History
Harold Valentine Jacobs
Harold Valentine Jacobs was born in New York City in 1888, and attended schools in New York City. He lived in the borough of Brooklyn and attended PS 32 and recollected that the neighborhood was a great place for everyone to play baseball except for the next-door neighbor's kid who kept banging on a piano, a kid named Aaron Copeland.
Upon graduation from high school in the spring of 1906, he developed an interest in accounting and, therefore, entered New York University's School of Commerce, Accounts and Finance in the program, which led to the Bachelor of Commercial Science degree. During the day he worked as a Junior Accountant in the Wall Street area for the firm that became Peat, Marwick, Mitchell and Company (KPMG).
His skills in accounting were immediately put to use after enlistment for World War I that began for him in October, 1917. He held various positions in the General Accounting Office during his 14-month assignment in Paris.
After discharge, with the rank of Sergeant in May of 1919, he returned to his bride whom he had left after only three months of marriage. Civilian life brought two rewards: a son in 1920 and his CPA Certificate in 1923. He worked for a number of accounting firms including Peat, Marwick, Mitchell and Company, but shortly decided to go into private practice. He and his wife, Rose, a first grade teacher all her professional life, retired to Florida in 1962. Rose, incidentally, is the "Rose" referred to in "The Rose of Delta Sigma Pi." After she died there in July of 1970, he moved north to join his son, James, and his family, in Monticello, New York. He died there in July of 1972. His son, James, was initiated as a member of Delta Sigma Pi by the Zeta Psi Chapter at the State University of New York at Albany in 1971.
In a letter written to his son in 1966, after attending the installation of Zeta Phi Chapter at Florida Atlantic University, in Boca Raton, he wrote, "after fifty-nine years of effort, the ideals of the Founders for a fraternity made of members regardless of race, creed, or color has come to pass. As one of the originators of his fraternity, and the ideas expressed and implied in the original Constitution and Bylaws, I can feel that I have accomplished something in this small world."
