EDITORIAL: Harry Jeanes' patriotism, public service legacy
Historians tell us that some claims about the “Greatest Generation” are exaggerated when put alongside the facts. But the lives of such individuals as Waco civic leader J. Harry Jeanes also remind us that the best of that generation not only endured all that the Great Depression and World War II could hurl at them but spent many years afterward trying to ensure that subsequent generations had it better.
Look around. You’ll see diverse evidence of Jeanes’ impact — everything from the Waco Symphony Orchestra to the Waco Boys Club to the Harry and Anna Jeanes Discovery Center, centerpiece of the Mayborn Museum Complex. For years, if you showed up to help with one civic cause or another, Jeanes was already there — and in some leadership role.
Jeanes served as a Baylor University regent for 18 years and regent emeritus since 1990, during which time he helped oversee great and sometimes painful changes as Baylor grew in scope and size to what it is today.
Some will recall Jeanes, a gentle, soft-spoken presence around town, receiving a Bronze Star for his role in helping coordinate the invasion of Iwo Jima in 1945 — even if it took nearly 58 years for the government to realize it had let the entire matter slip through the cracks when he was first recommended for the honor. Only a casual remark set in motion efforts to right this wrong. In 2003, when Jeanes was 90, he got his medal.
Jeanes, whose staunch work ethic is reflected in his 51-year career at First Federal Savings and Loan of Waco, died Thursday at age 98. If there’s a message to consider at his memorial service at 9:30 a.m. today at Wilkirson-Hatch-Bailey Funeral Home, it’s that one’s patriotism and public service are best measured in deeds, not in words, and that the focus should be on benefiting generations yet to come. To that degree, J. Harry Jeanes is still very much with us.
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