Honoring Jerry Ludeke: 6 Decades of Service

ArchivesThe Bakersfield NewsletterCollege Spring 2019 Volume 18, Issue 1 Honoring Jerry Ludeke: 6 Decades of Service BC Time Capsule Opened In This Issue Mid-Century Not So Modern, 1955 BC Time Capsule ..........2-3 BC Bushwackers and the Marble Cone Fire of 1977 ....................8 Simply Sterling, Jerry Ludeke Honored For The Three Wizards and the Magic of Chemistry ...........................9 Six Decades of Service to BC .................................................... 4-5 People We Will Miss .......................................................................10 BC Choir Recording: From Wales to Yorkshire to Come See The Archives .................................................................10 Bakersfield .........................................................................................6 Want, a Poem by Dr. Jack ............................................................... 11 The Blizzard of ‘99 ........................................................................6-7 From the New Editor ...................................................................... 11 Mid-Century Not So Modern 1955 BC time capsule opened Before demolition began on the The Press, whose motto was an ad for Jack Davenport’s typewriter Campus Center early this year to “Growing With Greater Bakersfield”, company. J.C. Penney offered washable make way for the first of the many apparently thought Bakersfield slacks in a fabric called “butcher new Measure J construction projects, had grown great enough without rayon.” Food prices were minuscule: Bakersfield College administrators, needing a freeway. A front-page eggs 41 cents a dozen, lamb less than faculty and students opened the time headline shouted Freeway Monster a dollar a pound, Bisquick at 37 cents capsule placed in the cornerstone at Threatens, condemning the State a box. But wages were tiny, too: the the April 30, 1955 dedication of the Department of Transportation’s plan help wanted ads offered a waitress job Administration Building for the new to construct the Bakersfield segments for 90 cents an hour, a housekeeping BC campus. of what would become the 99 and 58 job for $30 a week, and a bookkeeping “We are leaving the home of a freeways. The lead story warned “the position for $300 a month. close relative with whom we have state wants the almost numberless Perhaps the most beloved of resided since 1913,” BC President automobiles traversing Highway 99 many people’s newspaper memories Ralph Prator wrote in the Renegade to go right through Bakersfield.” An are the comics, and in 1955, “Mark Rip published two days before the editorial below the masthead titled Trail” puffed his pipe through outdoor ceremony. “On April 30th, we shall Only Militant Citizens Can Stop dramas at the bottom of the front not be looking back but rather we shall Bureaucrats called for “militant mass Sports page. Two mainstay single panel look ahead to a new and different life. protest” against the freeways. cartoons in the Californian were “Our We feel like a relative who has at last The Californian expressed its Boarding House” and “Out Our Way,” established himself. We are creating a support for the state Feather River and “Dick Tracy,” “Gasoline Alley,” and home of our own.” Project, which would bring millions “Alley Oop” anchored the strips. All are Among the time capsule contents of acre feet of water to Kern County long gone from the Californian. lent by the President’s office to the a decade later via the California If the College follows tradition Archives were a 1954-55 Reneguide Aqueduct. A banner headline also and includes a time capsule within student handbook, a 1954-55 student announced Albert Einstein’s death. the walls of its current construction directory, a 1954 Raconteur, a 1953-55 Fourteen movie theaters advertised boom, what will future generations BC course catalogue, a 1955 BC Band in the April 29 Californian. The Fox find inside? What would Archives Concert program, Masonic literature, Theater’s special “midnite” feature, Newsletter readers put into a BC time and several newspapers including “Dr. Jekyll and His Weird Show,” capsule today and why? Tell us what the Renegade Rip, the Bakersfield promised “monsters grab girls from you think. A Californian and a feisty daily, the East audience” and “He brings the dead Bakersfield Press. back” but assured “ambulances and The newspapers painted an nurses on call at all times.” The interesting portrait of mid-20th Rainbow Gardens on South Union Century Bakersfield that, unlike the Avenue was still enjoying its country era’s Danish modern furniture and music heyday, advertising a “big clean-lined architecture, seems quaint. western dance tomorrow night” Speedboat races drew big crowds to featuring Bob Wills and All His Texas Hart Park while the local minor league Playboys. baseball club, the Indians, struggled to “Don’t rent – buy. Own a draw fans to Sam Lynn Ballpark. typewriter. Pay for it like rent,” urged From the Bakersfield Californian, April 1955 2 Archives Newsletter ABOVE: SGA President Ashley Harp waits to see what the 1955 time capsule holds. LEFT: BC President Ralph Prator’s farewell to the BHS campus in 1955also anticipated the future opening of the time capsule. Archives Newsletter 3 scholar’s natural curiosity have built a collection of publications and materials that preserve and rekindle memories of BC’s past. As a utility Simply Sterling player, she is an MVP. Jerry is from a generation of Jerry Ludeke Honored For teachers who came to California during its post-World War II growth spurt, although she spanned the globe to get Six Decades of Service to BC here. An Indiana University double major in art and English, she taught art On March 23 at the Bakersfield years she has devoted to BC. This to an all-boys class in a disadvantaged College Sterling Silver dinner, richly deserved honor recognizes area of Ft. Wayne, her hometown. Archives Director Jerry Ludeke Jerry’s lengthy career of teaching, After earning an MFA in design received the 2019 Bakersfield College leadership, and scholarship, which from Tulane University, Jerry taught Foundation Service Medal for the 60 most recently includes 14 years as a at Beirut College for Women until civil volunteer director of the Bakersfield unrest between Christian and Muslim College Archives. factions turned Beirut into a potential Jerry Ludeke has been to BC war zone. In 1958, she boarded a what in baseball is a “utility player,” ship in Port Said, Egypt and sailed to someone who can be trusted to fill Hong Kong, then to San Francisco after in ably at any position. But she has hurriedly applying to graduate schools taken each of the many roles she using a typewriter at the U.S. consulate has filled to another level, using her in Port Said. broad education, compassion, and Jerry had earned an M.A. in common sense to improve higher counseling from Stanford when she learning for BC students who did and her fiancé, John Ludeke, were not get an equal start in life. recruited by Kern High School District And in retirement as Archives talent scouts John Eckhardt and Ed Director, Jerry’s Simonsen (then BC President-elect). organizational skills “John and I were a package deal, and her because we both needed teaching jobs wherever we decided to go,” Jerry said. As Jerry recalls, Simonsen’s and Eckhardt’s tennis tans (somewhat of a legend among BC faculty who were recruited during this era) and their glowing accounts of life in Bakersfield – which included the highest teaching salaries in California – persuaded John and Jerry to come to Kern County. “We intended to come to Bakersfield for a few years, then move on, but we never left,” Jerry said. Jerry preceded John to the BC faculty, serving in her first two years as director of residence halls, counselor for BC’s Opportunity Program for Photo by Susan Pinza disadvantaged students, remedial English instructor, and as a fill-in drawing instructor for Clayton Rippey, who was on leave. John taught and coached at Bakersfield High School while earning an M.A. in history during summer terms at the University of Oregon. After two years at BC, Jerry “dropped out” from teaching, as she puts it, to raise their children. John joined the BC history faculty in 1965. 4 Archives Newsletter Jerry came back to BC in 1965 growing enrollment of underprepared as a volunteer, helping Peg Levinson students. She also worked with faculty by starting the College’s first tutoring to make assignments and tests more program to serve foreign students readable for students. and underprepared students, chiefly Jerry’s BC colleagues honored her from disadvantaged backgrounds. Her with the Margaret Levinson Award for tutoring of deaf and blind students Faculty Leadership, Shirley Trembley would later form the core of BC’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, and Special Education courses (and she Levan Institute Colloquium. After she ABOVE LEFT: Jerry Ludeke with her family at the reports that she is still available for retired in 1994, Jerry was president Sterling Silver dinner. ABOVE: Indiana University graduate Jerry Dreisbach in 1954. BELOW: New tutoring on demand). of the Kern County Historical Society, Faculty members Jerry Ludeke and BC Choir Director Jerry also taught basic math, edited and co-authored a book on the Joseph Huszti in 1959. English and pre-employment skills to Chinese in Kern County, and tutored minority workers, job-training students Bakersfield City Schools students. and auto shop students, and remedial In 2003, Jerry was recruited to English to those for whom English was help organize BC Archives volunteers, not their first language. She worked a job which soon evolved into with Registered Nurse Program the directorship. She was strictly students to coach them in test-taking a volunteer until the Archives skills. For one shy nursing student Association realized that since she whom Jerry remembers, the obstacle was signing checks, work orders and was simple: she wasn’t pressing her Archives correspondence, she ought pencil hard enough for the Scantron to become an official employee again, machine to read her answers.

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