University of Santa Clara - Redwood Yearbook (Santa Clara, CA)

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Benjamin Swig 6

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Every college and university has pride in its past — and the deeper into the soil of time its roots penetrate, the greater a university ' s pride. It is proud it has stood, that it has a time — not so mush that it ' s beard is long, but proud it has stood, proud it has endured. For, to have endured, the university must have been able to meet the challenges of its time, to meet the challenge of time. The University of Santa Clara is obviously rooted in the past. Tile roofs have their red and broun strength in the bright days of autumn, and the old adobe walls and buildings afford their shelter from winter ' s wind- whipped rains. Angelus clangs from veteran bells daily cross the campus and the quiet softness of spring ivisteria leaps quickly to some country in the heart. And yet, as subtle as the breeze that smooths from northwest to southeast in late autumn afternoons, is Santa Clara ' s foundation in a spirit which has fostered and engendered it. In glotving terms, it is The Spanish Tradition — Santa Clara, the Mis- sion University. But in hard reality it is the drive and determination of individual men possessed with a will to accomplish that has moved Santa Clara forward from a good place to fish for trout to a twentieth century university with a twentieth century mission. The spirit of Santa Clara is in the tireless funipero Serra who ignited the building of the California mis- sions, of Robert Montgomery to make the first manned flight, and more recently, of the current University President ' s decision to incorporate co- education in the Santa Clara picture. The new energy of Santa Clara is in its energetic men, not the least of whom is . . .

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Mr. Benjamin Swig, to ivhom The Redwood is respectfully dedicated, a man of whom it is difficult to be in to speak, but once begun, far more difficult to stop. His personal financial contributions have given much impetus to the new dynamism of Santa Clara. But his generosity is more profound. He is a director of the California Safety Council and the late President Kennedy ' s National Committee on Traffic Safety, a director of the American friends of Hebrew University, a member of the board of trustees of Brandeis Uni- versity, a member of the board of governors of Mary ' s Help Hospital and of Hebrew Union College, a member of the education advisory council of the Lincoln Educational Foundation, and currently chairman of the Board of Regents of the University of Santa Clara. He is a member of the board of the National Conference of Christians and Jews and has done much work in the Boys Clubs of America. Always accessible, Mr. Stvig is manifestly energetic, personable, and generously considerate, spearheading the drive for further physical ex- pansion at Santa Clara and yet taking the tirne to personally answer a note of thank you from the women who reside in the dorm named for his late wife, Mae. Working without a secretary from a typewriter on a card table in his suite in the Fairmont Hotel, Mr. Swig is engendering a Santa Clara that will not only meet the challenges of the times, but make some chal- lenges of its own. Truly he ivould foster in Santa Clarans the spirit of our late President who prophetically said in his inaugural address . . .