Bruno E. Jacob (1899 - 1979)
    Bruno E. Jacob was born on September 9, 1899, in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, the fourth in a family of four boys.
He grew up on a farm and developed a marvelous intuition which allowed him to look at a piece of machinery, figure out how it worked and repair it as necessary.  He attended Manitowoc High School, graduating in 1918, and Ripon College, where he earned a B.A. with a major in Economics in 1922.  After graduation from Ripon College he taught social studies and coached debate at Chippewa Falls High School and later served as Assistant Professor of Speech at Ripon College.  In 1934 Bruno took a two year leave from his teaching position to earn the M.A. degree in speech from the University of Denver.

    As a college student, Bruno compiled a vest-pocket handbook entitled Suggestion for the Debater. It attained national circulation and led indirectly to the founding of the National Forensic League in 1925.  Karl E. Mundt, later United States Senator from South Dakota, also was instumental in the founding of the League and served for many years as its President.  Since 1925 the National Forensic League was the dominant interest in the life of Bruno Jacob.  In the early years his problem was to keep the National Forensic League alive; by 1969, when he retired as National Secretary, the problem had become that of trying to hold the number of chapters down to 1200 and at the same time adequately serve some one thousand or more affiliated schools.  Because of the press of business growing out of the National Forensic League activities Bruno resigned his teaching position at Ripon College in 1950 in order to devote full time to the League.  In 1953 the pressure of work occasioned by the expansion of the League required the addition of another full-time staff member and a third member was added to the staff a few years later.  Prior to these additions, Bruno had managed the entire business of running this national organization with nothing more than part-time office help from students at Ripon College and some volunteer help from members of his growing family.

    During his year as Executive Secretary Bruno typically traveled about 20,000 miles a year, mostly by automobile since he enjoyed driving.  Much of this was before the days of Interstate highways, and even when they became available he normally would avoid the Interstates in favor of the more scenic state highways and back roads.  In the 1940's he set for himself the goal of visiting every county seat in the country and documenting that visit with a postmarked postcard sent back to his family in Ripon.  His two sons were fortunate to be able to accompany him on many of these wide ranging travels.  By about 1972 he had achieved his goal and had visited and collected postcards from all 3066 county seats in the United States, including Alaska and Hawaii.
 

            Return to Richard Jacob's personal history page.

Revised August 21, 1999 by Richard Jacob.