“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. Weber Academy or Weber Jr. College. There were plays, courses, sports events and activities galore that always seemed to involve us all somehow. Excitement reigned and I was impressed at an early age with the beauty, vitality and charisma of my sisters’ friends. I remember such early day basketball heroes as Clyde, Claude and Ray Lindsay, “Bonsey” Jones and Pete Kasius. Then, there was a band leader improved curricular and extra-curricular programs and the potential of the school. Sixty-three years ago, the Weber Gymnasium was a great boost to Weber College and the city of Ogden. The fall of 1926, I enrolled at Weber. Heber was in England on a mission, and Rigby and I attended one quarter together. In order to enroll, I had to get a job and the only one President Aaron W. Tracy could offer me, was a part time custodian. My job was to sweep the Moench and Biological Science buildings every evening and to mop the halls and clean windows, as time permitted, on Saturdays and holidays. For this service, I received my tuition and twenty-dollars a month. (It averaged out to twenty-two cents an hour.) Wallace Jones assisted with other custodial duties throughout the year. It proved to be an interesting, if by the name of Nichols, whose son, “Red” Nichols later became a nationally known trumpet player and bandleader. The rivalry between Weber Academy and Ogden High School was keen, and often erupted into student confrontation. Rival buildings were sometimes painted with big “O”’s and “Ws, and once a bilious cow was tethered in the main hall of Weber overnight, much to the discomfort of not lucrative, experience. Half the time, the fumes from Dr. Lind’s laboratory would filter throughout the basement and steal up to the main floor. But that wasn’t as bad as the times club initiates draped strips of limburger cheese across the hot radiator in the main hall. Then, there were the times that delightful scoundrels kicked my piles of damp sawdust back up the floor I had just swept, “Oh, Katie, you rascal!” the students and custodians the next day. Also, President Tracy had fortynine 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 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.) 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 aiid was active in drama. While I was attending Central Junior High (1921-24) the deep foundation walls of Weber Gymnasium were constructed. Weber Junior College welcomed the new gymnasium 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 University-of Utah. Willard was hard working and thorough and some of us ——— Students study in the library of the Moench Building in the late 1920's. 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 visualize the enthusiasm with which we greeted the College Inn that opened classical took its there as For importance of education and it prominent place to remain long as the college was there. two quarters in 1927-28, I served as athletic director under 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 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. 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 Being with Coach Stevenson and “Monk” Halliday for that long was 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, admired, and loved as much as I did It was largely because of his influence Coach Merlon Stevenson. 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 great a “boys’ man” as he was a coach. He was as He was character and quality considered them both as being men of exceptionally fine character and 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. achievement. I was happy to be at Weber when they sii!i came around to roster of teachers and tell you many Weber. While I was at Weber, the school received an oil painting of David O. McKay, who was a former president of Weber Academy. This picture was hung at the landing between floors and I could go right down the 1926-28 splendid things about all of them. That’s the kind of people they were. Thera-was never a more select teaching staff ever assembled in the minds of many of their students,.and I’m included in that number. I loved Weber. I met some of the went my rounds. Another “event” occurred when President Tracy commissioned a statue finest people while there I have ever had the privilege to know, and some of the best friends I’ve ever had. Even sixty years can’t dim the enthusiasm I always felt for the staff, student body, and for the deep spiritual significance of a classically draped female figure to be place in the recessed cupola topped space beneath the name of the college of the institution that has done so much for so many people through the ensuing years. i I enjoyed viewing it each day as I purple pants he wore as a cheerleader. President Tracy it represented the just east of the Gym. 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 see us and to speak to us. TAS devotionals held regularly were a reai inspiration to many of us who attended 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 on the front of the Moench building. It was not, to some of us, a remarkable statue, particularly well done, but to 4 Older brothers and sisters had attended regularly enough that in the fall of 1926, when I enrolled, John Q. Blaylock introduced me to the first class I attended by saying, “This is Smith Jacobs, the last of the thirteen Jacobs’ children, most of whom I have taught at Weber.” Any youngster could never forget the excitement of being brought up in a family of five older sisters and two older brothers who went to school at