 Building. We held music classes in both places, but our swimming class was held in the gym building on lower campus. JW: It sounds like The TUB was the place to be. From the history, that’s where all the fun took place. DKJ: The thing that was so important about The TUB in those days was the bulletin board where the students posted where the cops were that day on the road between upper and lower campus. They posted sometimes at our gas station and at a couple of places on lower campus because you needed to get to class on time or you got in trouble. Sometimes they posted when they got mad because they got a ticket. It was a great time to be alive because I loved to see the campus make the change. It was normal to go to Weber College. All of my aunts and uncles went, my mom and dad went, my older brothers went, and they made it easy for those who followed, especially with the Weber faculty and staff. They seem to like Jacobs’. Dee was the class president of Weber High School. I was always known as Hugh Jacobs’ little brother, and every beautiful girl in Ogden and Weber County knew Hugh. I remember when I was just little and this girl moved in across the street. Gary Alstrom was my best friend at that time and Hugh wanted his beautiful sister to ride in his new red convertible car, but she wouldn’t. Finally, she said she would go if I could sit in the backseat. So, I got to go while he drove around with the girl. I think that’s one of the only times he let me in the car, but it was worth it. 32 When I was in junior high school the bus let us off near Edvalson dairy on Edvalson Road. I had to walk home along Harrison. Every night, when I got to the gas station, if my dad was available he would walk out to me and say, “Hi Sonny Boy.” He was always happy. This was in the heat of summer or the dead of winter and there was snow piled around. He was always up. He was a very happy man. He took after his dad in that way. People liked to get gas there because he gave them such good service and was always friendly. We were a Weber family. Mom and Dad had theater tickets to Weber College dramas and they had the cultural tickets to Ogden High School for when the symphony, Paderewski or operas like Barber of Seville and things like that came. If Dad couldn’t go and Mother couldn’t get a friend, I’d get to go sometimes. Mother was a superstar at home. Dad was always at work. Mom was a great cook, attended everything we all were involved in with school, and held responsible church jobs such as Stake President of Relief Society and president of the Child Study Club she belonged to. She saw us to all our lessons, performances, and took us to family gatherings in Brigham City and elsewhere. She was also a school tutor and canning specialist. In 1947, for the centennial of the LDS church there was a big drama thing and I was asked to try out for this play called, On Borrowed Time, and I got the part. I was 10 years old and had the lead role as “Pud,” and that kind of set me up because when I was in junior high school, Weber College called and the director said, “I saw you in this, would you like to be in this play?” John Elzy who was student body president was the lead and it was called All Wilderness. In 33 eighth grade, I got to go to Weber College to be in this Eugene O’Neill play which I found out later was kind of mature. I didn’t know what was going on, I liked it and had a good time. When I studied it in college I thought, “Well, that was a little risqué for those days.” It kind of set me up for college because the theater people knew I was coming when I got up there. JW: This is one of my favorite pictures of you in the play Blossom Time. (App. 58; 1956 Acorn) DJ: Do you know what David got his Ph.D. in? Ask him. JW: What is your Ph.D.? DKJ: Theater and Motion Picture Directing. JW: Of course. DKJ: At Weber, I received an Associate’s Degree and graduated with High Honors and a “Block W” pin. At BYU, I got a radio and television degree, then a M.A. in theater as well. Then, I earned a Ph.D. at the University of Utah. DJ: I must say, David is a great performer and he has performed and sung around the world. He went with the “Curtain Time USA,” BYU program around the world and he took a theater group to Vietnam during the Vietnam War. So, the things he did at Weber, he just expanded on worldwide and spent his whole career in the movie and film business. He was involved for 25 years with all the early BYU films including his own award winners. 34 DKJ: Thank you, Dee, you’re very kind. We all sound like our father. When Dad wasn’t around and we’d answer the phone people would say, “Hebe.” We’d say, “No.” We’re all tenors and guess who we got it from. JW: I was wondering why you don’t all sing barbershop together, but I guess it’s because you are all tenors. DKJ: We all sound like our fraternal grandmother. She had a low voice, and that’s where we get the timber from. It was a very distinctive thing. In Blossom Time, Heber Jentzsch, was the lead and he had a great baritone voice. He was a very good singer. When the picture in the paper came out there was a whole page about Blossom Time in the Ogden Standard Examiner and Kay Stanfield was on my knee and we were big in the front and he was in the back. Heber Jentzsch is interesting because he was from a polygamist family and not treated well by everyone here. We got along just great, but he later became the head of the church of scientology for over 15 years. He has a very interesting background. JW: Here you are in the student body election. (App. 59; 1957 Acorn) DKJ: We sang, Getting To Know You. We thought that kids are kind of bored when the student body president was introduced, and Joen England said, “We’ve got to do something fun.” So, we sang and danced. JW: Are you tap dancing or just dancing? DKJ: Just dancing. I didn’t tap dance. JW: Of course, you were on the social committee. What does it mean when you are chosen as AMS’ Outstanding Man? (App. 60-62; 1957 Acorn) 35 DKJ: Every year they picked a man and a girl. I was going with Kathleen Giles quite a bit and she was Outstanding Girl. DJ: That’s Associated Men Students and he was the outstanding man o. campus, let’s face it. DKJ: I did a lot of different activities. I sang in the choir, played flute in the concert band, and was in a lot of activities, but I think the reason I got the Outstanding Man award was because my friend was Monty Shupe and he was in charge of the social committee. He had a lot of swing on campus and I think that he really must have promoted me. DJ: There were a lot of girls that thought he was cute. DKJ: Well, yeah. Kathleen Giles Hansen, Joen England Humphries and many of us have stayed friends to this day. JW: What are some notable things on campus or professors that you particularly admired? DKJ: Leland Monson, Marva Gregory, Dello Dayton and Walter Buss. I admired so many of them. When I told my wife about my swimming teacher, she almost died and said, “That is terrible. I’ve never heard anything like it.” The only thing I didn’t understand about Weber College was that in the men’s gym, you didn’t swim with trunks. We swam au natural. My wife said, “The teacher must have been a pervert. That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard.” I said, “They did it before we came and they did it after.” We found out that’s what they did at Harvard and other schools and she said, “I don’t believe that.” 36 JW: This is new information to me. DJ: Didn’t you know that? Weber gym was used for the businessmen and they used to swim nude all the time. JW: It was a men’s only club, I’m assuming? DJ: It had men’s only hours and women wore their suits as far as I know. DKJ: Sometimes we’d hear girls in there. DJ: We would hear little titters from the balcony with falsetto voices. They weren’t male titters. At that point, we’d be a little careful. DKJ: That was interesting. I was at Weber when they put the big Weber sign out on the front entrance to campus and I’ve got a picture for you of us on the rock wall. In fact, it was in a Weber correspondence that was sent to the alumni last week. There I am holding hands with Sandy Weaver right in the front and I can name about 90 percent of the people that were there that day. It was historic and we were there for history. We saw the whole campus change. We saw the Edvalson Dairy go, we saw the Beus’ Place go, the Ferrin’s home and everything changed. There was a road that went up around and came out where the Alumni office is up there, but it went around and started by the pond. That’s where we would go horseback riding. In the wintertime, Dee and Hugh would pull us on the back of the cars or trucks with our sleds. It was a great time. There was an English walnut tree, and I’d go up there in the fall and gather those up and keep them. It was a great time. My Dad had horses and when they leveled the playing field for a football stadium, I would go up there with Ronald Halvorson who had a 37 horse. Ron Halvorson and I would race. He had some pretty good horses, but Dad’s horse beat them all. It was great running south, but running north he was hard to stop. One day, I beat Ron nearly every time and my horse was getting tired so I thought, “One last time.” We went north and Duke wouldn’t stop, when we got to the end of the field he didn’t stop, and kept running all the way down to 36th Street to Harrison Boulevard. I thought I was going to be killed because Harrison was a busy street. I thought he slipped on the concrete, but some guy yelled and said, “Heber!” He ran right past the station down to the barn. That was the closest I ever came to dying. Dad said, “Why didn’t you pull him back?” I said, “Dad, his mouth was hurt and I tried, but he wasn’t going to stop until he got home. That was an interesting experience I had there. I loved Weber and we all loved Weber. Our parents supported us. They went to all of the things we were in like plays, musicals… HJ: Boxing matches. DKJ: Those were held down at the roller rink downtown on 24th Street. I’ve remained friends with a lot of these people to this day and when I see them we’re close because there weren’t many people in our class so we got to know everyone that wanted to be known. None of us lived on campus then, so we came from all over, but we are still quite close. JW: So you still have Weber ties? I’m guessing you still come back to reunions with friends. DKJ: I used to, often. 38 DJ: We need more of that. DKJ: I came to Shep’s thing for the 50th reunion. Joen England came, and I was the MC to our 50th class anniversary and on that committee. Over the years, Joen England has kept the group close from all over. It was wonderful to be here at that time and we did fun things. Excelsior and Phoenix really kind of went at each other and we did a lot of nutty tricks the year Monty Shupe was here. One year, Otyokwa and Excelsior were holding an assembly and a guy named Darwin Vandergraff was the custodian on lower campus. Phoenix went down late the night before and we took locks from the lockers in the gym and locked the curtains open. Right in the middle there was a trap door where things could come up and we took that and hid it. The show was nearly a disaster the next day. At our next dance, the “Cream of Weber,” a pun on a local dairy of the same name, they had barking dogs down in the White City. The best one was the last one we did and then we got in trouble. We went up to the Rainbow Gardens swimming pool for a party and someone dropped that dye they used from airplanes to mark a ship in trouble in the ocean into that pool while they were swimming. They thought that was so fun and for three days people came to school with the yellow dye everywhere. Of course, the police got involved and Rainbow Gardens had damages, so the guy that did it had to pay several hundred dollars to have it cleaned up. That was the best or worst of the campus club capers, but they ended there because it was getting too destructive. There was a lot of club rivalry in those days. No one ever got the better of Phoenix though because Monty was very creative. I had a really interesting career, but I really learned a lot here at 39 Weber. H. E. D. Redford was here for the first year when I was here and he was actually the head of my Ph.D. committee at the University of Utah. I love being here and it was wonderful that you would take the time to listen. We are all so different, but all had wonderful growing experiences at Weber. JW: Weber saw a lot of changes in moving from one campus to the next, and for each of you, your time spent here was very different. DKJ: Our family had many personal Weber friendships. President David O. McKay was a great friend of my father’s. He would stop in our gas station in his big blue Buick on Saturdays. H. Aldous Dixon, he lived up 36th Street and I got to home teach him for a year, which I loved. Bill Miller had daughters that we all had crushes on. Donna was my crush when I was in the second and third grade and she was a foot taller than I was, but she didn’t care. I could walk from Birch Creek School right to their house for lunch and we’d eat together. It was a wonderful time. We love these good people that were presidents of the university and we love Weber. It did us well as a family. DJ: I’d like to add something about Dad. We’ve talked about ourselves an awful lot, and talked about Dad, but he was really a special person. When I read that excerpt about the great people that might come out of Weber, I think the real strength of Weber is in the lives of regular people. Weber made its imprint on them too. Dad never aspired to fame and fortune. He never held high positions in the Church until the final one when he was called as Patriarch, which is probably the one of most special callings in the Church. It’s a lonesome calling, but he did that for years. 40 When the folks went down to BYU to go back to school, they had too several kids still in college, so he went back to work. He was the head custodian of Helaman Halls for many years. This is an interesting reflection. I’ve lived overseas for 18 years in a lot of different places and traveled a lot and it was amazing the people that I’d run into that all knew Dad. I’ll just give you several examples. I was in Washington D.C., and the partner of Deloitte & Touche said, “You’re Dee Jacobs, I used to push a broom for your dad.” He went on and on about the positive impressions Dad made on students. Dad loved kids and he loved young people. He took care of them. I was in the Bay area and I met a well-known chemist, civic and church leader and he said, “When I was a kid, we’d all come and fill our bike tires up at the gas station and hang around Heber. When I got a little older I’d come down with twenty-cents to buy a gallon of gas for the car to go on a date. Your dad would always say, “Now Grant, remember who you are and you be a good boy tonight and don’t do anything you shouldn’t.” We were living in Denmark and very prominent apostle said, “Your dad is one of my heroes.” The university president at BYU in Hawaii said, “I pushed a broom for Heber.” I guess one of the greatest tributes is that I always thought of Dad as being the kind of person as when the Savior described Nathaniel, “He is a man without guile.” What you saw was what you got. You’d get some corny jokes sometimes, but you’d get a lot of genuine friendship and kindness. I think one of the nicest tributes I have ever heard about Dad was when I was in Moscow and was introduced to some American businessmen. One said, “Your dad was the 41 first person that ever treated me like a person. Up until then, I was always just a kid. Your dad treated me like a person.” I think that’s what Dad did. It came so natural to him. That was Heber Jacobs, and we love him very much and are very delighted that we are his kids. His sense of humor was almost automatic. After a broken hip, he was lying in the care center in Provo, feeling pretty good. Our youngest daughter went to visit and she was rubbing his feet. She said, “Grandpa, when I come next time I’ll bring my toenail clippers because your toenails are quite long.” Dad turned to her and said very seriously, “Oh Diana, don’t do that!” He was 95 years old and this was two days before he died. She asked, “Why grandpa, what’s the matter?” He said, “How will I scratch my back?” That was Heber Jacobs. JW: Thank you. Thank you all for being here, this has been wonderful. DKJ: It’s been our pleasure, thank you for having us. DJ: It has been fun. 42 1 Appendix 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62