HARVARD SILHOUETTE

Mt. Auburn Street's squat, bald, Packard-driving Benny Jacobson, owner of the Gold Coast Valeteria, is here at Harvard to stay. This is the place where he always wanted to be, so he's sticking. "I've had lots of opportunities to leave for much bigger jobs, but I couldn't do it. It's my life, here at Harvard," says Benny. Already, in less than six years he has become more a part of Harvard than some of its aging Professors, and he'll defend it, too belligerently at times, against any comer, whether from Yale or City Hall.

Back in the twenties, those years Benny longingly hopes will return he studied at Northeastern and did odd jobs around Boston, which was his birthplace. At the end of the decade he landed a permanent position with the City as constable. Now, looking back, he tosses off this part of his life as dull and unsatisfying. But it was probably these same years that gave him his big start in getting to know the "higher ups," the power boys in the City, who serve Benny so faithfully to this day. The business bug got him, however, and after selling a profitable business that he had built up, he came to Mt. Auburn Street and established the now-famous dry cleanery. For years he had had a secret hankering to come to Harvard to do some kind of work around the Square. Just why the urge was so strong he never knew.

Now he is the "lawyer," pant presser, adviser, almost second father to hundreds of Harvard men. Once, when he had only a few hours left to catch a boat to South America, he was hurriedly called by the father of a student whose son was on the way to jail for some minor offense. Some time later, the offender was back in college and Benny smiled with satisfaction when he received the cablegram of thanks. This is only one of many times that Benny Jacobson has pulled Harvard men out of the fire with his mysterious sleight of hand. But it isn't always as exciting as this. More often he is asked for advice on questions ranging from mussy suits to entangled love affairs. Three in the morning is no unusual time to get calls from any number of troubled souls in urgent distress.

Today Benny Jacobson is fast becoming Harvard's on-the-spot godfather. Nearly 12.000 grads know him, many very intimately, and others with everlasting gratitude. Anything that goes wrong at the University disturbs him as much as it does the most faithful graduate. Harvard will always be what it is today to Benny. All the talk about it never being the same after the war is "bunk" to him. Harvard will never change, it can't he says. It's too solid and fine to have to change, even if all the rest of the world does. Benny wants the same Harvard for his son to go to as other sons have had in the past, and the same Harvard he has come to love second only to his family.