Alumni

Edward W. Malan

Emeritus Professor Edward W. Malan ’48, one of the most influential members in the history of the Pomona College Physical Education Department, died Sept. 6, 2011, at age 88.

Malan came to Pomona as a student in the early 1940s and was already active in athletics, playing football and earning a letter as a running tackle, when, in May 1943, he was among a contingent of men who left campus for the U.S. Army. After serving with distinction in Europe, he returned to Pomona, graduating in 1948 and joining the faculty as an instructor two years later. He went on to earn a master’s at the Claremont Graduate School as well as an Ed.D. from UCLA, and in 1960 was promoted to professor of physical education and named director of athletics, a role he filled through 1978. During this time the challenging yet rewarding process of equalizing men’s and women’s athletics was begun, and the number of intercollegiate competitive sports rose from seven to 17.

In addition to coaching several years of both varsity and frosh football (including an 8-0 season with the 1950 frosh football team in his first year), Professor Malan coached track and field until 1966 and golf later on in his career. He founded the department’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 1958, oversaw its induction ceremonies for 42 years and in 1989 was himself awarded an honorary induction. That same year, he also received the SCIAC Distinguished Service Award. Along with serving as the College’s NCAA representative, he was very active in the NCAA Council and was elected to the presidency for Division III.

As a resident of Claremont, he was elected to the City Council twice, for the 1962-66 term and again for 1968-72, during which time he was mayor from 1970-72. He retired from Pomona in 1989 but remained active with the College and, in 2001, received its Alumni Distinguished Service Award.

“Coach Malan was a class act and a wonderful person,” says Athletics Director Charles Katsiaficas. “We all looked up to him; he was a great role model and mentor to so many of us through the years. We are blessed for the many years he shared with us here at Pomona.”

Richard M. Sheirich

Richard M. Sheirich, emeritus professor of German, died from cardiac arrest at his home in Claremont on Dec. 11, 2011. He was 84 years old.

He was born in 1927 in Erie, Penn., and attended local schools through high school. As his parents felt 16 was too young to go to college, he spent an extra year at Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, graduating in 1945. He attended Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., for part of his freshman year before enlisting in the U.S. Navy. After a year’s service at Williamsburg, Va., he was discharged and returned to Colgate to complete his undergraduate degree in 1949.

He earned a master’s degree in German from Northwestern University, and a Ph.D. in German from Harvard University in 1965. He also held a DAAD Fellowship at Universität Hamburg in 1957-58. After teaching at Colgate and UC Berkeley, he joined the Pomona faculty in 1965, and for 31 years taught courses in German language, literature and culture ranging from early tribal migrations to the Cold War and reunification. He also conducted research on Viennese poet, novelist and playwright Richard Beer-Hofmann, producing a number of articles as well as an edition of Beer-Hofmann’s correspondence, Der Briefwechsel mit Paula, 1896-1937. Most summers, Professor Sheirich spent time in Vienna, doing research.

In the 1990s he led a major grant-funded project, “German across the Curriculum,” to better integrate the study of German into non-language courses in the humanities and social sciences.The goal of the project, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, was to improve foreign-language skills and to promote, among both faculty and students, a greater understanding of the complexities inherent in a foreign culture and of the relationship between language and other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.

He also served on the Alumni Council and, more recently, on the Emeriti Committee. Many in the college community will miss seeing him walk with his wife of 49 years, Perdita, class notes editor for PCM, to and from campus in the early evening.

Upon retiring, Professor Sheirich expressed his gratitude for the fact that “one becomes a part of college life, yes, but it works the other way, too. The College, and a surprising number of students, also become a part of our lives.”

Memorial contributions to a fund supporting research and travel for students in German may be made to Pomona College, in care of Don Pattison, Donor Relations, 550 N. College Ave., Claremont, CA 91711.

Herbert B. Smith

Herbert B. Smith, emeritus professor of history, died Sept. 28, 2011, at his home in Mount San Antonio Gardens, Claremont, where he had lived since 1985. He was 93.

After obtaining his B.A. from the University of Iowa in 1940, he taught social studies for a year before he enlisted in the U.S. Army and was sent to Officer Candidate School. After graduation, he became the post chemical officer at Camp Butner, N.C., where, among other duties, he conducted countless drills against chemical attack for the units stationed there. He later was assigned to the information and education headquarters in Paris, helping to establish a post-hostilities education program for soldiers awaiting their return home.

After earning his M.A. degree in history at the University of Iowa and a Ph.D. in history at UC Berkeley, Professor Smith came to Pomona College in 1952. He was hired to teach French history, which he did for many years, regularly offering such courses as Absolutism and the Enlightenment in Europe, The French Revolution and the European Response and the History of Russia, in addition to Western Civilization. Smith also served as associate director of admissions and director of financial aid during the 1960s, and it was on his watch that Pomona established a policy of “need-blind” admissions.

After a one-year, Fulbright-funded sabbatical at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, he returned to full-time teaching at Pomona in 1969. Besides offering a new course on Southeast Asia, Smith was one of the creators of the two-semester introductory Asian history sequence—Asian Traditions and Revolution and Social Change in Modern Asia—that is still taught today.

He loved to travel, and he and his wife Dorothy traveled in the way that adventurous people did in the 1950s and early 1960s—by freighter and local trains and buses—to countries in Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa that did not see many American tourists in those days.

Smith retired in 1983 as the John Sutter Miner Professor of History after 31 years of teaching at Pomona. At the time, the College reported that he confessed to having had three serious loves in his life: his late wife, Dorothy, formerly a psychologist at Monsour Counseling Center; Clio, the muse of history; and the goddess Pomona. Shortly before he died, his fellow residents at Mount San Antonio Gardens made him the poet laureate of the Gardens.

In Memoriam: Corwin H. Hansch

Corwin H. Hansch
Professor of Chemistry Emeritus
1918–2011

Corwin H. Hansch, professor of chemistry at Pomona College from 1946 to 1988, died May 8, 2011, after a long bout with pneumonia. He had served on the Pomona College faculty from 1946 until 1988, and even after retiring from teaching he had continued with his research in the Chemistry Department until 2010. He was 92.

Hansch, the founder of Quantitative Structure Activity Relationships (QSAR), received his B.S. in chemistry from the University of Illinois and his Ph.D. from New York University. After a brief postdoctoral stint at the University of Illinois, Chicago, he worked on the Manhattan Project at University of Chicago and at DuPont Nemours in Richland, Wash. After World War II ended, he took a position as research chemist at Du Pont Nemours, but left soon thereafter, coming to Pomona College in 1946. During his tenure, he completed two sabbaticals, one at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and the other in Rolf Huisgren’s laboratory at the University of Munich.

Shortly after arriving at Pomona, he met a Pomona botany professor, Robert Muir, and their mutual interest in understanding the workings of plant hormones led to his pioneering work in QSAR. Hansch soon changed the direction of his research from the study of high temperature dehydrogenations to the correlation of biological activity with chemical structure; this led to the publication of his early, seminal works in QSAR, ably aided by Toshio Fujita. The founder of QSAR, Hansch came to be recognized as the “father of computer-assisted molecular design,” and the methodology he spawned is now utilized in most pharmaceuticals and biotechnology companies.

The author of numerous books running the gamut from organic chemistry texts to medicinal chemistry to QSAR treatises, he also wrote or co-authored more than 400 publications in all. During the period of 1965 to 1978, he was one of the 300 most cited scientists in the world. He also received many awards, including two Pomona College Wig Awards for excellence in teaching, two Guggenheim Fellowships and numerous accolades from the American, Italian and Japanese Chemical Societies. He was the first recipient of the American Chemical Society (ACS) Award for Research at an Undergraduate Institution (1986), as well as the first recipient of the Smissman-Bristol-Myers-Squibb Award from the ACS’s Division of Medicinal Chemistry (1975). In 1990, he was elected to the Royal Society of Chemistry and in 2007, he was inducted into the ACS’s Medicinal Chemistry Hall of Fame.

Mentor to a large number of undergraduate students and more than 40 visiting scientists and postdoctoral scholars from the U.S. and around the world, Hansch helped raise the profile of research at primarily undergraduate institutions and was instrumental in establishing the Fred J. Robbins Lectureship in Chemistry which helps to bring scientists of Nobel Laureate stature to the Pomona College campus.

In recent years, he devoted his time and effort to developing and organizing QSAR equations based on data generated internally and from global literature. His electronic database CQSAR, now contains more than 22,000 mathematical models. He was especially interested in comparing chemical QSAR with biological QSAR to gain insight into how chemicals interact with biological receptors.

Hansch was a voracious reader, his reading tastes ranging from scientific literature and politics to economics and film. He and his wife, Gloria, who was instrumental to his success, loved to travel, and their adventures spanned the globe. He was an avid skier and loved to ski Mt. Baldy, Aspen, the Alps and the Andes. —Cynthia Selassie

New Alumni President Takes the Next Step

As a sports fan raised in Southern California, Dodie Bump ’76 has faced a few adjustments since she moved to Massachusetts more than two decades ago. With time, she was able to put aside the Dodger blue and become a full-fledged Red Sox fan. But she never could get on board with the Celtics; they’ve had too long of a rivalry with the Lakers. She compromised by becoming a fan of the San Antonio Spurs, since they’re led by former Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens basketball coach Greg Popovich.

If there’s one team Bump has stuck with all these years, it’s the Sagehens, and Pomona College in the wider sense. Her new role as president of the Alumni Association is the natural next step in her decades of service to the College.

An art history major and Mortar Board Society member, Bump pursued her hobby of photography at Pomona, but athletics was her biggest extracurricular activity. She played on the women’s basketball and volleyball teams, managed the men’s track team coached by Pat Mulcahy ’66, and even threw the javelin on the not-quite-official women’s track team. She also was a physical trainer for football, track and other sports in what was a rarity for a female student at the time. And for her first year after graduating, she worked on campus as an administrative assistant to Athletic Director Ed Malan ’48.

From there it was on to the Xerox Corp. in El Segundo, where she worked in a variety of administrative and marketing roles. During this time, Bump kept her ties to Pomona, serving on the Alumni Council during the 1980s, including a stint on what was then known as the Executive Committee. This was just a “natural progression,” Bump says, and “a wonderful way to stay connected to the College.”

Then Bump made a big move. Xerox was offering a voluntary buyout program, and after more than a decade with the company, Bump decided to take the buyout and move all the way across the country. Eventually settling in Wellesley, outside Boston, she quickly became a leader in the New England Sagehen community, thanks to a little nudging from former Alumni Relations Director Lee Harlan ’55. “He knew I was a sucker for Pomona,” says Bump.

After holding marketing positions at several software companies in the Boston area, Bump has found her “best job ever” as director of communications for the Newton-Wellesley Hospital Charitable Foundation. She is a longtime member of the Rotary Club of Wellesley and has served on the boards of several civic organizations, including the Wellesley Historical Society and the Wellesley Club. She also plays tennis several times a week and has been a member of a book club since 1989. 

But Pomona College still tugs at her. She joined the Alumni Board in 2007 and particularly enjoys coming back to visit the campus. Bump considers it fortunate timing that she is becoming Alumni Association president at a time when the arts are a particular focus on campus. Arts initiatives are a major component of Campaign Pomona: Daring Minds, and this year the much-anticipated “It Happened at Pomona: Art at the Edge of Los Angeles 1969-1973” exhibitions are unfolding at the College’s museum.

“I’m definitely interested in making sure alumni are aware of the incredible plans the College has for the arts,” Bump says. “They are such an essential component of a top quality liberal arts education, and I’m thrilled that Pomona is committed to ensuring that its arts program is second to none.”

Alumni Bulletin Board — Fall 2011

Bulletin Board / News for Alumni

 Come Bach to See Us

If you enjoy classical music, please save the date of Saturday, July 21, 2012, for a special evening with Pomona alumni at the Carmel Bach Festival. Celebrating its 75th year, the festival set in the Central California coastal town of Carmel has quite a following. We are fortunate to have Pomona connections: Betsey Hampson Pearson ’66 and Susie Saunders Brusa ’84 serve as directors, and Steve Pearson ’66 is on the Foundation Board. 

Though plans are still being finalized, we anticipate receptions both before and after the concert. The performance will feature J. S. Bach’s B Minor Mass performed by the Carmel Bach Festival orchestra and chorale under Artistic Director/Conductor Paul Goodwin. Pomona College President David Oxtoby and his wife Claire will also be in attendance. When tickets become available, prices will likely be in the $75 range. If you plan to make a weekend of it, we encourage you to book your accommodations early. To receive additional information when available, please visit www.pomona.edu/alumnievents and complete the registration form. (This is not a commitment, just helpful to assure you receive information if you don’t live in the Carmel area.)

 Call for Nominations

The Alumni Association is seeking nominations for the following annual awards:

  • The Blaisdell Distinguished Alumni Award honors alumni whose contributions and achievements in a profession or community distinguish them even among the distinguished body of Pomona alumni.
  • The Alumni Distinguished Service Award pays tribute to an alumnus or alumna in recognition of that person’s selfless commitment and ongoing volunteer service to Pomona College.
  • The Inspirational Young Alumni Award honors a young alumnus or alumna (graduate of the last decade) in recognition of their dedication, perseverance, and consistency in following the inscription on the College Gates: “They only are loyal to this college who departing bear their added riches in trust for mankind.”

Please send names of your nominees, along with a brief supporting statement, to the Alumni Office at 305 N. College Avenue, Claremont, CA 91711, or alumni@pomona.edu.

 Save the Date for Alumni Weekend

For classes ending in 2 and 7: April 26-29, 2012
For classes ending in 3 and 8: May 2-5, 2013
For classes ending in 4 and 9: May 1-4, 2014
For classes ending in 0 and 5: April 30-May 3, 2015
For classes ending in 1 and 6: April 28-May 1, 2016
More information: www.pomona.edu/alumniweekend

Field Trips Forever

Special Reunions / Botany Majors

For botany majors of yore, field trips were always a particularly important part of their Pomona education. Today, those same students from the 1940s through the 1970s are still heading out into the field, accompanied by the same beloved professor who helped inspire their interests in botany all those years ago.

Since 2000, when Lucile Housley ’55 organized the first trip, alumni with ties to Pomona’s one-time Botany Department have gathered for annual get-togethers in breathtaking locales ranging from windswept Point Reyes to sandswept Death Valley. Most of the alumni share a connection to Professor Emeritus of Botany Ed Phillips, who today is 96 and still attends the gathering each year. He taught at the College from 1948 until his retirement in 1980, a few years after the Botany Department was merged into the Biology Department.

Upwards of 75 Sagehens have attended at least one of the gatherings over the years, including some who travel from as far as the East Coast and Hawaii. “They come again and again,” says Phillips. “They want to keep going and I do, too.”

As reported by Thomas Mulroy ’68 and Ralph Philbrick ’55, this year’s gathering was held in May at Cachuma Lake, drawing about 35 people to camp at the scenic spot in Santa Barbara County. The trip included hiking, viewing wildflowers in bloom and singing around the campfire at night. Day outings included a visit to S&S Seeds’ Rancho Las Flores in Los Alamos, where owner and founder of this pioneering native plant seed business Victor Schaff gave a tour of his growing fields of California natives. Then the group drove over the pine-covered Harris Grade to La Purisima Mission near Lompoc to hear from Steve Junak, expert field botanist for the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden.

Mulroy, who taught at Pomona decades ago and is now an environmental consultant, notes that the group “includes academic and professional botanists and biologists, people in various agricultural pursuits, medicine, business, secondary school and primary school teachers, as well as a wide variety of endeavors unrelated to botany or biology.”

“The mingling of ages is unbelievable,” he adds. “It’s a joy.”               

Noting how quickly people who’ve never met before connect on these trips, Professor Phillips has a theory about the special botany-major bond that develops in college. “I think it really comes right down to the field trips,’’ he says. “You learn not only about botany but about life. You learn how to get along with people.”

Reunion Shopping

I rarely worry about what I am going to wear. I usually have comfortable slacks and a jacket to wear out to dinner and, with a modification or two, they can go to a memorial service. The same pair of REI Merrell slip-on shoes is adequate for both occasions. Everything else I own is for gardening: stained t-shirts, comfortable sweat pants or jeans, worn sweatshirts, piles of dirty sneakers and boots. And, most important, the smartest wool socks to keep my toes dry. Plenty.

But a few years ago I accompanied my husband John to his 50th Pomona College reunion and, preferring not to embarrass him in front of his best and longest friendships, I surveyed my gardening wardrobe and saw that it was, indeed, unfit. Reluctantly, I went shopping.

The wardrobe survey had revealed a pair of good black slacks and a blue-green linen suit worn once, 10 or 12 years ago, when my own college’s president visited Seattle. A color palette, of sorts. But no shoes, short of the worn Merrells or mud-stained sneakers.  

To prepare myself for the coming ordeal, I tried to imagine I was shopping for plants. Before I shop for plants, I survey the garden, looking for areas where plants are much too big for their britches or have settled in so comfortably their knees are baggy. I study the borders, monitoring color balance, leaf texture and shape, ultimate height and rhythm—too many orange grasses, not enough lime green. If it’s particular sorts of plant I want, I search Web references, visit others’ gardens and favorite nurseries, review catalogs. Before long, I have a list of appropriate possibilities and, with luck, several places to find them. I feel confident; I know how to shop for plants.

But when it comes to shopping for my own clothes and shoes, my dismal lack of confidence is only surpassed by my ignorance.

Other shoppers are better prepared. It seems to me that every customer at the cosmetics counter—intimidatingly placed at the entrance of the department store—already owns enough lipstick and mascara. They’re wearing it. Their clothes match, and they show just the right amount of flesh between jeans and tank top. And women looking for clothes already seem to know what size they wear. They don’t seem shocked at the prices. (I could buy a tree peony for the cost of that shirt.) And the sales personnel know them by name.

I trudge in and out of the dressing room, trying out colors and shapes, asking myself if the colors of this pale pink and sea-green blouse will complement my old linen suit, wishing I had worn it. And remembering an earlier time when my color memory failed me, and I planted a brilliant vermillion climbing nasturtium too close to a dusky violet-purple Clematis Purpurea Plena Elegans. Tacky. I still cannot choose which of these treasures to remove. 

Ultimately, I buy a white silk shirt to wear with the linen suit, and a dressy cream blouse and black silk jacket with Chinese knotted buttons to wear with my good black slacks. I even survive the icy disbelief of the shoe salesman, who clearly views my comfortable Merrells as if they were dandelions among his most treasured roses. I escape with suitable shoes, but only tattered dignity.

The reunion was a success. Folks wore what they wanted to wear; they were comfortable. With a bit of clever weeding, I could have worn the clothes I already owned. And there were plenty of folks standing around in the equivalent of my worn Merrells. For all I know, they, too, were gardeners. John would not have been embarrassed, and instead of spending time shopping, I could have spent a whole afternoon deciding how to garb the garden so neither it, nor I, will be embarrassed the next time one of John’s college classmates comes to visit.

Lee C. Neff is married to Dr. John Neff ’55.

New to Pomona’s Alumni Board

Adam Boardman ’01
Lives in: Hollywood, Calif. Education: Boardman majored in linguistics and, in a sense, distance running. He ran track and cross-country all four years, including the last three as team captain in both sports. He was two-time SCIAC 5000-meter champion and 1999 NCAA All-American in cross country. He served as a transfer/exchange sponsor and an R.A. his junior year as well as senior gift co-chair. Career: Spent first year after graduation skiing in Mammoth before moving to Seattle and working as an admissions officer for a culinary school. He then spent six months traveling and blogging in South America. Since then he has done everything from commercial acting to writing for a cooking show to developing lifestyle and travel TV shows. Currently works at Pizzeria Mozza in Hollywood and is training for his second marathon. Alumni Involvement: Served as alumni interviewer for three years in Seattle, and upon arriving in Los Angeles was a founding member of the Claremont Entertainment Mafia, a networking group for Claremont Colleges alumni in entertainment, and served on the group’s board for the last 4 years.  

Jon Moore ’86
Home: Raised in Menlo Park, Calif., and now lives about 30 miles north on the island of Alameda.  Family: Moore has spent the last 4 years as a stay-at-home dad and husband. His wife, Beth, is an occupational therapist and they have two daughters, Emma, 10, and Abby, 4. Education: After earning his undergraduate degree in economics, Moore received a master’s degree in physical education from Cal State Fullerton in 1991. At Pomona, Moore was a co-sponsor in Norton-Clark and played varsity soccer all four years. He was president of the Phi Delta fraternity during his junior year. Career: Moore coached the Pomona-Pitzer women’s soccer team from 1986-1991 and continues to stay involved with soccer in the Bay Area. For 15 years, he was the program director at Skylake Yosemite Camp (a resident summer camp on Bass Lake) and now he is the director of Skylake’s family camps. Alumni involvement: Moore was the co-chair of his 5th year reunion and on the committee for the 10th and 20th year reunions.    

Jack Peck ’56
Lives in: Long Beach, Calif. Education: majored in economics at Pomona. Career: He was employed by Unocal 76, before and after service in the U.S. Army, in marketing or marketing support functions. For his last eight years before retiring, Peck was general manager for product distribution for the western U.S., overseeing delivery of gasoline, diesel fuel and lubricants to service stations and wholesale customers. Alumni involvement: Many years ago he was an “alumni representative” for the East Bay area of Contra Costa County. One grandson, Garret Bell ’14, is a sophomore at Pomona. Another, Calvin Kagan ’10, is now in medical school.

Anne Bachman Thacher ’75
Lives in: Laguna Niguel, Calif. Family: Married to Bruce Thacher ’78, and of their 3 children, they have one Sagehen, Tim ’07 (She is looking forward to Alumni Weekend 2012, when Bruce will celebrate his 35th and Tim his 5th alumni reunion.) Education: Thacher was a government major, graduating cum laude. She was a member of Mortar Board and a student representative on the Trustee Academic Affairs Committee. While there was no official women’s team at the time, she ran the mile in an ad-hoc women’s track team put together by Coach Pat Mulcahy ’66 against Redlands in 1975. She also gave admissions tours of campus. Career: Thacher attended UCLA School of Law and worked for nine years in the legal profession. After retiring from law, she became very involved in her local school district. This ultimately led to a new career as an academic advisor at San Clemente High School. Thacher is training for the Boston Marathon, having qualified in last year’s Santa Barbara Marathon. Alumni Involvement: Thacher has been involved in fundraising for her reunion years and has attended many alumni weekends, both formally and informally.

Tyson Thomas ’92
Lives in: San Mateo, Calif. Education: A double major in physics and economics at Pomona, Tyson went on to get M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from USC and was granted a scientific Chateaubriand Fellowship from the Office for Science and Technology of the Embassy of France to conduct research with Atmel Grenoble. Career: Tyson is the chief scientist at Neural ID where he develops algorithms for pattern recognition. Previously, he was principal scientist at NovaSol in Honolulu doing hyperspectral image analysis and prior to that worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory doing research in artificial neural networks and fuzzy logic. He has one patent. Alumni involvement: Tyson was an Alumni Association volunteer helping at several Alumni Weekends and served one term on the Alumni Council during the transition to the Alumni Board from 1997-99. He also co-organized his class’ 10th reunion.

Honors / Alumni Distinguished Service Award

Pat Newton ’51 has dedicated her life to improving her community. Lucky for Pomona College, she didn’t stray far from her alma mater. Newton married her husband Sanford, a Claremont McKenna graduate, just two days after Commencement. “Four years later I had four kids,” says Newton. “We’ve been married 60 years this June and I’ve been involved with Pomona College most of that time.”

Newton began her service with the Alumni Relations Office during her five-year reunion and hasn’t quit since. In addition to her involvement with every reunion in some manner, she’s participated in countless phone-athons and made many calls in between—especially during reunion years. She chaired the Annual Fund Alumni Network, a committee that coordinated ways to get alumni involved on campus both financially and as volunteers, and is currently finishing a three-year term on the Pomona College Alumni Board.

Newton is this year’s recipient of the Alumni Distinguished Service Award, which is bestowed annually in recognition of selfless commitment and ongoing service to the College.

“The College has benefited greatly from Pat ever since she was a student here,” says Craig Arteaga-Johnson ’96, director of Annual Giving. “It’s not just her generosity of time and energy. She is warm and friendly and a real can-do person.”

Newton says one of the reasons she enjoys her volunteer work is the chance to be on campus and she has lived nearby in Pomona in the same house for 49 years. “Most of the time, I’ve been the oldest person on the Alumni Board. First couple of times I did it, it was intimidating.

But they’ve all been very generous. And I’ve enjoyed the fact that they’re all brighter than heck and enthusiastic and work hard at what the Board does to ensure the relationship of the alumni to the College.”

Pomona isn’t Pat’s only community service passion. She has been involved in Girls Scouts her entire life, including being a leader while on campus at Pomona. She served on local Scout boards and committees, was the local council president, and spent five years on the national board of directors. She’s also involved internationally, raising funds for a small center for older girls in Mexico.

Her service to United Way was recognized with a Gold Key Award in the 1970s and both she and her husband worked with the Jaycees.

She and a group of community members founded a volunteer center in Pomona in the 1970s that assisted organizations in finding long-term volunteers and developing boards and committees. She is also a longstanding volunteer and board member with Mt. San Antonio Gardens. Newton still works with the Girl Scouts and with the Fairplex Friends, which supports the L.A. County Fair in an ad hoc way, including raising funds to provide buses for local school children to attend the fair.

Newton’s husband Sanford was a Realtor in Pomona for his entire career. While their children attended colleges other than Pomona, two of Newton’s grandchildren are Sagehens: Michael Bergeron ’05 and Christopher Bergeron ’14.

“I feel fortunate that I was able to go to Pomona,” says Pat, whose father Howard Wickersham attended Pomona and graduated in 1924. “There was no doubt in my mind where I was going to go to college. I didn’t apply anywhere else!”