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)

Educator and Ambassador to Mexico, 1927—2022

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 President
Alfredo Romero ’91

Greetings, 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.

Family Weekend Fun

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.

Alumni Weekend

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.

Sage Coaches Needed on Sagehen Connect!

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.

Signing up is easy:

1. Log in to Sagehen Connect at sagehenconnect.pomona.edu.
2. Select “Edit profile” next to your profile image.
3. Scroll to “Offer Sage Coaching” and select what you would like to do as a Sage Coach.
4. Don’t forget to save your changes!

Not on Sagehen Connect yet? Learn more about our Pomona College online alumni community and register today at pomona.edu/sagehen-connect.

A Message from Nathan Dean ’15, National Chair of Annual Giving

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