People in DH&S: Jule Phoenix;

              PEOPLE IN DH&S
It is a long way from practice development to marketing, even though it might not seem so at first. Implied in the change of terms is a fundamental change in attitude and practices. And no one has had a closer look at this shift, as it affects our firm and the public accounting profession as a whole, than Jule Phoenix. He took over the direction of prac-tice development in Executive Office in 1974, under condi-tions that now seem like those of thirty years ago. He retires this June as partner responsible for the firm's marketing pro-gram, leaving an organization that was scarcely in anyone's dreams just seven years earlier.
Not everyone in business or the professions can abide deep and rapid change; it throws some into confusion and leaves others behind. Let it be said of Jule Phoenix that he seems to have had built into him the right combination of qualities that enabled him to deal with the big turn that Deloitte Haskins & Sells has made over the past few years, along with the entire profession. He kept a cool head. He was never diverted from the course that he considered right for a great firm with a distinguished past and the promise of a future of continuing distinction and excellence.
When the accounting profession, under the pressure of voices in Congress, the Department of Justice and various consumer advocates, decided in 1978 to change its rules, there was considerable doubt as to where the new practices would lead. It would now be acceptable to approach the clients of another firm. Advertising would be permitted.
Now that the smoke has cleared and the profession has been living under the new rules for several years, it is clear that Deloitte Haskins & Sells has taken them in stride. We are growing each year. Under Jule's direction the marketing de-partment in Executive Office is assisting practice offices in preparing proposals for service at a pace that leaves some of his crew breathless at times. We now issue press releases, and favorable publicity for DH&S appears regularly in many press outlets in all parts of the country. Our firm advertising is published in leading periodicals at regular intervals. The entire program is on a high plane, as befits a first-class organization with an eighty-six-year history of growth and service. It all bears the stamp of a man of high standards who has taken on any number of assignments during his years with the firm, and has always given them his conscientious best.
Julius W Phoenix, Jr. grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, the state capital, where he absorbed early in life the lessons in courtesy and diplomacy that are necessary in the worlds of politics and business. Jule's mother was active in politics, and was also executive secretary of a statewide business associa-tion; his stepfather was variously a state senator, state com-missioner of agriculture and lieutenant governor. In high school Jule took part in a dramatics club that won several awards in state competition. When he entered the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill he continued his interest in dramatics and speech. He also studied accounting and found it very much to his liking.
One incident during his Chapel Hill days stands out vividly in Jule's memory, and perhaps it was prophetic of his readiness to deal smoothly with new situations. Jule was the student announcer for a campus radio station panel discussion by professors. The scheduled topic one Sunday morning: "Will Japan Attack the United States?" The date: December 7, 1941. A few minutes before the program was to go on the air, Jule and the professors heard the dramatic news that the Japanese had attacked the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii early that morning. Hardly skipping a beat, the young student announcer and the faculty panelists switched the topic to: "Why Japan Attacked the United States."
"I suppose that we were the first panel discussion on the air devoted to that subject," Jule says now, nearly forty years after the event.
Asa member of the Naval ROTC program at the University, Jule was deeply immersed in the navigation course. This led to his becoming the navigator on a patrol craft escort in the South Atlantic after the U.S. Navy summoned him in 1944. Later he was sent to the Pacific and he was in the Philippines when World War II ended. After a few months of duty in Florida helping to mothball destroyers, Jule was discharged from the Navy in the late spring of 1946 and returned to the university for his final year of accounting studies. One other item of importance to Jule at this stage — he married Anne Weatherspoon, just as soon as the Navy made it possible, in February 1946, He had known her since high school days in Raleigh, and during his wartime absence he had written to Anne everyday.
How did Jule come to our firm? At the time, he recalls, "I
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