Rufus Jacoby, 96; Industrial Arts Teacher, Silversmith
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Rufus Jacoby, 96, who taught industrial arts at Washington's  Coolidge High School from 1940 to 1967 and developed a robust silversmithing business specializing in chalices, died July 31 at the Casey House hospice in Rockville. He had congestive heart failure. Mr. Jacoby learned the silversmithing trade from English and Swedish craftsmen during his early Coolidge career and transferred those skills to the classroom.
He also taught jewelrymaking and silversmithing at a Catholic University night school program from 1948 to 1970 as well as at Suitland High School and Beltsville's High Point High School before retiring in 1976.
He owned and operated a side business of silversmithing and made several hundred liturgical chalices. His silver designs appeared in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art and other museums and exhibits.
Starting in the mid-1970s, he made wood his primary medium, telling one interviewer,  "All of a sudden I got weary of hammering silver."
Mr. Jacoby was a native of Reamstown, Pa., and a 1935 graduate of Penn State, where he also received a master's degree in education in 1938. He was in the John Hay Fellowship program at Yale University in the early 1960s.
He was a former president of the D.C. Industrial Arts Teachers Association.
He was a Silver Spring resident and member of University Park Church of the Brethren.
His wife of 52 years, Edith Frantz Jacoby, died in 1989.
Survivors include five children, Constance Southerly of Morgantown, W.Va.,Ronald Jacoby of Hedgesville, W.Va., Ruth Raine of Grayslake, Ill., Susan Jacoby of Erie, Pa., and Deborah Walker of Naples, Fla.; a sister; nine grandchildren; 10 great-grandchildren; and two great-great-grandsons.
-- Adam Bernstein