Frances Wisebart Jacobs, the “Mother of Denver Charities,” will become the namesake for the newest elementary school in the Denver Public Schools system.
The DPS board recently voted to name the new ECE-5 level school in honor of the woman who founded National Jewish Hospital and who was the only female founder of the Community Chest, today’s United Way.
Jacobs is also credited with founding Denver’s first free kindergarten, designed to serve the young children of working mothers.
The school that will bear her name will be located on East Maxwell Place in Denver’s Green Valley neighborhood, not far from Denver International Airport. Construction on the school began last August and it is slated to be dedicated and opened later this year.
Acknowledging that the idea came from a committee made up of volunteers and the new school’s leadership, a DPS resolution that passed on Feb. 13 said that the name “is intended to inspire our students, their families and the community-at-large to honor the legacy of community service and join together to help build strong communities where we live, work and flourish.”
Denver businesswoman and community activist Sue Allon was among those advocating for the school to be named in Jacobs’ honor. A board member at NJH, she and the hospital’s CEO Michael Salem were joined by officials from United Way in speaking before the school board last month.
Allon told the IJN this week that she has been active with National Jewish for some eight years, primarily because she is so impressed with the institution’s educational programs for chronically ill children. “That’s how I discovered Frances Jacobs,” she says, “and what she did.”
She said that the idea to name a new school after Jacobs came from discussions she had with officials of DPS, with which she is also a volunteer. She later shared the notion with leaders at NJH and United Way, who quickly got on board.
“Frances Jacobs said that National Jewish will be the finest and that everybody deserves the finest care,” Allon said. “She also said that when women barely had rights and look at what she created.
“What an amazing role model for people, especially young women. This woman cared so much for the community. I’m so proud to have a school named after her. It is a very important recognition for a member of our Jewish community who set a standard that few have ever come close to.”
Jacobs, already legendary in the history of the Denver Jewish community, seems a perfect role model for the goals cited by DPS for the new school.
Born in Kentucky in 1843, she moved to Denver with her husband in 1874 and was a tireless volunteer and community leader, particularly in charitable endeavors, until her death in 1892.
Described by a contemporary as “a frail woman with an unfailing sense of humor,” Jacobs’ philanthropic endeavors were wide-ranging, including hospitals and orphanages, and often concentrated on efforts to assist women.
“I know that whenever women lead in good work,” she told the Rocky Mountain News in 1888, “men will follow.”
In her first year in Denver, Jacobs helped found the non-sectarian Denver Ladies’ Relief Society and served as its first president. She spoke frequently on behalf of the society, raising awareness of unfair working conditions for women, the need to house women in prisons in separate quarters and the issue of homeless women.
Her dedication to charity was something Jacobs took very personally.
In 1892, already ill herself, she contracted pneumonia while delivering medicine to a sick child on a rainy night and died of the illness three months later.
The new school will not be the only memorial to her, in Denver and elsewhere. A stained glass image of her face is one of 16 windows honoring Colorado pioneers in the rotunda of the Colorado State Capitol.
She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1994.
A bronze statue of Jacobs, holding a bag of medicine and soap, reposes in the lobby of National Jewish Health, the descendant of the hospital she founded more than a century ago.
That she was highly regarded in her own day is proven by the fact that over 4,000 people attended Jacobs’ funeral at Temple Emanuel on 24th and Curtis Sts.
Copyright © 2019 by the Intermountain Jewish News
