“It’s like … a city!” Harry Zide, his eyes open wide, tells his best friend, Hy Goldman, as their bus rumbles along Charles E. Young Drive. It’s a warm summer’s day and the campus is bustling with activity. “There are so many people walking,” he marvels.
Summer programs are in session, and there are groups of prospective students taking campus tours, but Zide and Goldman are not here for a freshman orientation.
Though they very well could be. For the souls of the six Bruins taking a guided tour of their alma mater are as young and curious as in the days when they were students wandering about what was then called the Southern Branch of the University of California. These are Pioneer Bruins, UCLA alumni who spent at least one year at the old Vermont Avenue campus (now home to Los Angeles City College) before the Westwood site opened in 1929. And on this day in late June, some are touring the sprawling, 419-acre university grounds for the first time.
While students today might walk right past without noticing, a stop at Founders’ Rock, just north of Murphy Hall, brings back vivid memories for the Pioneers. The 75-ton granite boulder was hauled from Perris, Calif., for the formal dedication of the chaparral-covered Westwood campus on Oct. 25, 1926.
“This rock was the only thing here,” says Sherman Grancell ’30, president of the Pioneer Bruins, who piled his classmates into his Model-T Ford to witness the dedication ceremony 76 years ago. “There was dirt and weeds and Founders’ Rock.”
Chimes in Holly Halsted Balthis ’29 — the oldest living Rose Queen — “Has it been defaced by USC yet?”
While some traditions — like the UCLA-USC rivalry — are alive and well, others have gone by the wayside in recent years. This October, the campus is bridging the gap between once and future Bruins by reinstating festivities like the Homecoming Parade and Founders’ Day.
“The Alumni Association is reinvesting in tradition,” says Keith Brant ’83, M.A. ’88, Ph.D. ’95, executive director of the UCLA Alumni Association and assistant vice chancellor of Alumni Relations. “We feel that today’s students don’t have an appreciation for what happened in the past. Part of that is our own fault for not investing more resources in telling students about the history of the campus.”
Today, there are 482 Pioneer Bruins — the majority in their 90s, some older — living in Southern California. Many spiritedly attend the Bruin Pioneer Reunion each fall. (This year’s will be Nov. 10.)
“Their pride in being a Bruin really inspires me,” says Andrew Shaw ’02, who leads the tour. “They are so loyal and excited about being back on campus that it motivates me to remain active and to stay in touch.”
The Pioneer Bruins’ memories of attending UCLA in its early years are precious — and a far cry from those of more recent Bruins. Imagine, for example, taking a 7-cent trolley ride to get to campus. Or being the only female in your class. Or, if you are a frosh guy, having to wear a beanie, or a green button that says “Fresh” if you are a frosh girl. Picture a graduation ceremony in the Hollywood Bowl.
“I remember walking down the Bowl steps in my cap and gown, looking down at my feet so I wouldn’t fall,” recalls Goldie Jacobson Moss ’29.
Moss was the only woman enrolled in a parliamentary law class. As a joke, her male classmates elected her Sergeant-at-Arms. “They would say to me, ‘Sergeant-at-Arms, it’s too warm in here, can you open the window?’” Moss recalls. “Or ‘Sergeant-at-Arms, it’s too cold, can you close the window?’ I went along, they were only teasing.” Women’s suffrage had been in effect less than a decade. “I started coming to class a little bit late because they were telling dirty jokes all the time,” Moss says. “It’s not that I didn’t enjoy them, I just thought I shouldn’t be there.”
Frosh men also had to undergo their own rites of passage. Zide, who took premed classes at UCLA from 1926–’29, says he defiantly refused to buy a required beanie — “That was the only smart thing I did,” he says with a laugh — to avoid being hazed. But being found out could have brought down the wrath of upperclassmen. How did he manage to keep a low profile? As an ROTC cadet, Zide wore his uniform to school. “Maybe that did it,” he says.
Students today can find entertainment a few minutes away from campus in Westwood Village or the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. In the mid-’20s, the Cocoanut Grove at the now-closed Los Angeles Ambassador Hotel was the premier nightspot. Tuesday evening was celebrity night, and such headliners as Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra — he was the bandleader who commissioned George Gershwin to write “Rhapsody in Blue” — Bing Crosby, Harry Barris and other members of the Rhythm Boys graced the stage with songs from the Jazz Age like “It Had to Be You.”
“Our toes were tapping, our thumb and middle finger were snapping,” Balthis says. “And to think that we knew every word to every song.”
The Grove, Balthis continues, was the place to be. “Every well-known band of the day was playing at the hotel. You felt very special when you were there, mingling with the stars.” The ladies carried dance cards hung from their wrists with a tassel — Balthis still has hers saved in a scrapbook. It was Prohibition, and while women drank punch, the men secretly sipped liquor from silver flasks. Dinner following dancing was not de rigueur back then. Instead, Balthis says, a couple, usually on a double-date, would go have a “goopy sundae” at the Pig ‘N Whistle or C.C. Brown’s on Hollywood Boulevard.
Those long-ago times may sound romantic, but they were anything but easy.
“We were all poor back then,” Grancell says. “But nobody knew any different.” It was the Great Depression. To get by, students would take any job they could find. Grancell worked as a drugstore soda jerk, earning 50 cents an hour during the summer, and he worked a 10-hour shift one night per week during the school year.
Goldman ’33 took a couple years off from school to work as a bookkeeper in a potato chip factory and selling magazines door to door. “Anything for a dollar,” Goldman says. “But a dollar bought a heck of a lot. A person making $20 a week was able to support himself very modestly.”
Twenty dollars also would cover all fees — including admission to sports events — for a semester at the college, Grancell says. Since there were no residence halls, many students took the red trolley to campus. Zide lived in Boyle Heights and took three streetcars to get to the end of the line at the Vermont campus. Some women were able to find places to live through the Helen Matthewson Club, named for the first dean of women students, Helen Matthewson Laughlin, who helped find housing for working women so they could continue their studies.
As the tour bus continues its passage through campus, Shaw, the tour guide, explains, “The pavilion we’re passing on your right is named Bunche Hall, for Ralph Bunche.”
“He was a good basketball player,” Grancell interjects.
“He was a great basketball player,” Shaw says. “And then he was undersecretary general of the United Nations and won the Nobel Peace Prize.”
“He was in my class,” adds Zada Pierce Folz-Evans ’27.
“Was he really? Wow,” Shaw says, pausing for a moment to absorb the fact.
The day is loaded with similar name-dropping — names that in the minds of many generations of Bruins are more closely linked to buildings on campus than to the actual people behind them. Even a tour guide, who knows more about the campus’s history than the average Bruin, can be surprised.
“I’m used to saying the names of buildings over and over again, but the Pioneers give me a picture of the faces that go with the names,” Shaw says. “They’re not just random things; they have a lot of meaning and personal history attached to them. When I mention Kinsey Hall, and one of them says, ‘He was my physics professor’ — that is amazing!”
For some Bruins, Rieber Hall harkens memories of dormitory life. But for the Pioneers, the name brings back the memory of Charles Henry Rieber, professor of philosophy and first dean of the College of Letters and Science (1921–’36).
“Dean Rieber was a very handsome, imposing gentleman with white hair, and he always wore a beautiful gray suit,” Goldman says. “One thing I’ll always remember about him: He once said that the mark of a gentleman is cleaning the washbasin after using it in the lavatory.”
As the Pioneers approach Dickson Plaza, the green swatch bounded by the campus’ four original buildings — Powell Library and Royce, Kinsey and Haines halls — the emotion bubbles. “This looks familiar,” Goldman says, smiling ear to ear. “Now I know where I am.”
Inside Powell Library, the Pioneers are given a tour by College Librarian Eleanor Mitchell, who offers them both a glimpse of the old and a peek at the future. They warmly touch the old brick walls in the basement that were once the exterior of the building. They check out the 24-hour study rooms and the College Library Instructional Computing Commons. “When we were here, we never even learned to use a typewriter,” Moss exclaims.
It is lunchtime at the Faculty Center. During their meal, the Pioneers reminisce about classes they took at UCLA and it is easy to imagine one is listening to a group of 18-year-old freshmen chatting about their professors. One of the most memorable instructors was Evalyn Thomas, a woman given to wearing heavy white face powder, high-collared dresses and who taught Shakespeare, Greek drama and public speaking and directed the school’s annual Greek drama.
“I remember our voice lessons in Evalyn Thomas’ class: ‘ma-za-ska-ah,’” Balthis enunciates. “She always used to make us practice saying that.”
“She was weird,” Moss interjects.
“But I liked her,” Goldman says.
“That was so far away and long ago,” Moss adds.
“Just like yesterday!” Balthis says.
