Bakersfield College’s 50th year celebration of the college’s “Move to the Hill” on April 2, 1956, from the campus of Kern County Union High School (now Bakersfield High School) proved for some BC alumni to be quite moving.
The April 21celebration was held in the newly anointed John Collins Campus Center, formerly known as simply the Campus Center.
The evening began with a vast assortment of current and former BC students milling around both BC’s cafeteria and Fireside Room, chatting and browsing through copies of BC’s 1956 yearbook Raconteur, as well as photo albums that included a picture of former California Gov. Jerry Brown sitting with BC faculty.
Former BC students at the event had mostly praise for the college.
Pam Knight, whose maiden name was Taylor as a BC student, was a BC cheerleader in 1957.
Speaking of her BC experience, Knight said enthusiastically, “We (cheerleaders and students) had fun!”
Harriet Shelton, class of 1939, was a BC athlete, and she played on the BC women’s tennis team.
“I thought BC was a great place to go,” Shelton said. However, Shelton also remarked that she was dismayed that, as a woman, she could not play softball at BC.
“In 1939 they (schools and colleges) were very prejudiced about women athletes and about women playing softball,” she said.
Asked if he enjoyed his BC experience, John B. Gillett, 85, and owner of Webster’s Sand and Gravel for 50 years, said, “Sure.”
Gillett, a BC student from 1939 to 1940, was a halfback on the BC football team then. Gillett said he left BC to enlist in the military during World War II, and after he finished his tour of duty, he said he went straight into the business world.
A few students said their BC experience was quite uplifting.
Micki Burcher, class of 1958, was a student journalist working on the Renegade Rip writing articles and taking photos. With a 4×5 speed graphic camera, and flying in a helicopter above the area designated for the new BC campus, Burcher got what she said was a “fantastic” panoramic view and shot of the location.
She remarked, “The digital cameras they use now make me feel old.”
Former BC student Martha Covey, class of 1985, and a part of the Gourmet Group, which was, she said, a “social thing — BC instructors getting together to eat dinner,” said she had a “great time” at BC, which she said had a “lovely campus with lovely people.” She also commented that she made a “lovely transition from BC to CSUB,” but she said
she always felt “more at home here at BC.”
Dr. Kenneth Fahsbender, another attendee, was a BC bandleader and instructor for five years, starting in 1959. After his stint at BC, Fahsbender went to Stanford for his doctorate and eventually became assistant chancellor for the Kern Community College District. He retired in 1981.
“I met my wife here (at BC),” Fahsbender said. “She was a student of mine.”
All of the 400 attendees congregated into BC’s cafeteria, settling down to reminisce and to quaff ice tea, Meridian chardonnay and “Smoking Loon” Merlot.
The program started with a word from master of ceremonies Don Rodewald, a former BC director of publiciInformation and a KERO television personality from the 1950s and 1960s.
Rodewald remarked that when he was young and learning to drive his mother’s car, “Bakersfield had one high school and about 35,000 people. These days, 35,000 people can be found on Rosedale Highway at any time.”
Rodewald spoke at length on all of the historical events occurring in 1956, the year of BC’s move.
“The USSR was heightening in power . the U.S. was testing the H-bomb at the Bikini Atoll . the Yankees beat the Dodgers in the World Series . Montreal won the Stanley Cup . Elvis was big . Buck Owens was getting started .” he said.
During the spring semester of 1956, Rodewald said, “BC students walked on plywood to get to class.”
After a few opening comments by current president William Andrews, a video presentation narrated by Rodewald described BC’s history mentioning that in 1913, Bakersfield Junior College was established as a department of the Kern County High School, and that on September 12, 1951, land on the China Grade Bluffs was purchased from Kern County Land Company. Each acre cost $625. The 15 BC building halls cost an estimated $17 million.
In 1956, Rodewald narrated, BC had the “largest JC football stadium in the U.S. and the best running track surfaces in the nation .”
The video presentation spoke of past BC presidents, including Dr. Edward Simonsen, who served as BC president from 1958 to 1968. “Sigh,” as he was called by colleagues, was a music student, primarily of the oboe and attended the University of the Pacific. He served as a Navy pilot in 1941 during World War II in the Pacific theater for two years. Sandra Serrano, another past BC president and current chancellor for the Kern Community College District, presented Dr. Simonsen with a special plaque that read, “Only the educated are free.” Serrano announced that BC’s Speech and Music building would soon be known officially as the Edward Simonsen Performing Arts Center.
After the video presentation was concluded, Dr. Gerald Haslam, BC grad, author and Sonoma State University professor emeritus spoke.
Haslam, an Oildale native and a Garces High grad, said that before the move, BC students felt like they were in a kind of “limbo.” However, after the move to the hill, BC students felt as if they had “entered a different dimension, and there were no younger students to elbow you,” he said.
“We felt that we really had come to college,” Haslam said of the college’s move.
Haslam admitted he was “the slowest runner on the BC track team, and that he had the lowest GPA of any student body president at BC.”
At some point Dr. John Collins, BC president from 1972 to 1983, spoke. He remarked that attendees were journeying down the “backroads of memories.”
Rodewald spoke of BC and its 50th anniversary of the move, but he had harsh things to say about the aging process. He quoted a poem by the author known as “Dr. Seuss,” who also had harsh words for the aging process. The Seuss poem ended, “. the golden years can kiss my a-s!”