Occidental College - La Encina Yearbook (Los Angeles, CA)

Page 16 text:

the two main wings of Bullock ' s Department Store was once used as a straight-a-way by the Occidental trackmen! Personal losses borne in the fire, and the failure of the Board of Trustees to approve of his financial program for the college caused Rev. Condit to give up his office of President for a pastorate in the Northwest, and his difficult position was filled by Rev. Guy W. Wads- worth late in August of 1897. In that paragraph telling of Rev. Wadsworth ' s resignation. Dr. Cleland not only pays fine tribute, but offers a brief summation of the college ' s progress in the years of his leadership. All concerning those years is not told here for space is limited. Friends made by the school and who made it what it is today are passed over. Trials, tribu- lations, successes, and the heat of the so-called Occidental spirit are hinted at only in the mute evidence of prosaic facts. Honor, where honor is due remains a part of The History oi Occidental College . . . Now, for a flight of years. In August of 1905, Dr. Guy W. Wadsworth resigned— His devotion and effectiveness were reflected in the growth of the college during the eight years of his administration — a growth evidenced by the development of the new campus in Highland Park, the erection of three large buildings, the establishment of a substantial endowment fund, and a great increase in faculty personnel and student enrollment. When Dr. Wadsworth became presi- dent in 1897 there were eight instructors on the faculty, nine students in college and thirty- eight in the academy. When he resigned there were twenty-four members of the faculty, one-hundrcd-and-eight students in the college and one-hundred-thirty-four in the academy. In its resolution of regret over Dr. Wadsworth ' s resignation the Board said, He has followed the vicissitudes of the college through darkness as well as sunshine, sacrificing his financial and personal interests, until he was unquestionably one of the most potent factors in bring- ing Occidental College from its humble beginnings to its present commanding position. To temporarily fill the chair left vacant by Dr. Wadsworth, Rev. Wm. S. Young was appointed acting president. This position he filled with a fidelity that was his own, effectively for over a year, laboring without a salary, doing his whole duty. Then, in September, 1906, John Willis Baer assumed the reins for the college ' s guidance. Here, definitely, began a distinctive era in Occidental ' s growing. To be present at his inauguration came Benjamin Ide Wheeler, president of the University of California, David Starr Jordan, president of Leland Stanford University, and principal speaker, Robert E. Speer, secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. But what of the college life of those times that saw three presidents in a span of two years? Wliere were found those beginnings that have established the many ties with today, through names, through institutions, and through happenings? 12

Page 15 text:

incidentals ... it is a mistake to give money to the student for indiscriminate use. All such money should be furnished through the President or some other member of the faculty. Each boarder will be furnished with a blank book in which to keep his or her personal account. The semester beginning October, 1888, opened with an enrollment of forty in the college and eighty-six in the academy. In 1894 the students for the institution totaled seventy-four. In i8gi President J. M. McPherron was installed in Dr. Weller ' s place only to resign three years later. It was a heavy burden, the presidency, in those days both on private purse and mind. Two years after succession to Professor McPherron in the office of president. Rev. C. N. Condit saw the physical wealth of his institution burned. A contemporary report is filled with the tragic completeness of the catastrophe: At 11:35 ' M-j a man driving toward the college across a field from the west, saw flames bursting from the roof of the tower adjoining the chimney. He whipped up his horse and gave the alarm to the inmates. Tliere was no fire apparatus about the place, but Professor Condit, assisted by members of the faculty, formed a bucket and pitcher line, but could not get water to the tower fast enough to check the flames, which spread rapidly south and east. Meanwhile a telephone message was sent to the city for aid from the Boyle Heights fire department, but the distance of the college from the city and the absence of water made it useless for the firemen to respond. It took but a few minutes to convince all that the building was doomed, so the little time remaining was devoted to removing furniture, clothing, etc. The dormitory was on the third floor, and a number of the students saved their effects by throwing them out of the windows. It being a school holiday, many were absent, and all their belongings they had left in their rooms were destroyed . . . The only students who looked cheerful were the young men of the football team who were fortunate enough to save their football-hair. Perhaps, the greatest single beneficence that grew out of the ashes of what had been Occidental College was the realization of the loyalty of the Young family to that school. To stranded students, the home of Dr. and Mrs. Wm. S. Young was thrown open as temporary haven. And for the remainder of the year classes were held in Dr. Young ' s Boyle Heights Presbyterian Church for the rental fee of 190 yards of three-ply ingrained carpet. To quote from Dr. Cleland ' s History oi Occidental College, Before the opening of the next semester, arrangements were made to lease a part of the building formerly occupied by St. Vincent ' s College, at 614 South Hill Street in Los Angeles. Here the college held its sessions until its removal to Highland Park in 1898. One wonders how many of the tens of thousands who now daily pass Seventh and Broadway realize that the alley which separates 11

Page 17 text:

In the home of Robert G. Cleland, whieh came to be known as The House, lived a number of young men attending the college. High in the hole of a sycamore tree in the front yard nested a family of owls. From this co-incidence came the Owls who were later to become the Owl and Key fraternity, and eventually Phi Gamma Delta. Another group banded to- gether on campus assumed a popular name of Apes. Rivals they were to the Owls and later, in days far removed, rivals they remain as Alpha Tau Omega. The year 1900 emerged with eight girls in the Occidental Academy in the process of forming a secret society they chose to call the L.I.Z. Today they find perpetuation as Alphas. In igoi another group of coeds assumed the letters of D.O.T. At present their future lies in the hands of Delta Omicron Tau, though they almost became something extinct when an early annual pictured the members in daring and decollete garb which incited immediate action from a shocked faculty. Not that the Alpha ' s predecessors fared any more serenely when they saw reason to present in the college auditorium a dramatic fan fare that featured the famous athlete J. P. Hagerman surrounded in his inebriated dreams by sweethearts from a highly romantic past. To every college and university there are certain generations, particular classes, whose imprints are stamped with the imperishable die of their individuals and their activities. Such a unity was the class of 1905. Out of that graduation year came the foundation of the Asso- ciated Students Organization, the presentation of class numerals, the ivy procession at com- mencement time, and the tradition of planting each year a tree. ITiere were in that group many men whom the college remembers and still knows — Arthur Buell, Dan Hammack, Horace Cleland, Fred Schauer, Dwight Chapin, J. P. Hagerman, and Robinson Jeffers, who is now one of America ' s most outstanding poets. Reversing the accepted order from the ridiculous to the sublime, the same century ' s turning that produced the above class and its people saw marching men of quite a different mood. With a band organized to play popular funeral dirges, the night-shirt parade started tramping the streets of Highland Park to raise college spirits and the ire of the residents of the locality. Though faculty action finally banned the band, musical and night-shirt-clad, the wild souls of later yesterdays and today find solace still in spasmodic streamlined pa jama revivals. Important was the year 1911 because the Board of Trustees made three decisions, namely to discontinue the Academy, to grant the college complete freedom from Presbyterian eccle- siastical control, and to move the campus from Highland Park to its present Eagle Rock location. Certainly unique is the reason for this last move. The Highland Park home of the college was bisected by a transcontinental railroad that encountered at that particular point »3