CPA Hall of Fame Names Auditing Advocate and Influential Educator

CPA Hall of Fame Names Auditing Advocate and Influential Educator

Homer S. Pace

Considered a pioneer of accounting education, who personally trained and inspired thousands of CPAs, Homer St. Clair Pace is a co-founder of what is now Pace University.

According to a CPA Journal article by Society member Allan M. Rabinowitz, Pace was born on April 13, 1879, in a log cabin in Rehoboth, Ohio. He held a number of jobs before he moved in 1901 to New York City to work for the Chicago Great Western Railroad. It was around this time that Pace decided he wanted to have a formal business education, receiving his high school diploma and enrolling in a CPA preparatory course. To say he found his calling is a colossal understatement.

While studying to take the CPA examination, which he passed in 1904, Pace had a difficult time finding suitable accounting literature and instruction. He resolved to do something about it, and in 1906 opened with his brother Charles a one-classroom school on Nassau Street in Manhattan that sought to prepare candidates for the New York CPA exam, the article states.

This modest venture, titled Pace & Pace, which also was an accounting firm, quickly grew from its twice-weekly lectures on accounting, law and applied economics to additional faculty and landmark text that the brothers authored and that stayed in print through the 1960s. A second location at the 23rd Street YMCA in New York City was added, and with the market on quality accounting education cornered, the two brothers watched their academic enterprise catapult to more than 4,000 students in the New York City area by 1919. By 1921, more than 50 schools nationwide were offering Pace standardized courses, according to the article.

Several years later, as schools continued to provide Pace courses through a franchise arrangement, Homer and Charles refocused their attention on their first school, which became Pace Institute. The institute eventually became Pace University in 1973, with campuses in New York City and Westchester County.

Though he never met him, Rabinowitz has an especially close connection to the educator, having won a full paid scholarship in Pace’s name to attend Pace University. The scholarship gave Rabinowitz the opportunity to attend a school he otherwise could not have, an in so doing helped forge a lifelong bond between himself and the university. Rabinowitz has taught as a professor of accounting at Pace for 42 years.

“The guy (Pace) was a brilliant man. I have never, ever heard anybody say a negative word about him,” said Rabinowitz, who nominated Pace for the CPA Hall of Fame. “In some ways, I think that I’m repaying a debt and in other ways I feel that someone who is truly deserving of this recognition is getting it.”

In addition to serving as president of Pace Institute, Pace also briefly held the post of acting deputy commissioner of what eventually became the Internal Revenue Service, and led the Society from 1924 to 1926. His firm, Pace & Pace, merged into the international accounting firm of Pace, Gore & McLaren until it dissolved in 1933, at the depth of the Great Depression.
Pace died in May 1942 at the age of 63.

To read Rabinowitz’s article, see page 6 of the February 2004 issue of The CPA Journal.

Arthur H. Carter

While a managing partner at Haskins & Sells, Arthur H. Carter was the only accountant who appeared to testify before the U.S. Senate Banking and Currency Committee during hearings on the Federal Securities Act of 1933. The act awarded CPAs the exclusive right to audit public companies; thus, Carter helped to institute one of the accounting profession’s largest legislative landmarks. When asked during the hearings who audits the accountant, Carter famously replied, “Our conscience.”

Carter joined the New York State Society of CPAs in 1919 and later led the organization as president for a three-year term beginning in 1930. He also worked with the American Institute of CPAs in a variety of roles, including that of vice president.

Carter served with distinction not only as an accountant but also as a soldier. He entered the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1901. After graduating as a second lieutenant of field artillery, he served in various posts in the United States and the Philippines before returning to civilian life in 1915. Two years later, when the U.S. entered World War I, Carter returned to the Army as a major in the Bureau of Ordnance and then as commanding officer of the Field Artillery Central Officers’ Training School in Kentucky. In 1919, he received an honorable discharge as a full colonel.

At this time, Carter joined the international firm Haskins & Sells, where he would become a partner in 1922 and then senior partner in 1927.

Carter’s work as a CPA at Haskins & Sells naturally fused with his military background when he was brought onto President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s staff as executive accountant (1941–1946), reviewing and recommending improvements in the War Department’s auditing organization and procedures.

Both the Army and the AICPA officially recognized Carter’s contributions. In WWI, the Army awarded him a Distinguished Service Medal for organizing and commanding the Field Artillery Central Officers’ Training School; in World War II, it added an Oak Leaf Cluster. The AICPA presented Carter with a scroll in recognition of his “outstanding service to his country and the accounting profession in the wartime office of Fiscal Director of the Headquarters Army Service Forces.”

Two former New York State Society of CPAs presidents whose legacies are very different but equally significant to the accounting profession have been posthumously inducted into the CPA Hall of Fame. The honor goes to Arthur H. Carter and Homer S. Pace for their lifetime achievements, vision and contributions to the profession and the larger community. They will be acknowleged by the Society at its 107th Annual Election Meeting and Dinner on May 13 at the New York Marriott Marquis Hotel in Manhattan.