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

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of fifty dollars a plate. Tlie loyalty of the college ' s friends and the drawing-card that Will Rogers proved to be, drew several hundred people to the affair. Then fate began to make drastic moves. Tlie morning of the Will Rogers Dinner its namesake was rushed to the hospital for an emergency operation of major seriousness. And at practically the same time President Remsen D. Bird was ordered to bed by his physician. Still the banquet was sched- uled, fifty-dollars a plate minimum and a good many of the guests in their munificence paying a great deal more. Only the tact and good humor of John Willis Bacr, the gracious spirit of Mrs. Will Rogers who left her husband ' s bed-side to attend, and the words of William S. Hart spoken in substitution for his good friend, saved the college from becoming the target of potential ill-will. It ' s nice now to have evidence of concrete existence of the Gymnasium Will Rogers was to have helped raise. And that, incidentally was the last of the major buildings to rise before the recent depression catapulted most everything but dreams of college expansion until in 1932 when the Trustees built two additional homes upon the campus, that of the dean of faculty and the comptroller. Truly, here was evidence of a college becoming a self- sufficing personality, a sanctuary rather than a productive scholastic mechanism turning out die-cast products with the help of disinterested technicians. It is interesting to note that all the eucalyptus trees which lend their tall and graceful beauty to the present campus were planted in 1914 by architect Myron Hunt at the total cost of some five dollars. They were set out from flats as seedlings and their growth has corresponded with Occidental ' s. Through all of these days that passed under the guidance of Dr. Bird and saw the erection of a complete physical campus moved many college generations. Alike were these groups in their ardent love of alma-mater, yet as different from each other as the times they were a part of. Post-war disillusionment and the sophistication of the Menken-ite era came to Occi- dental, setting new standards of morals and of conduct, bedecking itself in blatant cynicism and creating a smart set. On the surge of the boom days Occidental rode the crest of the wave that past the middle twenties did so much to create the rah-rah convention of collegiana in the minds of the great American public. Finally, too near the present to need reminiscence came the depression. Minds were suddenly serious, summer jobs a thing remembered, preparedness a byword and a law. Now emergent from financial depths of personal and institutional worry, the Occidental student sees his college beginning to stride once more booted with attainable ambition. 17

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Fowler in 1915 projected hill-climbing races up the slope back of Fowler Hall at the pro- jectile rate of eighteen miles per hour as an extra-curricular activity. The two successive years, however, showed the student mind still to be involved in more academic pursuits as Occi- dental debaters won the intercollegiate championship of Southern California without meeting a single defeat. At the same time Dr. Ward ' s production of the Greek drama, Medea, focused favorable attention upon the campus. On September 21, 1919, Occidental College lost the physical presence, though not the spirit, of one of the dearest friends an institution was ever to possess in the death of Rev. Robert W. Cleland. An issue of La Encina published near that time captured a little of the essence of his being when the editor stated: ... there has never been a day so dark that the sunshine of his presence has not brought light and gladness to the hearts of Occidental students. He was a wise man. From the San Francisco Theological Seminary in the year of 1921 came Dr Remsen DuBois Bird to become President of Occidental College. To catch a hint of all that Dr. Bird is and all that he has done is impossible, yet in three paragraphs of Dr. Cleland ' s history is suggested some of it: . . . Dr. Remsen Bird brought to the presidency of Occidental College certain qualities most needed at the time— spontaneous enthusiasm, extraordinary energy, unusual capacity to make new friends for the college, imagination, a contagious love of beauty, and a seal for contributing for the common good. Under his leadership, surrounded everywhere by new opportunities, the college outgrew the last of its adolescence and came to maturity— changed, as Burke might have said, from the gristle of youth to the hard bone of maturity. The evidence of Occidental ' s material development during this decade is furnished by the following figures: student enrollment expanded from 506 in 1921 to 753; the faculty increased from 35 to 73; and the annual budget rose from about $82,000 to $250,000. A building program of large proportions was also carried on during these years. Through- out the first decade of Dr. Bird ' s administration he had the heartening satisfaction, indeed, of watching each year a new major structure rise upon the campus. With one or two exceptions, each of these buildings represented the devotion, as well as the generosity, of some individual or family to the college. The greater part of them were built as memorials and bear names honored and beloved in the records of the college. All of them symbolize that deep interest and sacrificial spirit which springs of Occidental ' s life. Now that time has moved another decade away, amusing is an incident concerned with the campaign to raise money for the Alumni Gymnasium in 1926. Featuring Will Rogers, noted American humorist, a banquet was given at the Biltmore Hotel for the unusual fee 16

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Seeking to know of the flight of this college into its fiftieth year, and of what in that year had been accomphshed in the manner of college building, La Encina went into the president ' s office. From the administrative sanctum it emerged triumphant with a letter. Prosaic, indeed, must all words be if some of the grandness of today ' s growing, and tomor- row ' s dream are not caught in these paragraphs by Dr. Remsen Bird who in them expresses the doings of the administrators not as persons, but as a unit with a single goal. You have asked me to give you a statement with reference to the progress oi the college during this Fiftieth Anniversary year. May I say that the plan of celebration ordered by the Committee having the matter in charge began with the Commencement Program closing the year 1935-36 and carries through to the opening convocation of the year 1937-38. We set our sights with reference to the increased equipment, endowment and furnishing of the college to a general amount of % oo,ooo. It was the desire of the Administration that there should he received during this period gifts for essential buildings, endowment, campus grooming and other necessities of the college by outright subscription, bequests, trust funds, or otherwise, to an amount of % oo,ooo. At this time I may announce to you that this sum has been secured and an amount totalling considerably over the goal set without campaign and without cost. Among the outstanding significant units in connection with this planning and equipment are the following: 1. The erection of the Helen Gertrude Emmons Memorial Health Center at a cost of about % o,ooo. 2. The funds for the erection of the Belle WiJber Thorne Hall, for which an original gift was made of 1 0,000, and which has now been increased by Mr. Thome ' s generosity to 200,000. 3. The assurance that funds will be provided for the reorganization of the Central Quadrangle and the planning of the campus in the environs of Thorne Hall at an estimated cost of about 2 ,000 or ,000. 4. The addition to the campus of the property required for the athletic fields which are to be developed beyond the men ' s residence area, an acreage valued conservarively at % o,ooo, which has been presented to the college by an alumnus and trustee, Alphonzo E. Bell. 5. Addirions to endowment by the Carnegie Corporation and other friends of the col- lege to an amount of $100,000 for the permanent funds of the institution. 6. Other subscriptions and special contributions looking to the erection when the 18