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Masago Armstrong Beloved Registrar Leaves $1 Million for Pomona Student Scholarships

Masago Armstrong feature image
Masago Armstrong shaped the academic lives of generationsof students as Pomona College registrar from 1955 to 1985.

Masago Armstrong shaped the academic lives of generations of students as Pomona College registrar from 1955 to 1985.

Revered in campus lore, Masago Armstrong helped thousands of students stay on track during her 30 years as registrar of Pomona College. After leaving a $1 million gift for scholarships at her passing, Armstrong will continue to shape students’ lives for years to come.

The daughter of Japanese immigrants, Armstrong found her world upended in 1942 during World War II when her entire family was sent to a U.S. government incarceration camp, where her mother died. In time, Armstrong rebuilt her life and went on to influence the academic lives of generations of students during her tenure as Pomona College registrar from 1955 to 1985.

Coming from an administrator whose work unfolded behind the scenes, the bequest is a testament to Pomona’s close-knit community—and to the extraordinary nature of Armstrong, who passed away at the age of 102 in 2022.

“Masago Armstrong was known for her skill and diligence as registrar and for her kindness and care for Pomona students,” said Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr. “This endowed scholarship will honor her mother’s memory and support generations of students with financial help to attend Pomona.”

The gift through Armstrong’s estate builds on the smaller Towa Yamaguchi Shibuya Scholarship Fund that Armstrong launched in honor of her mother decades earlier.

Masago Shibuya Armstrong was born in Menlo Park, California, one of six siblings who worked on the family’s flower farm. Her parents, determined that all their children would attend college, saw most of them off to Stanford, where Masago graduated with a master’s degree in 1941.

At opposite page top, the Shibuya family before being incarcerated during World War II. Photo by Dorothea Lange.

At opposite page top, the Shibuya family before being incarcerated during World War II. Photo by Dorothea Lange.

Her father, Ryohitsu, and mother, Towa, were born in Japan and came to the United States in 1904. Masago’s father is said to have arrived with just $60 in cash and a basket of clothes. Together with his wife and children, the family built a thriving flower business renowned for its prized chrysanthemums.

The Shibuyas’ hard-won prosperity was interrupted by catastrophe in April 1942. Due to the executive order issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the entire family was sent to temporary quarters at Santa Anita Park racetrack in Arcadia, California, and then moved to a detention camp for Japanese Americans at Heart Mountain in Wyoming. Tragically, her mother died there at the age of 51, and the family would not return to their Menlo Park home until April 1945.

After the war, Armstrong worked at Stanford University, where she met and married her husband, Hubert Armstrong. Together they moved to Claremont, where she was hired by the College in 1955. During her long career, Armstrong helped guide 8,752 students through to graduation.

Before Armstrong’s death and in celebration of her 100th birthday, Julie Siebel ’84 joined a group of alumni to share memories of Armstrong’s influence on their lives at Pomona and afterward. Siebel recalled how Armstrong knew her mother—Cynthia “Sue” Cudney Siebel ’59—who had attended Pomona—and also remembered Julie as a child growing up in Claremont.

“Masago’s warm welcome to me as a first-year in Sumner Hall really surprised my sponsor group because they had been told to fear her at registration,” recalled Siebel. “And later, when I applied to graduate school, the hand-calculated GPA on my transcript was a point of interest to the historians on my admission committee. I gave them the first hand-calculated GPA they had seen since computerized transcripts had become the norm, and they asked me about it. I assured them that Masago was more accurate than a computer.”

Beloved and respected by the Pomona community, Armstrong was known as a woman of gracefully opposing forces. She was kind and stern, patient and efficient, self-effacing and accomplished, mild and meticulous. Her memory for names and faces, majors and GPAs remains the stuff of legend. She was both a masterful student mentor and an exacting, indomitable college administrator.

At bottom, Armstrong in action as registrar pictured in the 1957 Metate yearbook.

At bottom, Armstrong in action as registrar pictured in the 1957 Metate yearbook.

When she retired, Armstrong reflected on her career in an interview for Pomona College Magazine. “I like the detail. I think that is one of my strengths, and it’s absolutely necessary for the job. … And I haven’t denied myself the pleasure of meeting the students,” she said.

In the same magazine piece, then Associate Dean of the College R. Stanton Hales ’64 agreed. “She is the ideal registrar. She is efficient, patient and has a deep and sincere interest in every individual student,” Hales said.

Even decades after retiring, Armstrong stayed close to Pomona’s campus as a resident of the Mt. San Antonio Gardens retirement community a little more than a mile from Marston Quad.

Lily Shibuya, Armstrong’s sister-in-law, commented on the gift and the College’s plan to celebrate Masago and her enduring impact on Pomona: “To me the best epitaph that describes her is that ‘to know her was to love and respect her’ as she enriched everyone’s life that she touched. Thank you to Pomona College for honoring her in this special way.”

Our Bird’s Beginnings Script

Page 1

Panel 1

Caption: Our Bird’s Beginnings. Story by Robyn Norwood, Illustrated by Eric Melgosa

Image: Cecil stands by a mailbox preparing to send a DNA test kit.

Cecil (thinks): All right! Time to find out where I come from…

Panel 2

Caption: Adan Amaya, Pomona College Mail Services, finds Cecil training in preparation for “Through the Gates.”

Image: Listening to music through his headphones, Cecil leans against the Pomona College gate stretching his knee as it goes “CRUNCH.” Adan has a package in his hand.

Cecil (singing): …turns out I’m 100% that…

Adan: Hi Cecil! I’ve got a package for you.

Cecil: Oh, Hey Adan! That’s probably my DNA results. I’m so nervous!

Panel 3

Image: As Adan holds a sheet of paper with Cecil’s DNA test results, Cecil asks…

Cecil: What’s it say, Adan?

Adan: hmm, let’s see… I’m Sorry, Cecil, it says you’re not human. You have way more than 46 chromosomes so they cannot process your DNA.

Panel 4

Image: Cecil dejectedly walks up to the entrance of the Richard C. Seaver Biology Building.

Cecil (thinks): What in the world am I!? Prof. Karnovsky will know what to do. If anyone can figure this out, she can!

Page 2

Panel 1

Image: Open panel showing Professor of Biology Nina Karnovsky and Cecil in conversation.

Cecil: Prof. Karnovsky, I need your help! The DNA test I took didn’t work! Is there a “23 and poultry” or something!?

Prof. Karnovsky: Well, Cecil, I don’t think that will give you the answers you’re looking for. Who you are is a lot more than your DNA, you know. I think you should go see Sean Stanley, the College archivist, You might find some hidden heirlooms!

Panel 2

Image: Overhead view of Prof. Karnovsky and Cecil looking at photos, documents and a range map of the Greater Sage Grouse.

Prof. Karnovsky: Before you go, come look at these pictures. Here we have Centrocercus urophasianus, the Greater Sage Grouse, also known as a sagehen.

Cecil: …But they’re brown. I’m blue. And my beak is orange. I definitely don’t have those pectorals.

Prof. Karnovsky: Those aren’t pectorals. They’re air-filled sacs used in courtship displays. Those spiky tail feathers are another way the males try to attract a mate. And sorry to say, but they don’t chirp. It’s more of a coo-coo, plus a bubbling or popping sound.

Page 3

Panel 1

Caption: First thing the following day, Cecil visits the college archivist, Sean Stanley, to find out what he knows about Cecil’s origins.

Image: Sean stands behind a counter as Cecil greets him.

Sean: Ah, Early bird gets the worm. Hi Cecil!

Image: Cecil imagines himself with a mouth full of worms with a nauseated look on his face.

Cecil: That’s disgusting!

Sean: Never mind. I have something I think you’d like to see.

Panel 2

Image: Sean holds out a pennant depicting a slim anthropomorphic bird wearing a two-toned cap followed by the word Pomona.

Cecil: Who’s that supposed to be?

Panel 3

Cecil: Do you think that’s my father?

Image: Cecil imagines the old mascot wearing a black Stahlhelm claiming to be his father.

Sean: No, no. This pennant is estimated to be from the 1930s or ’40s. That would be many hen-erations ago.

Image: Sean holds up a blue and white cap with a small rim on it.

Cecil: OK, smart aleck! But he’s so… thin. Scrawny. He looks nothing like the Greater Sage Grouse. What’s that hat, anyway?

Panel 4

Sean: There was a tradition that first-year Pomona students had to wear a blue beanie with a P on the front. They say that ended with the Great Freshman Beanie Revolt of 1967.

Image: A crowd of students gathers in front of Sumner Hall holding picket signs that say BEANIE REVOLT.

Cecil: The ’60s. I thought the protests were about more important things.

Sean: They generally were. So back to the origins of the Sagehens…

Page 4

Panel 1

Sean: In the early 1900s, Pomona’s athletic teams were called various nicknames, including Huns, once a reference to warrior nomads but later an unfortunate pejorative term for Germans during World War I and World War II. Though Sage Hens appeared in the L.A. Times as early as 1911, according to one legend a writer for The Student Life in 1913 might have meant to type Huns but typed Hens, and it stuck.

Image: Sean and Cecil, in conversation, both imagine a group of nomadic warriors on horseback wielding bows and arrows, pikes and swords.

Cecil: So I’m a Typo?!

Sean: If you are, you’re a typo with staying power. Since 1918, the Sagehen has been the only symbol of Pomona, Pomona-Claremont and now Pomona-Pitzer athletics. Have you been to see Miriam Merrill, our athletics director? She may have useful perspective.

Cecil: No, but that’s a good idea. I’ll go see her now.

Panel 2

Image: Cecil waves at Miriam Merrill, the director of Pomona-Pitzer Athletics.

Miriam: If it isn’t our 2021 national champion Sagehen!

Cecil: Yes! men’s cross country and men’s water polo!

Miriam: You’re really something, Cecil.

Cecil: Thanks, Miriam … But who am I really?

Miriam: You’re the spirit of the college, Cecil. You are one of a kind!

The End

See graphic story here

 

Book Talk: After the Flood

A century has passed since the 1921 San Antonio flood, a disaster that devastated the city but also sparked a movement.

West Side Rising: How San Antonio’s 1921 Flood Devastated a City and Sparked a Latino Environmental Justice MovementWith the coming release of the paperback edition of Environmental Analysis and History Professor Char Miller’s 2021 book, West Side Rising: How San Antonio’s 1921 Flood Devastated a City and Sparked a Latino Environmental Justice Movement, PCM’s Sneha Abraham talked with Miller about what happened when the waters receded—and the issues that remain more than a hundred years later. The interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.

PCM: In relation to the 1921 San Antonio flood, you examine spatial inequities, ethnic discrimination, environmental injustice. How are those things revealed?

Char Miller: One of the things that I’m really fascinated with regarding this flood and hurricanes and other similar disasters is that these events are ephemeral. A flood comes, it goes, and then it’s gone. A flood just runs downriver until it heads into, in this case, the Gulf of Mexico. But what it reveals are all of the social issues that may not be talked about, but which are very evident on the ground. For example, the spatial inequity in a place like San Antonio is evident if you ask a pretty simple question, “Who died, and where did they live? And who didn’t die, and where do they live?”

And, in this case, you can, like an archaeologist, do a very quick schematic. Those who lived in the flood plain tended to be poor, tended to be Hispanic, but not exclusively, and tended to live in a landscape that repeatedly flooded. It’s not just the 1921 flood, there are floods dating back to the 18th century when the Spanish arrived. Those who did not die even though their streets flooded tended to live in much more substantial homes that were designed to withstand periodic moderate flooding—almost invariably in all-white neighborhoods.

Then you start to look at the physical geography. And it’s not just that one group is in the flood plain; the other group is elevated. By 1921, the spatial differentials were that in San Antonio the people who were dying or getting injured or whose homes were getting destroyed tended to be black and brown, and those who didn’t tended to be white. So that’s one way to see it. If you look at the second layer, which is political inequity, that’s built into the system also. And so, although Spanish-surnamed residents and African Americans voted, they were voting for white candidates because that’s who dominated the political arena. So even if you had the power of the vote, you didn’t have power.

The third issue is economic inequities. Those who lived in victimized neighborhoods were themselves manual laborers and, therefore, had little-to-no money to cushion themselves as a consequence of one flood after another, after another, after another. And so, with the ’21 flood, you can see that although the downtown core got ravaged and the West Side barrio got splintered, downtown recovered and the West Side barrio didn’t.

And those are post-flood examples of political disempowerment, of political and environmental injustice and the linked spatial inequities. The city grieved for those who died and then immediately turned its resources, its public funds, to support and protect the downtown core, which it believed was the only economic activity and social life that mattered. The Anglo power elite built a big dam and then straightened out the river and did all sorts of work over the next decade, virtually none of which was useful to anybody whose family had been destroyed in the 1921 flood.

PCM: Similar to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 …

Miller: Yes, totally right. Katrina, Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Name your hurricane and they reveal that same kind of story. It’s dramatic in a sense, but also predictable. And that’s the piece that, I think, drove me crazy while working on the book, which is that there are really two stories. One of which is the disaster as a disaster. The other is the repeated disasters that go back to the 18th century.

Even though I don’t talk about climate change in the book, it’s actually an analog for what happened in San Antonio for decades. “We had a flood; let’s do something.” “Nah, let’s not.” “We had a flood; let’s do something.” “Nah, it’s too expensive.” And they kept delaying, calculating that in the short term it’s cheaper not to do anything. In the long term, if people died, the elite could say to themselves, well, they’re not our bodies. They were other people who were going to bear that burden disproportionately. So that’s one part of the story.

The other part of the story is that, yes, there was a disaster, and yes, it solidified for a period of time the control of Anglo domination over the city’s budget, over its politics, over its social life, and managed to even further segregate Spanish-surnamed communities, the West Side barrio.

But—and this is a piece of the story that is crucial—out of that disaster came a local Latino environmental justice movement that quickly became one of the most dominant grassroots organizations of any city in the United States. And it was another flood that turned that story around. The flood in 1974 spurred the West Side to say, “All right, enough of this s—.” You can quote me on that one.

Two years prior, the West Side had been organizing a group called COPS, Communities Organized for Public Services, a parish-based, largely female-led organization that is in and of itself fascinating.

And they flipped the narrative so rapidly that it’s almost impossible to believe. They used the 1974 flood to challenge the political status quo, secured half a billion dollars over the next 10 years to turn ditches into flood-control channels, repair street infrastructure, and build better houses, water and sewer hookups, a set of connected resources the West Side had wanted for 50 years since the ’21 flood. They fought such that the city had to create a new charter so that city council representatives were no longer elected by at-large elections but via single-member districts. This new format gave people like Henry Cisneros, who was later mayor of San Antonio and then U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, a chance to get onto the city council and take its budget and start moving it to disempowered neighborhoods, African American and Mexican American. They broke the back of the power elite and came up with a whole political system. And then COPS became sort of the University of COPS, training and sending activists to Los Angeles and Houston, Tucson, Phoenix, Denver and Chicago.

San Antonio was for Mexican American/Chicano political development what Atlanta was for the Black Civil Rights Movement. It was the incubator and the galvanizing force that then sent people across the country. And, you know, you can’t have that story without the ’21 flood. And, in a way, what COPS’ victory represented for me was a kind of homage to those who died in 1921. They were going to better the landscape—built and natural—than the flood-prone one their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents had endured, and they did it.

PCM: Why did you choose to examine the 1921 San Antonio flood?

Miller: Partly because I lived in San Antonio for 26 years. I lived near the Olmos Dam and was totally puzzled by it, but it taught me about watersheds. I also worked for what was called the Open Space Advisory Committee for the City of San Antonio, and everyone was thinking watersheds there, too.

Talking to the committee’s representatives from the west and south side was a lesson in politics. They knew all about the local watersheds and what flood control had achieved and what it had not accomplished. That hit home, literally, because the community in which we lived was built at the exact same time the dam was dedicated. It was a high-ground lure for the elite who wanted to get out of town, literally, and get elevated above and behind the dam. It was then a white enclave and an automobile suburb—the first car-dependent subdivision in San Antonio. It was these people who helped fight for the dam’s construction so that it would protect their downtown businesses and other economic assets—using public funds to protect private capital.

In 1939, New Deal photographer Russell Lee captured a key outcome of this skewed public spending. He set up his camera on the bank of Apache Creek, which in 1921 ripped through the barrio. In the foreground is a shack much like those throughout the West Side. In the middle ground is San Fernando Cemetery, where many of the 1921 flood’s victims were interred. In the background, no more than 1.5 miles away, tall post-flood skyscrapers rise up. Lee doesn’t need to say a word: He has perfectly caught the systemic injustices that prevailed in San Antonio two decades after the 1921 flood.

These strategies to withstand disasters normalized class and race and injustice. They weren’t just normalized; they were set in concrete. If you had concrete, you were protected even more. And if you still had an earthen ditch, you were utterly at the whim of nature. And its whim was felt in 1935, 1946, the 1950s through the mid-1970s, as floodwaters poured through the West Side. Running through the 1960s it was pretty nasty on the West Side. Most of their streets through the early ’70s were hard-packed dirt. Many areas were without potable water. They had to walk to find a faucet somewhere. The Peace Corps trained volunteers in San Antonio so they would understand what they might encounter when they arrived in South America.

COPS, the Communities Organized for Public Services, which emerged in the 1970s, is one expression of the West Side’s anger and the ultimate success of its grassroots activism. But you have to backdate that a little to 1960 when Henry B. Gonzalez, also a West Side resident whose family had gone through the ’21 flood, became the city’s U.S. congressman. He used his seniority to start channeling money to the West Side. COPS did the same thing with local dollars.

The combination of bottom-up and top-down pressure meant that West Side residents themselves disrupted, even destroyed, some of the markers of systemic racism. It doesn’t mean racism and classism have been fully vanquished, but the since the 1970s Spanish-surnamed politicians have dominated the public arena.

PCM: You talk about these calamities not being natural disasters. What do you mean by that? 

Miller: Disasters, whether hurricanes, tornadoes or a flood like that which wracked parts of Tennessee last year, blast through human communities. We want to call them natural disasters so that we can say that we have no control over them. But, in fact, we do have control. If we build houses in fire zones and they are incinerated, that’s not natural. It’s a result of policymaking. The same is true when communities greenlight subdivisions in a flood plain, riparian or coastal. Human decisions have human consequences.

The argument in West Side Rising, much as it is when I write about wildfires, is that because these are human actions they can be reversed. As an example, in 1998 San Antonio experienced yet another mega-flood. All local flood control infrastructure worked as planned. But this inundation revealed that there were other unprotected watersheds; a lot of people lost their homes. The city and the county acted swiftly, committing local funds to buy floodplain-sited houses from willing sellers.

I had been tracking that story and realized that the same strategy could be applied in the wildfire zones in California. Why not buy people out before their houses burn or buy them out after a firestorm swept through a community? The Golden State could replicate San Antonio’s success, which depends on a simple insight: that human-made disasters can be prevented. Equally so with climate change.

PCM: You’re a mentor for many students.
For this project, how did you bring San Antonio home to Claremont? 

Miller: West Side Rising and a companion documentary volume, The Tragedy of the San Antonio Flood, benefited enormously from the talents of a team of Pomona and Scripps students. I received a wonderful grant from the Digital Humanities at The Claremont Colleges initiative funded by the Mellon Foundation and used the funds to hire Anam Mehta ’21, Natalie Quek SC ’19 and Katie Graham SC ’19 to digitize a large collection of photographs and aerial maps that the U.S. Army had produced in the immediate aftermath of the 1921 flood. Anam also created several maps that appear in the two texts. Nicole Arce ’21 pored through Spanish-language documents and newspapers and provided a number of key translations. It was a blast working with them and being schooled by their insights—as happens with their peers every day in class.

Char Miller, W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History

Char Miller, W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History

Bookmarks Spring 2022

PITPIT

Art Professor Lisa Anne Auerbach collects photographs she took at Chicago punk and hardcore shows—in particular in mosh pits—in 1985 when she was a teenager.


What Is Love?What Is Love?

In this picture book, Mac Barnett ’04 and illustrator Carson Ellis present a fable about the nature of love, told from the perspective of a child.


Don’t Wait, Create: How to be a Content Creator in the New Digital RevolutionDon’t Wait, Create: How to be a Content Creator in the New Digital Revolution

Erica Berry ’19 writes about the changing nature of the entertainment industry and how successful digital content creators found their creative voices, providing a roadmap for aspiring content creators.


Eyewitness to AIDS: On the Frontlines of a PandemicEyewitness to AIDS: On the Frontlines of a Pandemic

Bob Biggar ’64, a physician-epidemiologist from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, tells the story of AIDS and the HIV epidemic from its earliest discovery in 1981 to 2021, giving insight into how science brought this pandemic under a measure of control.


Dreaming of California

Dreaming of California

Grant Collier ’96 spent many months taking photos in California to capture the images for this children’s book about Pandora the Pelican and her exciting journeys through California past and present.

Legacies

Dr. Martin Hyung-Il Lee

Dr. Martin Hyung-Il LeeLee, the father of Pomona College Trustee Bobby Lee ’02 and Jenny Lee ’07, immigrated to the U.S. from South Korea in 1974, becoming the first in his family to graduate college before going on to medical school with the help of scholarships supplemented by student loans.

As a doctor, Lee for decades served immigrants in Los Angeles’ Koreatown, sometimes even accepting copayments in windowsill chili peppers from elderly widows with limited incomes.

Now students on Lee’s same path to the American dream will benefit from a $1 million gift to Pomona College devoted entirely to scholarships. The Dr. Martin Hyung-Il Lee Scholarship Fund is for students facing financial hardships who come from immigrant families, are first-generation college students and/or are pursuing careers in science or medicine.

Lee’s son Bobby and daughter-in-law Sophia Whang established the fund to honor Dr. Lee, who died in 2021 at the age of 64.

“My father lived the American dream, and this is a way to carry on his memory and ideals,” says Bobby Lee, president and COO of Los Angeles-based JRK Property Holdings.

Barbara Barnard Smith ’42

Barbara Barnard Smith ’42Smith’s remarkable support for the College and non-Western music continued at her passing last year at the age of 101. She left more than $3.5 million to the Music Department through a planned gift, bringing her support to the College over the years to $5.7 million.

Half of her final gift will support the future renovation of Music Department facilities and the naming of a space in honor of the late Professor of Music Katherine J. Hagedorn. The other half will further endow the existing Barbara B. Smith ’42 Fund for Non-Western Music to support ethnomusicology curriculum and other instruction, programming, equipment and performances of non-Western music at the College. Smith’s support made possible Pomona’s non-Western music ensembles, including the Balinese gamelan, West African and Afro-Cuban ensembles.

After graduating from Pomona, Smith studied at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester before embarking on a career teaching at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa from 1949 to 1982. Noting the university’s diverse student body, Smith introduced classes in hula and Hawaiian chant, Korean dance, Chinese dulcimer and Japanese gagaku (court music). She founded UH Mānoa’s ethnomusicology program and established its master’s and Ph.D. ethnomusicology degree programs.

The Highest Beam

The new athletics, recreation and wellness centerThe new athletics, recreation and wellness center adjacent to Bridges Auditorium topped out with the raising of the highest beam in November.

Scheduled to open this fall, the 99,925 square-foot building will feature not only facilities for Pomona-Pitzer Athletics but also a vastly expanded fitness area, plentiful locker rooms, three classrooms, two weight rooms and two large studios for activities such as yoga or spinning.

“This is part of how we reinvent wellness on our campus,” says Miriam Merrill, director of athletics and professor of physical education, noting that wellness is a component of the College’s 2020 Strategic Vision.

Once it opens, visitors to the athletics center may notice a small detail that gives Project Manager Brian Faber pride. The room number of the first-floor studio is a nod to Pomona lore: Studio 147.

OA, Local Version

Joshua Tree National Park

Eli Li ’25 tries rock climbing at Joshua Tree National Park.

The traditional multi-day Orientation Adventures to such classic California destinations as Yosemite National Park and various coastal spots for camping, surfing or kayaking have been on a pandemic hiatus. But students arriving on campus for the first time had opportunities to go on more local orientation experiences last fall, including a rock-climbing day trip to Joshua Tree National Park, a dog-walking outing with four-legged friends from the Priceless Pets rescue group in Chino Hills and a trip to Long Beach.

Priceless Pets rescue group

Ella Novy-Marx ’25, left, and Brody Eggert ’25 playing with a dog.

Protesting is part of the college experience—even perhaps an essential element of a well-rounded education.

But the small protest that materialized outside of Frary Dining Hall one November morning was unexpected to say the least. Several students, armed with camp stoves and spatulas, were whipping up made-to-order omelets for yawning students before class.

Their cause? Weekday morning omelet service had been suspended because of pandemic-related staffing issues. The students published a “Das Omelettistich Manifesto” with an apropos slogan: “You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.”

Campus administrators said the omelet stations would resume as staffing allowed—and they did, with daily made-to-order omelets returning to Frary and Frank as indoor dining resumed for the spring semester.

‘The Capacity to Ask Questions’

Angela Davis

Angela Davis at The Claremont Colleges during her October visit

Angela Davis, considered a radical in the 1970s and now Distinguished Professor Emerita at UC Santa Cruz, returned to the Pomona campus as the Ena H. Thompson Distinguished Lecturer for two events in October. In 1975, Davis was appointed to teach in The Claremont Colleges’ Black Studies Center only to be forced out after two semesters by resistance from administrators, trustees and donors who objected to her activism and notoriety as a former prisoner on charges for which she was later acquitted.

In a Q and A with The Student Life, Davis addressed the role of education in activism.

“The challenge, I think, is to guarantee that students acquire the capacity to raise questions. And as far as I’m concerned, that is the very heart of education, not only teaching students how to conduct research and acquire information, but what we do with it. So it seems to me that the most crucial aspect of education is teaching and encouraging students how to constantly engage in that process of questioning. And that involves also questioning those things we take for granted.”

Angela Davis

Angela Davis at The Claremont Colleges in 1975-76. Kevin Spicer interviews Angela Davis during class break

Bike for Sale

John Boutelle ’81

John Boutelle, a 1981 alumnus of Pomona College, is pictured with his grey Trek bicycle, nicknamed the “Alaskan Tank,” outside of his home in Madison, Wis., during late autumn on Dec. 2, 2021. Boutelle, often accompanied by fellow Pomona College alumnus Peter Pitsker ’81, recently completed a 17-year quest to pedal a bike through each of the 50 Unites States. (Photo by Jeff Miller – www.jeffmillerphotography.com)

John Boutelle ’81 has completed his 17-year quest to pedal through each of the 50 United States. Often accompanied by fellow Sagehen Peter Pitsker ’81 and/or multiple family members, Boutelle finished the journey in Rhode Island (now Rode Island) on September 16, 2021. Here is an update to the piece he wrote for the Spring/Summer 2009 issue of Pomona College Magazine, with answers to your burning questions.

Q: Why? Just … why?

A: To quote a favorite line from Richard Powers’ The Overstory: “Makes you feel different about things, don’t it?”

When you experience the sights, smells, weather and terrain of a place on a bike, over back roads, it’s amazing what you learn.

There are small surprises: Who would have guessed that Arizona has more cotton fields than Georgia? That there are big herds of buffalo in Kentucky? Or that the world’s stupidest birds are in Florida?

There are eye-opening revelations: I had no idea how many people live in mobile homes. How friendly and helpful people can be to random bike-riding strangers. Or how cold a 40-degree rainy day actually is.

You also discover new idiosyncrasies and eccentricities in people you’ve known for decades, and they all become fodder for good-natured teasing. Peter Pitsker’s dad can talk for hours about corn tassels and thinks you have to squeeze chickens to get eggs (inside joke). My sister Liz is scared to death of irrigation equipment (inside joke). My dad rode 133 miles in a day at 74 years old, on an ancient Schwinn, and he refused to wear “fancy schmancy” bike shorts because they’re too expensive (no joke—ask me for a copy of “Weapons of Ass Destruction,” the story of our ride across Minnesota).

A study found that the average adult male laughs 15 times per day. On bike trips, we laugh at least 15 times per hour—and much more at meal stops. That alone should explain why we do this.

In the end, your memories of the adventures are also transformed. Each trip involves adversity, suffering, cruel weather and exhaustion, but somehow a few weeks later all the memories are good. And the worse the adversity, the better the stories about it later on.

Q: Which state was the hardest?

A: Oregon. Peter Pitsker and I had carefully planned our route along the coast from north to south—because in August there are always strong winds from the north. But nature doesn’t always cooperate. As it turned out, the wind was 20-30 mph from the south, and it rained constantly for four days. In fact, Oregon’s weather that week made national news. A headline in USA Today was “Freak Storms Pound Oregon’s Coast.” Riding into this tempest, with stinging needles in my eyes, was the closest I’ve come to crying in my adult life.

Q: Which state was the most fun?

A: Alaska. My wife Jane and I drove from Madison, Wisconsin, to Fairbanks, crossing British Columbia and the Yukon Territory along the way. In Fairbanks we picked up my brother Dan and Peter Pitsker at the airport. Jane flew home, and the three riders then drove 400 miles north on a mostly gravel road to Dead Horse, a town at the very top of the state, on the Arctic Ocean.

From there we pedaled back to Fairbanks in small chunks. Along the way we saw herds of caribou, wild musk ox, moose, bears, foxes, eagles and the most spectacular scenery you can imagine. This was a case where the weather did cooperate. No snow. Mild winds. Even the mosquitoes were not that bad.

Q: Now what?

A: If I don’t get any reasonable offers on my bike, it may be time to consider riding the Canadian provinces. My daughter is also bugging me about biking the U.S. Territories. When I told her I had completed the 50 states and Washington, D.C., she said “What about Guam? What about Puerto Rico? What about the Virgin Islands?” Oy.

I’ll tell you the truth: As I was finishing up my final ride in Rhode Island, I wasn’t thinking about new possibilities or reminiscing about all the great times with friends and family. I just wanted a nice bowl of chowder.

Want more stories or details? Just send me an email at johnboutelle@gmail.com. Many thanks to Sagehens Peter D. Pitsker ’81, his wife Marilou Quini Pitsker ’85, his mother Polly Dubose Pitsker ’56 and his dad Peter B. Pitsker for all their help and companionship during this quest

In Memoriam Darlene Hard ’61

Darlene Hard ’61
International Tennis Champion
1936—2021

Darlene Hard ’61

(L-R) Althea Gibson and Darlene Hard walk onto centre court for the Ladies’ Singles final (Photo by Barratts/PA Images via Getty Images)

Darlene Hard ’61, winner of three major singles championships and a two-time Wimbledon finalist hailed by Billie Jean King as “a major influence on my life as an athlete, teammate and friend,” died December 2, 2021. She was 85.

Ranked as high as No. 2 in the world, Hard won the precursors to both the French Open and the U.S. Open, taking the French title in 1960 and the U.S. championship in 1960 and ’61.

Though her heyday came before the dawn of the Open Era in 1968 when professionals were first allowed to compete in the four major tennis championships known as the Grand Slam, Hard reached the pinnacle of the sport on its grandest stages.

In 1957, she fell to Althea Gibson in a historic Wimbledon final as Gibson became the first Black player to win a major tennis championship. Side by side with Gibson as Queen Elizabeth presented the trophy at Centre Court, Hard pecked Gibson on the cheek and then teamed with her to win the women’s doubles championship.

For all Hard’s success as a singles player, it was as a doubles player that she etched her name on Grand Slam trophies most often: She won 18 major doubles championships, 13 in women’s doubles and five in mixed doubles. Seven of her doubles titles came at Wimbledon, four in women’s doubles and three in mixed doubles, including two with Rod Laver, winner of 11 Grand Slam singles titles.

Inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1973, Hard nevertheless was “the most under-publicized, underappreciated, possibly underrated tennis player of the last half-century,” a Los Angeles Times columnist lamented on her death. Hard’s accomplishments were so under-the-radar in her retirement that she worked for 45 years at USC with little fanfare as an employee in the student publications department, where her duties included designing parts of the USC yearbook El Rodeo.

Raised in Montebello, a suburb of Los Angeles, Hard played tennis with her mother on public courts as a girl but soon became so good she would take the long bus ride to the Los Angeles Tennis Club almost daily to hone her skills.

In 1957, she enrolled at Pomona College to study chemistry and biology in hopes of becoming a pediatrician. Already a touring international player, she won the inaugural U.S. collegiate singles championship in 1958 before leaving Pomona short of her degree to continue her athletic career. In 1974, Hard was inducted into the Pomona-Pitzer Athletic Hall of Fame, the first woman to be honored.

The young Pomona student made a big impression on another girl growing up on the public courts of Southern California: Billie Jean Moffitt.

Moffitt, now Billie Jean King, was a teenager in Long Beach when Hard, seven years her senior, agreed to hit with her at the request of Clyde Walker, who coached Moffitt and knew Hard from the Southern California youth circuit. By then, Hard had already played at Wimbledon. Moffitt was starstruck.

“Playing one -on-one with Darlene, who wound up in the International Tennis Hall of Fame, changed my outlook because I got my first extended taste of what it meant to play at a high level,” King wrote in her recent autobiography, All In. “The pace and depth of her shots were a revelation.”

Hard continued to practice with the young prodigy, often driving 40 miles from Pomona to pick up Moffitt at her house.

“I would be jumping out of my skin as I waited to hear her coming down 36th Street in her red Chevy convertible. It had a twin-pipe hot rod muffler that announced she was near,” wrote King, adding that she sometimes imagined she would follow Hard to Pomona.

On occasion, Hard would join the Moffitt family for a meal after the two practiced.

“It was my chance to barrage her with questions about all the things I longed to know,” King wrote. “What’s it like to play a major? Is Wimbledon as great as they say? Tell me about some of the places you’ve been!”

Years later, the two players teamed up in 1963 to help win the first Federation Cup, an event created to give women an equivalent of the Davis Cup international competition for men. The Fed Cup—renamed the Billie Jean King Cup in 2020—pits qualifying teams from 16 nations against each other. Hard and Moffitt clinched the championship with a doubles victory over Australia’s Lesley Turner and Margaret Smith, later Margaret Court, the dominating champion who won a record 24 Grand Slam singles tournaments, one more than Serena Williams has claimed.

On Twitter after Hard’s death, King recalled Hard’s influence on her life, their friendship and that Fed Cup victory.

“She was the best doubles player of her generation,” King wrote. “This was something we would both remember always.”