Fingerprints in Time
Several years ago, Barbara Jacobs asked her son David Jr. what he wanted for his birthday. She was prepared to give him a trip around the world or a new car. She wasn't ready for his response. He said, "Mom, I want you to endow the Indiana University School of Music and have it named for Dad."
That was an order taller than anything Barbara had ever done before, but she wanted to honor her late husband and her children. Their $40.6 million endowment for the School of Music is the largest ever given by individuals to Indiana University. But why the School of Music and why a naming gift? The answers lie in Barbara's lifelong ties to Indiana University and the relationships that were formed as a result of those bonds.
Her devotion to IU began when she came to Bloomington as a coed to study home economics. It was here she formed lifelong friendships with her Chi Omega sorority sisters and met the great love of her life, David H. Jacobs. She wanted to marry him right after graduation, but David felt they should wait until he was more established in the world. Barbara wouldn't have it. She took a job teaching elementary school and supported them both while David and his brother built a wildly successful construction and real estate business.
Barbara always maintained close ties to the people and places she cared about, and she gave everything she could to help them. Even her relationship to the School of Music was based on her connection with others. When her middle son, David Jr., was a student at the school, he was befriended by then-dean Charles Webb and his family. David Jr. sang in the church choir where Dean Webb, who had no knowledge of the Jacobs family, played the organ. One day after church, Kenda Webb invited David Jr. to join the family for lunch. They took to each other immediately, and David Jr. became a regular guest and babysitter in the Webb home. The circle expanded when Barbara and David came for Parents Weekend, thus beginning a 33-year friendship between the Webbs and the Jacobs.
What kind of impact do people like Barbara Jacobs have on those they touch? Curt Simic, president of the IU Foundation and a dear friend of the Jacobs family, described it thus: "Barbara's gift knows no bounds in geography or time. Students who study under great IU faculty whom she has helped to attract and retain will achieve their potential because of a woman who does not know them. But she believes they will add beauty and pleasure to the entire world. Barbara's fingerprints will be on the achievements of thousands of musicians forever."
