# “The Weber | Remember’ by J. Smith Jacobs class of 1928 s long as I can remember as a | facility with great enthusiasm. The modern basketball facilities, locker child, there was someone in rooms, beautiful ballroom, modem our family attending Weber. showers, steam room, swimming pool First, it was Weber Academy, then it and large foyer all contributed to was Weber Junior College. improved curricular and extra-curricuOlder brothers and sisters had lar programs and the potential of the attended regularly enough that in the school. Sixty-three years ago, the fall of 1926, when I enrolled, John Q. Weber Gymnasium was a great boost Blaylock introduced me to the first to Weber College and the city of class I attended by saying, “This is Ogden. Smith Jacobs, the last of the thirteen The fall of 1926, I enrolled at Jacobs’ children, most of whom I have Weber. Heber was in England on a taught at Weber.” mission, and Rigby and I attended one Any youngster could never forget quarter together. In order to enroll, I the excitement of being brought up in had to get a job and the only one a family of five older sisters and two President Aaron W. Tracy could offer older brothers who went to school at me, was a part time custodian. My Weber Academy or Weber Jr. College. job was to sweep the Moench and There were plays, courses, sports Biological Science buildings every events and activities galore that always evening and to mop the halls and clean seemed to involve us all somehow. windows, as time permitted, on Excitement reigned and I was imSaturdays and holidays. For this pressed at an early age with the service, I received my tuition and beauty, vitality and charisma of my twenty-dollars a month. (It averaged sisters’ friends. out to twenty-two cents an hour.) I remember such early day Wallace Jones assisted with other basketball heroes as Clyde, Claude and custodial duties throughout the year. Ray Lindsay, “Bonsey” Jones and Pete It proved to be an interesting, if Kasius. Then, there was a band leader not lucrative, experience. Half the by the name of Nichols, whose son, time, the fumes from Dr. Lind’s “Red” Nichols later became a nationlaboratory would filter throughout the ally known trumpet player and bandbasement and steal up to the main leader. floor. But that wasn’t as bad as the The rivalry between Weber times club initiates draped strips of Academy and Ogden High School was limburger cheese across the hot keen, and often erupted into student radiator in the main hall. Then, there confrontation. Rival buildings were were the times that delightful scounsometimes painted with big “O”’s and drels kicked my piles of damp sawdust “Ws, and once a bilious cow was back up the floor I had just swept, tethered in the main hall of Weber “Oh, Katie, you rascal!” overnight, much to the discomfort of Also, President Tracy had fortythe students and custodians the next day. nine heavy metal wood desks that he My sisters were active in class and student-body offices at Weber. Mary (Wilson) was vice-president while there. They were also active in drama and chorus. I’m sure everyone knew the Jacobs girls while they attended Weber. Later, Heber and Rigby went to Weber. Heber was there the year they changed from Weber Academy to Weber Junior College and was active just couldn’t find a final resting place as cheerleader and in drama and In the fall of 1926, J. Willard Marriott joined the Weber staff as musical productions. Rigby attended after graduating from Ogden High School, Weber’s second year as a junior college. He also served as a cheerleader aid was active While I was attending Junior High (1921-24) the foundation walls of Weber in drama. Central deep Gymnasium were constructed. Weber Junior College welcomed the new gymnasium for. Wallace and I moved them from Hinchcliff’s attic room to Lind’s basement hall, to Croft’s science building back to the top attic room that year. We earned “salt” working for Weber in those days. (Wallace Jones became student body president and I served as athletic manager the following year. Nothing snooty about Weber then, either.) financial secretary and assistant to President Tracy. I had known him before, as he had hired Rigby and his brother Paul to go out selling woolen goods for a couple of summers previously. That was the way Willard had financed his way through the Universityof Utah. Willard was hard working and thorough and some of us Ps Students study in the library of the Moench Building in the late 1920's. ihae i‘ were sorry to see him go back to Washington D.C. to gamble on making a go of his hamburger and root beer shop. However, we were happy to see that he did all right in the end. Few college students today could classical importance of education and it took its prominent place to remain there as long as the college was there. For two quarters in 1927-28, I just east of the Gym. served as athletic director under It was part of the property bought earlier by the Church. No question, it was small, inadequate and unpretentious, but it was the best we had and we appreciated and enjoyed it as a student rendezvous. Professor Harvey L. Taylor became a friend who used to accompany me on my rounds through the Moench building, chatting and being Merlon Stevenson. The spring quarter, I had to drop out to work on the family farm. However, during those two quarters I attended, I had a truly great experience working with the athletes and coaches. Our football trip to Dillon, Montana and to Rexburg, Idaho, was the most fun trip I had ever taken and going with twenty-two fine athletes and friends even made it friendly as I worked. He had attended Weber with my sister Mary, and better. treated me almost like family because of this association. Dr. Wayne B. Hales, Dr. Whitney Young, Merlon Stevenson, and Eva Browning were just “frosting on the cake.” It was a great experience! Our football team won all five of its regional games to complete its fifth consecutive year as intermountain junior college football champions and we tied Ricks College for the division basketball championship, winning six of eight games. That was a record we could be proud of. I’ve never seen a coach of any sport, anywhere, that I respected, others of the staff with whom I had a close affinity. They were great friends as well as being great teachers. President Tracy upon occasion asked me to drop my work and come into his office for a chat. He was interested in what I wanted to do and to be, and often asked me searching questions that required some thought. It was largely because of his influence upon me through these talks that I chose to go into the field of English and later taught it. As I grew up, Apostle David O. McKay and Dr. Adam S. Bennion, Superintendent of Church schools, played a part in my life. They spoke quite frequently at Ogden events and I achievement. was happy to be at Being with Coach Stevenson and “Monk” Halliday for that long was admired, and loved as much as I did Coach Merlon Stevenson. He was as great a “boys’ man” as he was a coach. He was character and quality from the word “go”. After spending thirty-nine years in public education I have concluded that a school can be no better than the teachers it has in it. Weber Academy, and Weber Junior College were great schools because they had great teachers in the classrooms, library, and office. I could go right down the 1926-28 Weber when they sii!{ came around to see us and to speak to us. TRE devotionals held regularly were a reai inspiration to many of us who attended roster of teachers and tell you many Weber. While I was at Weber, the school splendid things about all of them. That’s the kind of people they were. There-was never a more select teach- received an oil painting of David O. ing staff ever-assembled in the minds of many of their students,.and I’m included in that number. McKay, who was a former president of Weber Academy. This picture was hung at the landing between floors and I loved Weber. I met some of the finest people while there I have ever had the privilege to know, and some of I enjoyed viewing it each day as I the best friends I’ve ever had. went my rounds. sixty years can’t dim the enthusiasm I always felt for the staff, student body, Another “event” occurred when : President Tracy it represented the we greeted the College Inn that opened visualize the enthusiasm with which considered them both as being men of exceptionally fine character and Football (above left) was added to the college in 1919, and by the early 1930's had become a major sport. Heber Jacobs (above right) displays purple pants he wore as a cheerleader. on the front of the Moench building. It was not, to some of us, a remarkable statue, particularly well done, but to President Tracy commissioned a statue of a classically draped female figure to be place in the recessed cupola topped space beneath the name of the college Even and for the deep spiritual significance of the institution that has done so much for so many people through the ensuing years.