60Th Anniversary of the Big Move to the Hill
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The Bakersfield College Archives Newsletter SPRING 2016 Volume 15, Issue 1 Attendees at the cornerstone laying ceremony gathered inside the entry area of the new Administration Building on a rainy day. In This Issue 60th Anniversary of the Big Move to the Hill ........................... 2 Traditions, Traditions! ............................................................ 6 New Acquisitions ..................................................................... 3 When Pigs Fly ......................................................................... 7 Where Else But In America ..................................................... 4 Carl Smith ............................................................................... 8 Who Is Our Mystery Man? ....................................................... 4 The Queens of Bakersfield College ........................................... 9 From Our Readers ................................................................... 5 Welcome to Bakersfield .................................................... 10-11 People We Will Miss ................................................................ 6 Minding Our Mindfulness ..................................................... 11 most difficult moving jobs will be that of space with the regular ones. The Although the 1955 football the Grace Van Dyke Byrd [sic.] Library. Health Center is located to one’s left season games were played at the newly Rather than being packed in boxes, the as he enters the gym from the north constructed Memorial Stadium, it was in books will be left on the shelves, with entrance. Here there is a nurse who is April of 1956 during spring vacation that the shelves themselves bolted in tiers employed by the college and an area Bakersfield College moved from its forty on flat bed trucks. The library will be where the students now pick up their three year home on the Bakersfield forced to move again next fall when it excuse (yellow slips) for classes. High School campus to its new home ocupies [sic.] its permanent quarters. Upstairs, on the second floor is the on Panorama Drive. The April 2006 [The temporary location was in the Coral Room (dance studio) which houses Archives Newsletter was devoted Business-Administration building.] all of the dancing classes in the P.E. to the fiftieth anniversary of the Big The BC bookstore will be located in department and the choral and music Move. (You can view it at the Archives a corrective physical education room in classes of the music department. This website: www2.bakersfieldcollege.edu/ the gym, but the temporary site will still room overlooks the swimming pool. bcarchive). On this sixtieth anniversary be larger than the present space the Since the campus center isn’t we want to focus on students’ bookstore occupies. finished, areas have been designated anticipation, experiences, and reactions The nearest to the new campus that throughout the campus to house the to that Move to the Hill as recorded city busses [sic.] will run is about one facilities that will go into the Campus in these quotations, mostly in the mile. (District buses would be provided Center when the building is finished. Renegade Rips. from the high school campus.) One of these areas is the gym. Here Rip Headline, March 22, Hot food will be prepared at East one will find the bookstore, the cafeteria 1956- ‘M-DAY’ON WAY: Bakersfield High School and trucked to and snackbar. the new campus. The cafeteria serving area is in the An air of expectation hung over The some 1700 parking places farthest east room on the south side, but Bakersfield College today as faculty should be enough in spite of women the eating area is scattered throughout and students made final preparations parkers. the wide hall areas on the first floor of for the move to the new campus, There will be no bell system. the gym. Eating areas include the wide scheduled for one week from Monday Assemblies will be held in the hallway at the east end of the building, but already in progress. stadium. the wide space near the south entrance Five major buildings and parts of Renegade Rip, and the swimming pool patio. Here in the gym will be occupied on the April 2 these areas have been placed regular deadline. The Business-Administration, April 12, 1956 dining tables, chairs and containers to Home Economics, Humanities, Science BC’s athletes are currently “getting put in all of the garbage. and Engineering, and Trades and into condition” by dodging lunch trays, The snackbar is located in the Industries buildings will be ready for mambo dancers and budding musicians southwest corner under a stairway. Here occupancy. in BC’s bulging gym. one may grab a sandwich on his way to Most moving is being done with Even though the gym isn’t finished class (if the class either before or after the school trucks, though some instructors it is already overworked with the many eight-minute break is in the gym.) are using their own pickups. One of the temporary activities competing for The spacious well-stocked 2 Archives Newsletter bookstore is located in the northwest Renegade Rip, Gerald Haslam, class of corner. Just west of the bookstore is April 26, 1956 the band headquarters. 1957, Archives Newsletter, The first day at the new campus Chivalry is dead. It died on the muddy April 2006 field surrounding Bakersfield College two many humorous events occurred. At My earliest distinct memory of the flag dedication a rabbit was seen weeks ago. The rains came. And then the new setting is of traipsing through running wildly around stealing the soon the beautiful parking lot was a vast mud during the first real rain after the scene. It seems that a cement truck sea of mud. Many unsuspecting students move; slipping and sliding, I found had parked over his burrow. drove their rods (most of them Cadillacs) myself laughing with students whom I Lance and Shield did a fine job of into this sea of mud, singing their “rock hadn’t previously met. One attractive directing students whose classrooms and roll” songs without a thought of the coed lost her ballerina slipper when her were lost. One such student reportedly great disaster that awaited them when foot plunged into mud next to a plank approached a guide and asked where they stepped out. sidewalk. Hoping to impress her, two of he could find the Romanities Building. Charlie Mae Abrams my buddies from Garces wrestled one Clarence Cullimore, architecture and Littlejohn, class of 1956, another for the privilege of recovering engineering instructor, was showing his the maiden’s shoe and only succeeded young grandson the new campus when Archives Newsletter, April in shoving it so deeply into the muck he was asked, “What do they teach in 2006 that it was never recovered. Along the Humilities Building?” Cullimore’s with their aspirations, that ballerina answer, which fully satisfied the boy, Everyone was full of excitement slipper remains buried there today, a was, “That’s where they teach how not that came with the move from limited monument to love unfulfilled. to be boastful.” and crowded conditions on the high A photograph showing two men school campus. The only drawback The 1956 Raconteur: in mountaineering clothing with ropes that I remember was the new campus It isn’t completed; there is wind, and a pick ax climbing up a hill shows was not completely landscaped. This dust, noise, and lots of space between “a rather drastic solution to the problem condition was certainly not good for the buildings, but the campus is ours. A of getting from one place to the next “white buck shoes,” one of the shoe on this hilly campus. Shows what styles at the time. can happen when you believe those ‘Approved Short Cut’ signs.” NewNew AcquisitionsAcquisitions We delight in receiving memorabilia from current events. You may not think that they are archival, but by the day following the event they are part of BC’s archival history. Please remember the Archives as you are closing up after an event. We received memorabilia from two reunions. The Renegade Rip, which has been publishing a remarkable ninety three years, held an all staff reunion on May 10, 2014. This was headed up by Bona Dillon Press, a past advisor, and Danny Edwards, the current advisor. The cups made for the occasion are really a bright true red (which our camera couldn’t capture.) Tote bags were prepared for the Bakersfield College Choir 50th European Tour Reunion held in 2015. This was the group led by Joe Huszti which won the International Eisteddfod Music Festival in Llangollen, Wales, the first choir in the Western Hemisphere to do so. As a result they sang for Pope Paul VI at the summer residence Castel Gondolfo, Italy, and for President Lyndon Johnson in the Rose Garden of the White House. The tote bag carries the quotation by T. Gwynn Jones that appears on the trophy: “Blessed is a world that sings. Gentle are its songs.” The reunion choir sang a performance. Archives Newsletter 3 Where Else But In America…! Mary Kinoshita Higashi is one of the students who was taken to a Japanese internment camp in 1942, just before she graduated from B.C. [see Archives Newsletter, Spring 2011 at www2.bakersfieldcollege.edu/ bcarchive]. In 2014 she was honored at graduation, receiving her diploma in a long delayed ceremony. Mary’s brothers who also attended BJC were John, Fred, Dave, Ted, and Robert. Brother Robert attended BC on the GI Bill of Rights following his service. During World War II brother George, who was recently honored in Hawaii, was in the Poston, Arizona Relocation Center with George made the US Army I thought where else but in America, Mary and her family. Then George life his career, serving in counter could a Japanese American (Nisei), be was drafted on June 19, 1946 so he intelligence, and in the Investigation subjected to all the hatred and prejudice missed attending Bakersfield Junior Division for almost 30 years. He that he suffered and then be honored in College, as it was known at the time.