FORT WORTH -- It was never just about the
music.
Sure, James "Prof" Jacobsen loved watching a
band fan out across a football field during
halftime, in sync and pitch-perfect.
But something else drew him in for all those
years, all those competitions and
performances.
"He loved working with people, supporting
people," said Richard Floyd, the state's
music director for the University
Interscholastic League. "That was his
passion."
Jacobsen -- a former Texas Christian
University band director, renowned music
educator and marching band innovator -- died
Tuesday in his sleep. He was 86.
Born in 1920 in a small Colorado town,
Jacobsen was the son of a construction
equipment operator and a homemaker. In
junior high, a teacher encouraged him to
join the band, but Jacobsen's family had
little money and couldn't afford an
instrument. The teacher bought him a tuba,
which young Jacobsen played for years,
eventually winning state recognition for his
performance in high school.
Music helped Mr. Jacobsen rise above his
family's hardscrabble beginnings. None of
his relatives had graduated from college,
but Mr. Jacobsen received a scholarship to
study music at the University of Northern
Colorado.
"Music was his key to so much," said his
son, Kent Jacobsen.
After a stint in the Army during World War
II, Mr. Jacobsen became the band and choir
director at Midwestern University in Wichita
Falls.
That's where he met Wyneth Berry, a young
woman returning to college. Mr. Jacobsen saw
her one day at the university, strutted over
to her and said, "I'm the choir director.
Surely, you play a musical instrument or
twirl a baton."
She replied, "No."
She turned him down for a date three times
before eventually agreeing to go out with
him. Three months later, they married and he
adopted her young daughter, Carol. Wyneth
Jacobsen died in 1999.
"Even before talking to her, he knew they
would get married," Kent Jacobsen said.
In 1955, Mr. Jacobsen took over as the band
director at TCU.
He thought a marching band should put on a
show and began thinking of ways to do that.
He created the "moving diamond," a marching
drill that resembles a kaleidoscope.
The band performed the drill on national
television during the Cotton Bowl in 1959,
earning national recognition.
"He was an innovator, a legendary figure in
the band community," said Bobby Francis,
TCU's current band director.
Mr. Jacobsen retired from TCU in 1982, but
he continued working with the UIL to promote
and organize band competitions in the
Metroplex. He kept in touch with former
students for decades.
Just a couple of weeks before he died, Mr.
Jacobsen organized regional band
competitions in the Fort Worth area.
"He never stopped giving," said Jim
McDaniel, a longtime friend and fine arts
director in the Carrollton-Farmers Branch
school district. "He encouraged and
supported all of us."
FUNERAL
Services will be at 11 a.m. Monday at
University Christian Church in Fort Worth.
more
Published in the
Star-Telegram on 11/10/2006.
