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Robert E. Tranquada ’51
Public Health Advocate and Trustee
1930—2022
Bob Tranquada ’51, former chair of the Pomona College Board of Trustees and former dean of the medical school at USC, died on December 4, 2022, in Pomona. He was 92.
A diabetes researcher turned public health advocate, Tranquada was instrumental in increasing access to health care for underserved communities across Los Angeles County. He was a founding board member and chair of L.A. Care, today the country’s largest publicly operated health plan.
The son of two Pomona alumni and father and grandfather of others, Tranquada was a constant friend of the College. As a Commencement speaker and recipient of an honorary doctorate in 2007, he said, “I have been couched in the arms of Pomona College for a long time. It would be impossible to return more than a fraction of that I have received.” Awarded an Alumni Scholarship as a student, he returned much, both in service and financial support. The student health facility that serves The Claremont Colleges bears his name as the Robert E. Tranquada Student Services Center.
Tranquada’s path to medicine began early. Hospitalized with a broken leg at age 5, he was so impressed with the doctors who treated him he decided to become a physician. After graduating from Pomona College, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, he attended the Stanford University School of Medicine and joined the faculty of the USC medical school in 1959.
Tranquada’s career took a dramatic turn in 1965, when the California Army National Guard medical battalion he commanded was activated during the Watts Uprising to treat casualties of the violent confrontations between L.A. police and residents. Afterward, he was asked by then-USC Medical School Dean Roger Egeberg to head the new Department of Community and Preventative Medicine and to organize a public health clinic in Watts. Tranquada was one of the founders and the first director of the South Central Multipurpose Health Services Center in 1965 (now Watts Healthcare Corp.), one of the country’s first community health centers.
His experience in working to launch the health clinic, which opened its doors in 1967, led to a 40-year career in public health. Two years later, as associate dean of the medical school, Tranquada was appointed medical director of Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. After five years as medical director, he became director of the Central Health Services Region of the L.A. County Department of Health Services.
Following other leadership positions, in 1986 Tranquada was recruited to become dean of what is now the Keck School of Medicine at USC with a mandate to develop a new private teaching hospital, today’s Keck Hospital of USC. It was while serving as dean that he was appointed to the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department, better known as the Christopher Commission, formed in the wake of the 1991 Rodney King beating. He also headed the Los Angeles County Task Force on Access to Health Care following the 1992 civil unrest, which led to the creation of Community Health Councils, a nonprofit that works to promote health and wellness in under-resourced communities.
After stepping down as USC medical school dean in 1991, Tranquada held an endowed chair in health policy before becoming professor emeritus upon his retirement in 1997. During his long and distinguished career, he was elected a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
In addition to his service on the Pomona College Board of Trustees beginning in 1969, Tranquada was chair of the Claremont University Consortium board from 2000 to 2006. He served on numerous boards and was a particularly effective advocate for increasing the number of women and people of color in medicine, serving as a longtime board member of New York-based National Medical Fellowships, a member of the founding board of Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science and a board member of Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital.
Born in Los Angeles, Tranquada was the son of Ernest Tranquada ’27 and Katharine Jacobus Tranquada ’29. He married Janet Martin Tranquada ’51 after meeting at Pomona. In addition to his wife of 71 years, he is survived by children John ’77 (Lisa Sackett Tranquada ’77), Jim (Kristin) and Kate Tranquada; grandchildren Matt ’08, Jessica and Alex Tranquada; and his sister, Carolyn Prestwich ’54.
Speaking broadly, last year’s Class of 2022 was similar to many other Pomona classes: About 71% secured jobs, internships or entered military service after graduation, and 21% were pursuing further education. Another 3% received fellowships, 2% began service opportunities and 3% had other plans.
The Class of 2022 First Destination Report features data gathered through surveys and data mining for the College’s Career Development Office. Top industries included internet and software companies (14%), management consulting (11%), higher education (9%) and investment banking and management (9%).
For the real nitty-gritty about the specific jobs and graduate degrees Pomona’s Class of 2022 headed for, check out the fascinating interactive dashboard at pomona.edu/outcomes-dashboard. Want to see how many went to work for Amazon and how many went to Accenture? It’s all there, along with how many were destined for graduate school in Cambridge (Massachusetts or England) and elsewhere.
For an early look at destinations for some of the Class of 2023 graduates, see the inside back page of this issue.
Photo by Paul Stodart, British Baseball Federation/GB Baseball
The situation Ryan Long ’21 found himself in on March 11 was almost unfathomable. The 6-foot-6 former Sagehens pitcher was on the mound for Great Britain against Team USA in the World Baseball Classic in Phoenix when Mike Trout came to the plate. Long, a minor leaguer who was drafted 497th overall by the Baltimore Orioles in 2021, was facing Trout, the three-time American League MVP and 10-time All-Star.
And down went Trout after Long struck him out with a 94-mph fastball.
“It was just a really surreal experience. Something that I’ll definitely hold onto forever,” Long says of playing in the World Baseball Classic.
Long realized he was eligible to play for Great Britain because his mother, Liz, was born in England. He asked Pomona-Pitzer Coach Frank Pericolosi if he had connections to the British Baseball Federation and Pericolosi put him in touch with alumni who did.
Months later, Long was pitching at Chase Field in Great Britain’s opening game against Team USA.
“I think before this the biggest crowd I ever played in front of was about 7,000, maybe 8,000. This was 40,000,” Long says.
His early nerves settled after he went on in relief in the fourth inning.
“Once I got out there and got on the mound, my heartbeat started to slow down a little bit, which was cool,” Long says.
He gave up a home run, “one that I’m not too upset about because it’s a major league All-Star,” he says of the blast by Kyle Schwarber, who led the National League in homers last season.
The next inning, Trout came to the plate.
“First of all, he’s obviously an amazing hitter but their whole lineup was filled with All-Stars and future Hall of Famers,” says Long.
He got Trout to a 3-2 count and decided to stay with his best pitch, his fastball.
“He fouled the first two off,” Long says. “He didn’t seem like he was seeing it as well as he might normally be. I decided to throw it again and it got past him. That was a very, very exhilarating feeling—a lot to take in.”
Long moved up to the Orioles’ High-A team in Aberdeen, Maryland, this season and still has a goal of reaching the majors, but he won’t forget playing for Great Britain.
“I think that will go down as one of the best, if not the best, experiences I’ll ever have in this game.”
In a banner year for women’s college basketball, Melissa Barlow ’87 was in the middle of an NCAA tournament that garnered record ratings.
Decades after she played point guard on Pomona-Pitzer’s standout teams of the 1980s, Barlow still runs the floor as a top NCAA Division I women’s basketball official. She called three games during the 2023 tournament, including the Sweet 16 game in which Iowa star Caitlin Clark scored 31 points in a win over Colorado.
Barlow has officiated in 10 Final Fours and three NCAA championship games, assignments that are earned through round-by-round reviews by officiating supervisors. She also has been yelled at by some of the best in the business—the late Pat Summitt of Tennessee, Geno Auriemma of Connecticut, Kim Mulkey of Louisiana State—and can laugh it off later.
For years, officiating was a sidelight to a highly successful career in the pharmaceutical industry that enabled Barlow, a biology major at Pomona, to retire at 53 from her job as national sales director for the metabolic division of AbbVie.
She encourages other former women’s players to get into officiating, too.
“I try to tell them: You get the best seat in the house, you get a workout and they pay you to watch these great games.”
Helen Anderson ’47 took part in weekly demonstrations by seniors in Mill Valley, California, into her 90s, as seen here in 2018. Photo by Scott Strazzante / San Francisco Chronicle / Polaris
The road to my friend Helen Heyden Anderson ’47 was never long, and my heart always felt lighter crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. Her active senior community in Marin County reminded me of Blaisdell, where we lived 50 years apart.
Even at 97, Helen greeted me with bright eyes and a cheerful “Come in.” The scent of magnolia blossoms wafted through from the garden. “I was born in 1926. The flowers transport me to when I was 9, swinging from oak trees by the magnolias,” she said, remembering the San Fernando Valley ranch where she grew up. Helen entered Pomona College during World War II and was affectionately nicknamed Kanga by her suitemates, after the A.A. Milne character. In later years, she became “Great Helen” to her grandchildren and friends.
I met Helen more than 30 years ago, when I was applying to Pomona. She was leading a program addressing childhood hunger, and my friends and I raised a few thousand dollars toward her efforts. I recall visiting her ranch-style home in Tustin where Helen, surrounded by her watercolor canvases, talked about a service trip to Mexico with her husband Gordon. She was fascinated with the people she met, and I was taken with her life of service.
Her 10th decade of life found Helen leading a spirited social activist group called Seniors for Peace. With walkers and wheelchairs, Helen and some of her neighbors gathered to hold up poster board signs for various causes at a nearby intersection one afternoon a week. Her keen interest in restorative justice grew, and she worked with a group that successfully secured fair housing for low-income minorities in Marin.
Helen Anderson ’47, left, with Leena Ved ’97.
During my turn as a student at Pomona, I wrote about Helen for Professor Jill Grigsby’s class called the Life Course of Women. Helen encouraged my self-designed major in economic development. I visited schools for girls in South Asia with Professor Tahir Andrabi and, like Helen, I had my first career in K-12 education. Helen subtly counseled me on my life choices when I’d ask—career changes, having a second child and recently, on moving back to Tustin from the Bay Area with my little girls. We’ll do that this summer, coming full circle. One of her greatest gifts was how she listened with gentle presence. With her advice, I’m currently managing social impact investments, including housing with dignity for lower-income Americans.
The geographies of our lives intertwined. We moved from Orange County to the Bay Area at the same time, and Helen and Gordon guided me through the wilderness of my 20s and 30s as I wrestled with life’s big decisions. On Marston Quad during one of our common reunion years, Gordon advised me, “Marry for chemistry,” he said. “And shared values,” Helen said before Gordon added, “I met Helen when she was a spry 68, and we’ve had fun since.” Helen lost Gordon to complications from COVID-19 in 2021.
Helen lived through two pandemics. When she was a senior at Pomona, she contracted polio at a friend’s wedding. In her 70s, Helen experienced late effects of the disease, but continued moving forward with a leg brace, orthotics and undeterred optimism. She remembered the dramatic impact of Dr. Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine in 1955 and found it strange that COVID-19 vaccines were politicized. (She approached people she disagreed with politically with curiosity, not judgment.)
Anderson holding Ved’s first baby, Serena.
Last year, I met with Helen as a respite to juggling my preschooler, pregnancy and increased professional responsibilities. I asked how she managed years ago as a young mother to simultaneously raise young children alone (when her first husband left), earn a master’s degree and teach.
“We had four children,” she told me. “It was still the era where women could mostly become either a teacher or a nurse. So after Pomona I became a reading specialist. My mom watched the children, which kept me afloat. It made my family so much closer after that era when we were faced with sink or swim.”
That practical attitude pervaded all Helen did. When I asked how she kept up with the news, she grinned over her Jell-O. “I scan the biggest-sized headlines first. If I can take action on it, then I’ll read more.”
Helen was remarkably resilient despite three heart blockages in her last six months. On our final visit, I asked her how she maintained her optimism. “From this age, I see the tough times,” she said. “For me, it was after Gordon was gone. It comes down to gratitude. I always wanted a spiritual tie, so I had a church community. That helped me, as well as gaining a worldview, interacting with young adults, and traveling and seeing the hardships people have. Others lifted me in my life, so I did the same.”
Pomona College Alumni Award recipients, from left: Ann Rose Davie ’58, Peter Shelton ’73, Linda Alvarado ’73 and Michelle Williams Court ’88.
A committee of past presidents from the Pomona College Alumni Association Board has selected the 2023 alumni award recipients.
Three alumni received the Blaisdell Distinguished Alumni Award in recognition of high achievement in their professions or community service: Linda Alvarado ’73, Michelle Williams Court ’88 and Peter Shelton ’73. These alumni have carried the spirit of the College into the world and embodied the inscription on the College Gates: “They only are loyal to this college who departing bear their added riches in trust for mankind.”
In addition, Ann Rose Davie ’58 was honored with the Alumni Distinguished Service Award in recognition of her selfless commitment and ongoing volunteer service to the College.
To learn more about this year’s award recipients, visit 2023 Pomona College Alumni Awards Announced.
More than 1,300 Sagehens returned to Pomona April 27-30 to celebrate Alumni Weekend and Reunions on a fully decked-out Marston Quad and other iconic campus spaces. In addition to places across the U.S., alumni and guests traveled from Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Canada and Mexico to reunite and reminisce with classmates, professors, staff members—and of course, Cecil! Class years ending in 3 or 8 celebrated milestone reunions ranging from the fifth through 70th this year as Pomona welcomed back eight decades of alumni, ages 23 to 93.
Alumni Weekend 2023
Alumni Weekend offered more than 160 programs and events, including signature events such as A Taste of Pomona Wine Tasting with alumni vintners, the Friday night All-Class Dinner on the Quad, Reunion Class Dinners across campus, the Party at the Wash and Class Parade through the Gates. Other programs included Blaisdell Alumni Award winners’ talks at Ideas@Pomona and presentations from faculty and the dean of the College. For the first time, several events were also livestreamed this year.
Next year’s Alumni Weekend and Reunion Celebrations will be April 25-28, 2024, and will celebrate reunions of class years ending in 4 or 9. Remember, all alumni are welcome to attend whether in a reunion year or not—so mark your calendars. Chirp!
For more Alumni Weekend photos and to watch the recorded livestreamed events, visit Alumni Weekend and Reunion Celebrations.
Give now at GiveCampus: Pomona College.
Just in time for Alumni Weekend, Pomona’s alumni house, Seaver House, reopened its doors with a warm welcome and a new look. Sagehens were invited to a special open house to meet with Alumni Board members and get a first peek at Seaver’s new alumni photo galleries, items from the new Myrlie Evers-Williams ’68 archival collection and a short documentary on her life, as well as tour the house’s beautifully updated interior. If you find yourself on campus, be sure to stop by for a visit and say hello to the Alumni and Family Engagement team.
Given to the College in 1979 by the Seaver family, Seaver House was built in 1900 and moved from its original location on East Holt Avenue in the nearby city of Pomona to its current site on the Pomona College campus in 1979, where it has since served as the home of the College’s alumni. Read Seaver’s exciting relocation story and see a photo of the move in action at Pomona Timeline: 1979.
Learn more about the Myrlie Evers-Williams ’68 Collection at Pomona College at Myrlie Evers-Williams ’68 Collection at Pomona College.
Cecil sends hearty chirps of gratitude to the Alumni Association Board and regional alumni chapter leaders who were out in full force throughout Alumni Weekend to assist and celebrate with visiting Sagehens! Board members helped with check-in, A Taste of Pomona and reunion class photos and dinners, among many other events throughout the weekend. They also presented the Class of 2023 graduates-to-be with their Commencement stoles on behalf of the Alumni Association and partnered with the Career Development Office at the CDO’s Alumni Weekend Chirp and Chat mixer to talk careers, graduate school and Pomona memories with current students and alumni.
The Alumni Board also met as the weekend wrapped up to ratify new president-elect Andrea Venezia ’91, who will take office for a two-year term beginning July 1, 2024, and to say an in-person thank you to members whose terms end this June 30:
Paula Gonzalez ’95
Megan Kaes Long ’08
Vicki Paterno ’75
Veronica Roman ’95
Dominic Yoong ’88
The board also ratified new members whose three-year terms begin this July 1:
Miguel Delgado ’20
Stuart Friedel ’08
Toran Langford ’21
Te’auna Patterson ’18
Tricia Sipowicz ’85
Jim Sutton ’84
Forty-seven chirps to Nathan Dean ’10, who closes out his term as our National Chair of Annual Giving on June 30. During his two years as chair, Dean worked closely with the College’s Annual Giving team to support multiple fundraising campaigns and crowdfunding initiatives. Last year, he helped to raise $5.3 million for the Pomona College Annual Fund, which supported student and faculty needs like financial aid, academic programs, research and internship opportunities and more. Huge thanks to Dean for his time and dedication in serving in this crucial volunteer role for Pomona!
Learn more about annual giving impact at Annual Giving Impact Report.
Give at Pomona College: Give.
Whether displaced by war, political upheaval or natural disaster, students fleeing crisis could soon find refuge at Pomona College through the new Dr. Albert Eckstein and Liese Bendheim Eckstein Scholarship.
Liese and Albert Eckstein in a family photo at son Paul’s 1962 graduation from Pomona, along with images of their U.S. citizenship papers.
Established by Pomona College Trustee Paul Eckstein ’62 P’92 GP’26 and his wife Florence P’92 GP’26 in memory of Paul’s parents with a gift of $1.2 million, the permanently endowed scholarship will provide students with refugee status and financial need a chance to continue their education.
Paul’s father, Albert, born in 1908 in what is now Romania, immigrated to America with his family as a teenager to escape the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. Encountering quotas on Jewish students in U.S. medical schools, Albert returned to Europe to attend medical school in Germany, where he met Liese Lotte Bendheim. With Hitler in power by the time Albert earned his degree in 1936, the couple left Germany for the U.S. ahead of the horrors of the Holocaust.
Paul said his father often spoke about the extraordinary waste of human talent caused by the Holocaust, other wars and political upheaval. Both Flo and Paul know his parents would be proud the endowed scholarship carries their names. Thinking of future recipients, Paul says, “Who knows if they will be Nobel Prize winners, great senators, or wonderful writers or musicians? I like to dream and think this gift will in some way help facilitate that.”
Romero, the new president of the Alumni Association Board, arrived at Pomona in 1987 as an undocumented student. After working in international business, he now owns a marketing consulting firm for small businesses and is a part-time lecturer at Loyola Marymount. His conversation with PCM’s Robyn Norwood has been edited for length and clarity.
PCM: How was it that you first came to Pomona?
Romero: In high school, I visited the Harvey Mudd campus through the Upward Bound program, where we got to stay overnight. I was very interested in—and still am—engineering and mathematics. During the tour, somebody pointed out, oh yeah, down the street there are other colleges. Pitzer, Claremont McKenna, Pomona. Only one of my teachers at Pioneer High School in Whittier had actually heard of Pomona, and the only reason he remembered was because Pomona had won the College Bowl back in the ’60s. So that added a little bit more mystique. Sure enough, I fell in love once I got to visit the campus, meet people and read about the student-faculty ratio. I thought, absolutely, I’m going to apply.
PCM: Tell me about your family and higher education.
Romero: We’re all immigrants. I was 8 years old when we came here. I didn’t speak a lot of English. One of the reasons that we came to this country, my dad has said many times, is for the opportunities, including educational opportunities. We were a border family. I was born in Hermosillo, the capital of the state of Sonora, just south of Arizona. This was before the borders were so impenetrable. There was a lot of back and forth.
We finally came here, and I was pretty good at school and ended up skipping eighth grade. In high school, they put me in the track of the honors program. It was really interesting, the encouragement I got from my parents. It wasn’t even explicitly said, but I understood that whatever I chose to do, they were going to support it. It never really dawned on me to think about the price. We’d figure out how to pay for it. I’d take loans if I had to, which I did. There are a lot of things I wish I would have known. But I also had probably the best support I could have gotten.
PCM: How did you get involved on campus once you were here?
Romero: I spent my first two years in Oldenborg, and that was a lot of fun. I was very involved in high school and I just continued that here. I decided to run for ASPC, so I was a senator and then I was the external affairs commissioner my junior year. I played intramurals. I’ve always been very sociable, so I’d just go meet people. A lot of the people on the Alumni Board are people who were very involved. In fact, we have former ASPC presidents on the board, including Andrea Venezia [’91], who was ASPC president when I was here. My personal journey after graduating was that I volunteered with the CDO [Career Development Office] quite a bit. And I served on panels about business, international business, graduate school, anything they needed speakers for that I have experience in.
What it’s always been about is Pomona did a lot for me. Coming in, I was actually undocumented. I didn’t get my green card until I was a sophomore at Pomona. Thinking back, that was probably one of the reasons I chose Pomona over UCLA—a state school versus a private school. I never got to the conversation with UCLA as to what they would have expected of me as an undocumented student, but with Pomona there was no issue. Some of the loans I got were different from federal loans, but they found them for me.
That’s probably one of the biggest debts of gratitude I have to Pomona: They didn’t let my immigrant status get in the way. But the other one is really just the exposure to the world that I got at Pomona. Students from all over the world, all over the country. The access to different socioeconomic groups. I think one of the best advantages Pomona has, especially with the diversity of the student body, is that as a young immigrant kid from Whittier, you get to speak with people whose parents are professors or they’re lawyers or they’re successful business people. There are also instances where you realize that you’re in a better situation than they are, which for a 17-or 18-year-old is eye-opening when you’ve been told your whole life that people in the upper part of the socioeconomic strata have it better: They have a better life; they have a better chance of success.
The story I love to tell is the friend of mine who needed to buy a dress for a formal party. We went down to Montclair Plaza. I had a car, and that was one of the biggest things right? I’m local, so I have a car and I drive people around. There are different kinds of privilege. We get to the mall, she picks the dress she wants and we go up to the counter. Her father had given her a checkbook and said, “Go ahead. Write checks for anything you need.” Which immediately I’m thinking, oh, that’s cool. She opens up the checkbook and goes, “I don’t know how to write a check.” It was a big reveal to me, because I had a checking account since I got a job at 16. So I helped her. Privilege isn’t necessarily a binary thing. It’s not one extreme or the other.
PCM: Given the timing, were you part of the Reagan amnesty era?
Romero: Yes, absolutely. We came here in 1978, and my dad actually had attended high school in Arizona, in Tucson. He joined the U.S. Air Force but ended up moving back to Mexico, met my mom and had a family there. When we came, my dad said, “I’m a veteran. We should have no problem immigrating.” So we started applying for residency. And nothing. It was issues with my dad’s paperwork; there were just all kinds of hurdles. It was seven, eight years of trying. My mom was completely concerned when I was in high school. “Be careful where you go, you don’t want to get caught by Immigration.” At that point, I think I’d already lost any accent I had, so I wasn’t that worried. But my mom was.
At one point, the lawyer we had hired to help us looked at my parents and said, “You know, the best thing you could do right now is to apply for this new amnesty program that is coming through.” So when I hear people talking about, like, why don’t people just come here legally, I remember it took us almost a decade to do it the right way. That is how finally, in 1987, I was in Oldenborg and I got my date to go down to the city of Pomona and have my interview to get my temporary residence card.
PCM: With the Alumni Board, do you come in with anything specific you’re trying to do?
Romero: The Alumni Board to me is a reflection of the alumni community as a whole. So what I immediately recognized is that no matter what my personal feelings may be towards something, the only way to get things done is to make sure the energy is there to get them done. Yes, I have a particular passion for DACA students or anybody undocumented. I have a very, very strong desire to help first-generation and low-income students as they come in. We do have a very diverse group on the board, including other former first-generation students.
But we also have—I guess I’m part of this now—older alumni who are very interested in continuing the traditions of the College. In conversations with some of the younger alums, there seems to be a disconnect between their experience at Pomona and what they see as the traditions of the College. Some of that was done on purpose because there are some traditions that Pomona had—the freshman weigh-in was definitely one we don’t want to continue. It stopped. But there are a lot of traditions that we do want to continue. (For more on traditions, see Pomoniana Blog)
Julian Nava ’51, a professor and trailblazing advocate for public education who later became the first Mexican American to serve as U.S. ambassador to Mexico, died July 29, 2022. He was 95.
Two Los Angeles Unified School District campuses bear Nava’s name—the Dr. Julian Nava Learning Academy and the Nava College Preparatory Academy—in recognition of his contributions as the first Latino elected to the Los Angeles Board of Education in 1967.
Nava, a professor of history at Cal State Northridge for more than 40 years, served on the LAUSD board for 12 years, including two stints as board president. A proponent of bilingual education, a multicultural curriculum and school integration, he emerged as a pivotal figure in the first year after he was elected during the volatile protests remembered as the East L.A. high school walkouts or Chicano “blowouts,” when thousands of students walked out of classrooms demanding more equitable education. Nava, a graduate of Roosevelt High in Boyle Heights, immediately found himself in the middle.
“Having grown up in East Los Angeles and having experienced the same unfair treatment that these students were experiencing, he understood it like no other member on the board,” remembers his daughter Carmen Nava, a professor of history at Cal State San Marcos.
“It was a trial by fire and on a certain level, everybody criticized him. People on the right felt like, ‘Who is this person who’s sympathetic and soft on crime?’ People on the left were like, ‘Why are you wearing a suit? You’ve just become one of them and you’re a sellout.’”
Nava—at times under such criticism he was advised to wear a bullet-proof vest—persuaded the board to move a pivotal meeting to East L.A.’s Lincoln High, and the board eventually implemented reforms that met most of the students’ demands.
“He had to find a way to speak with his brand-new colleagues on the board—to talk with them, to learn from them, to educate them, to convince them that this was an opportunity to listen to these students—and to do what he could, for example, to try to prevent an overreaction, a police reaction, to what the students were doing,” his daughter says.
Though Nava hadn’t planned to go into politics or diplomacy, he was appointed U.S. ambassador to Mexico in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter, serving until 1981 after Ronald Reagan had taken office. In 1992, not long after he taught at Pomona as a visiting professor, Nava announced a run for mayor of Los Angeles, but his candidacy never took hold.
Nava arrived at Pomona after serving in the U.S. Navy Air Corps near the end of World War II. The GI Bill provided a pathway to higher education, and he became the first of eight siblings to attend college. He enrolled at East Los Angeles College, where he was the first Mexican American elected student body president. One of his teachers, a Pomona alumna, pointed him toward her alma mater, suggesting that he could be accepted despite a B+ average. “She explained that grades were not everything that Pomona would take into account. My well-rounded background, military service and election as student body president could help gain acceptance,” he wrote in his autobiography, Julian Nava: My Mexican-American Journey.
At Pomona, Nava recalled, he was one of only a handful of students with Spanish surnames. He reveled in eating in Frary Dining Hall under the Prometheus mural by José Clemente Orozco, one of Mexico’s greatest artists. Professor Hubert Herring, a specialist in Latin American history, urged Nava to apply to graduate school at Harvard. He was accepted and became one of the first Mexican Americans to earn a doctorate from Harvard.
As a young man Nava worked as a community organizer with the Community Service Organization. There he met labor leader Cesar Chavez. He served as a pallbearer at Chavez’s funeral in 1993.
Pomona presented Nava with an honorary doctor of laws in 1980, when he was a Commencement speaker. His time as a Pomona student was a watershed, his daughter says. “Up to that point, nothing in his life had been like that. But the beautiful Pomona campus, the richness of the experience that he had in his classes with his teachers and fellow students, I remember stories he would tell me about how small the classes were, almost like a seminar. I’m so grateful for that and I know that he was able to pass it forward to other students.”
Nava is survived by his wife of 60 years, Patricia, children Carmen Nava, Katie Stokes and Julian Paul Nava, sister Rose Marie Herzig and six grandchildren.
Message from Alumni Board PresidentGreetings, my fellow Sagehens,
Happy New Year! How are we here in 2023 already? I’d like to begin by thanking Don Swan ’15 for his leadership of the Alumni Association Board these past two years. The board and I deeply appreciate his time and commitment, especially as it stretched across the pandemic and the return to in-person life.
I am excited to be leading this dynamic group of dedicated and energetic Sagehen volunteers and can’t believe it’s already been six months since the Alumni Board members kicked off their work this academic year. We have had fantastic planning and discussions taking place in our meetings and are working toward many opportunities for alumni engagement and philanthropy—so stay tuned for more details! And I am also pleased to share some highlights of board work already in motion:
Partnering with the Career Development Office to offer Alumni Futures, virtual career exploration and planning presentations from Alumni Board members for young alumni and students. Chirps to Jeff Levere ’12 for kicking off this effort with his workshop this past fall!
Connecting with members of the campus community to share information and support Pomona traditions.
Working to grow alumni registrations as well as alumni-to-alumni and alumni-to-student mentoring on Sagehen Connect. (Did you know you can access the official Pomona College Alumni Directory and the Pomona College Magazine class notes pages on Sagehen Connect?)
Supporting activities of our Sagehen Regional Alumni Chapters, including working with chapter volunteers and planning the launch of two new chapters by Summer 2023!
As we get closer to spring, I want to remind you that all alumni are welcome to attend Alumni Weekend—April 27-30—and hope to see you there. The Alumni Board also looks forward to welcoming our newest Alumni Association members (the Class of 2023) in May!
Until next time—CHIRP!
Alfredo
Alfredo Romero ’91
Alumni Association Board President
To learn more about the Alumni Association Board, see the board roster or read meeting minutes online—or to nominate a fellow Sagehen (or yourself) for the board—please visit pomona.edu/alumni-board.
For questions, please contact
Director of Alumni and Family Engagement Alisa Fishbach at alumni@pomona.edu.
We happily welcomed hundreds of families to campus for Family Weekend in October to enjoy a special weekend of programs and activities with their students. Families toured the new Center for Athletics, Recreation and Wellness and Benton Museum of Art, attended faculty and staff presentations like Hen Talks and History of Pomona, and were welcomed to many open house receptions hosted by academic departments and Student Affairs offices. We also appreciated the opportunity to thank our generous family donors in person at a special luncheon held in their honor on Saturday.
Who’s Coming to Alumni Weekend 2023?
Alumni Weekend registration opens in February, and we can’t wait to welcome our Sagehens back to campus for a fantastic weekend of reconnecting and making new memories. We’ll visit familiar and new Pomona spaces and celebrate reunions with class years ending in 3 or 8 as well as the 47th reunion of the Class of 1976 and our Diamond Classes of 1962 and earlier. As always, therewill be an abundance of curated programs and events for our alumni community to enjoy. All alumni are invited, so don’t wait for your next reunion to come and say hello to classmates, faculty, staff and Cecil!
Watch your email and the Alumni Weekend and Reunion Celebrations website at pomona.edu/alumniweekend for details, updates and information on how to register. Questions? Please call (888) SAGEHEN or email Director of Alumni and Family Engagement Alisa Fishbach at alumni@pomona.edu.
Who knows the ins and outs of graduating from Pomona and experiencing life beyond the Gates better than a Sagehen? Alumni and students would love to connect with you and hear your advice about career experiences, graduate school and other post-Pomona life wisdom as a Sage Coach on Sagehen Connect. Provide resume feedback, offer advice on career roles and paths, make recommendations on graduate school programs or assist with other types of support—you choose how you would like to help and how much. Additionally, Sage Coaches may be invited to participate in panel discussions or individual presentations hosted by the Career Development Office or Alumni and Family Engagement.
Not on Sagehen Connect yet? Learn more about our Pomona College online alumni community and register today at pomona.edu/sagehen-connect.
Hello and Happy New Year, Sagehens!
I hope your holiday season was full of joy and relaxation and gave you time to reconnect with family, friends and your favorite Sagehens. During these past months of giving, I have been in awe, once again, at the generosity of our Sagehen community. It is inspiring to begin 2023 as a proud member of our philanthropic community, noting the impact that’s been made in support of our students so far this academic year.
With January here, it occurs to me that I am heading into the last six months of my term as the national chair of annual giving. In July, I’ll be honored to pass the torch to our newly named national chair, Christina Tong ’17. It’s been a rewarding role indeed, and I look forward to working on several special giving opportunities coming our way this spring that will strive to raise funds for key areas in need at Pomona.
Thank you to everyone who has made a gift in 2022. Rest assured that your support goes directly to the immediate needs of current students and faculty, including financial aid, academic programs and resources, experiential learning and student activities. If you haven’t given yet, I hope you’ll consider donating to the area of Pomona that’s most meaningful to you before June 30 reaches us. Gifts of all sizes make a great impact.
Gratefully,
Nathan
Nathan Dean ’10
National Chair of Annual Giving