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The Loma Prieta Earthquake of October 17, 1989, A UCSC Student Oral History Documentary Projec
Full text linkOn October 17, 1989 at 5:04 p.m. a 6.9 magnitude earthquake on the San Andreas Fault shook the Central Coast of California and lasted for fifteen seconds. The epicenter of the quake lay near Loma Prieta Peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains, about ten miles northeast of the city of Santa Cruz, deep in the redwoods of Forest of Nisene Marks State Park. The focus point was at a depth of ten miles. This earthquake killed sixty-three people and injured 3,757 others, and caused an estimated six billion dollars in property damage. It was the largest earthquake to occur on the San Andreas fault since the great San Francisco earthquake in April 1906.While the national media covered the damage in the San Francisco Bay Area extensively, far less attention was paid to the effects of the earthquake in Santa Cruz County, where the earthquake was actually centered. In the city of Santa Cruz much of the downtown Pacific Garden Mall, composed of older brick structures located on unconsolidated river sediments, collapsed, killing three people and injuring others. Ten miles to the south in Watsonville, a largely Spanish-speaking city, buildings also crumbled and people were killed. In the Santa Cruz Mountains, landslides closed many roads including Highway 17, which traverses the rugged mountains between Santa Cruz and San Jose, and for several days traffic was allowed through only in escorted convoys.In the spring quarter of 1990 the Regional History Project sponsored a student internship class entitled, "An Interdisciplinary Oral History of the October 17, 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake". Randall Jarrell, who was the project's director for many years, was the instructor for the class, which was co-sponsored with UCSC faculty members John Dizikes in history and Conn Hallinan in journalism. Five students signed up for the course. They completed eleven oral history interviews.One of the interviews is with Barbara Garcia, who was director of Salud Para La Gente, a bilingual primary health care facility serving the greater Watsonville area. In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, this community organization stepped in to address the enormous problems created by the lack of bilingual/bicultural volunteers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Red Cross. Diane Chang-Wilson interviewed eleven members of a fifth grade class at Rio del Mar School in Aptos. Chang-Wilson's oral histories provide candid reflections from children on how they felt and experienced the earthquake. Other interviews include Quinton Skinner, who was a UCSC student and an employee at Universes Records on the Pacific Garden Mall at the time of the quake; seventy-two year old Mayme Metcalf, who managed a small apartment complex in the Beach Flats area of Santa Cruz; Ramona Noriega, a UCSC re-entry student and mother of four children; and several narrators who had committed to a program of recovery from addiction to alcohol or other drugs when the earthquake happened. These oral histories illuminate the diverse subjectivity of this historical event in ways that are not captured in news photos and articles, and geological or engineering reports on structural damage
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Michael Nauenberg, Professor of Physics: Recollections of UCSC, 1966-1996
Full text linkMichael Nauenberg, Professor of Physics: Recollections of UCSC, 1966-1996, is the edited transcript of a single interview conducted by Randall Jarrell on July 12, 1994. Nauenberg received his B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1955 and his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1960. Prior to his appointment as a professor of physics at UC Santa Cruz in 1966, he was an assistant professor at Columbia University and a visiting associate professor at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and Stanford University.At UCSC, Nauenberg served as department chairman of physics from 1970 to 1972, and again from 1983 to 1985. He was instrumental in developing both Stevenson and Crown Colleges, but in 1973 shifted his focus to building a graduate program in physics. He also founded and served as the director of the Institute of Nonlinear Sciences at UC Santa Cruz.Nauenberg's primary research interests are in particle physics, condensed matter physics, and nonlinear dynamics, and he is the author of numerous publications in these areas. His most recent work is on a new quantum mechanical treatment of neutrino and neutral meson oscillations and on the dynamics of wave packets in weak external fields. He has had a long standing interest in the history of physics and mathematics, particularly during the seventeenth century, and published about a dozen articles on the works of Hooke, Newton and Huygens, and several reviews of recent books on Newton's Principia. He has a particular interest in the history of physics and has helped to bring historians of science and physicists together.In this oral history narration, Nauenberg shares his impressions and critical evaluation of UCSC as an experiment in public higher education, particularly the tensions between the college-based model and the pressures of the faculty tenure system within the large research University of California system. He points out that the founders of UCSC appear to have overlooked or underestimated the demands building graduate programs would make on faculty members' time. He discusses faculty appointments in the physics department, as well as other key faculty members on campus. He provides a sweeping and cogent assessment of the strengths and achievements of the physics department, and describes the struggle to establish the very successful Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics, as well as his frustrating and ultimately unsuccessful political battle to attract the Institute for Theoretical Physics to UC Santa Cruz. This oral history is an invaluable and insightful historical contribution by a senior faculty member with an extensive and distinguished history on the Santa Cruz campus
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Florence Richardson Wyckoff (1905-1997), Fifty Years of Grassroots Social Activism: Volume II Families Who Follow the Crops
Full text linkFamilies Who Follow the Crops is divided into four sections. In the opening section Wyckoff discusses her participation in the New Deal gubernatorial campaign of Democrat Culbert L. Olson and her participation in the Olson "crusade", where she became an ardent advocate in behalf of the dispossessed migrant agricultural population in California. In the second section Wyckoff chronicles her political and social life in Washington, D.C., during World War II, where she continued to lobby for migrants at the national level by fighting to maintain the existence of the Farm Security Administration and to educate congress on agricultural issues. She worked with a number of organizations including the National Consumers League, the Women's Joint Congressional Committee, the Office of Price Administration, and Food for Freedom on public education and legislative lobbying on agricultural issues. The third section begins with Wyckoff's settling in Watsonville after the war, where she became a key figure in developing health and social services in Santa Cruz County, including the establishment of the Pajaro Valley Health Council and the Visiting Nurses Association, and in influencing grassroots, community-based health and social service planning. She discusses a number of significant developments in the evolution of local social services. In the final section of the volume, Wyckoff discusses her work on the Governor's Advisory Committee on Children and Youth, to which she was first appointed by Governor Earl Warren in 1948. Her tenure on this advisory committee continued under four governors during which she continued to pursue her investigations of the needs of migrant families and children. One of the most significant developments which grew out of her work on the Children and Youth's subcommittee on Children of Seasonal Farmworkers was the organizing of the five Conferences on Families Who Follow the Crops during the late 1950s and early 1960s. As a major organizer of these events, Wyckoff and her colleagues brought together growers and migrant workers, and convened as well social workers, migrant ministers, teachers, public health workers, labor officials, and members of rural county governments, all of whom were working in different ways to address the living conditions and well-being of migrant families. Wyckoff's interdisciplinary approach in the organizing of the conferences was in itself pioneering and laid the groundwork for legislation addressing migrant health needs. This legislation established public health clinics for farm workers nationwide-- along both the eastern and western migrant streams. The volume concludes with Wyckoff's commentary on the first Conference on Families Who Follow the Crops
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Ernest T. Kretschmer: Reflections on Santa Cruz Musical Life, Volume II
Full text linkhis volume was the Project's second publication on Kretschmer, a notable presence in Santa Cruz musical life for more than 30 years. In this volume, Kretschmer reflected on the significant local cultural developments of the last decade and his role in those events. He described the coming-of-age of the Santa Cruz County Symphony under maestro Larry Granger, the need of the symphony and other musical organizations for a performing arts concert hall in north county, and recent efforts to establish such a facility.Kretschmer also discussed the Henry J. Mello Center for the Performing Arts, the premiere cultural venue in south Santa Cruz County, which Kretschmer was instrumental in founding.Kretschmer discusses the world-renowned Cabrillo Music Festival, which he participated in since its inception. He recalls the festival's acclaimed 1999 production of Leonard Bernstein's "Mass," and the innovative tenure of the festival's Music Director/Conductor, Marin Alsop. He also gave a lively history of Santa Cruz's New Music Works, directed by Phil Collins, which has highlighted the work of local composers, including Lou Harrison.Kretschmer's philanthropy over the years included the donation of concert grand pianos to local venues, the establishment of music scholarships for UCSC students, the support of UCSC's resident student ensemble program, and, most recently, the establishment of a permanent endowment to enrich musical archives in the University Library's Special Collections.Krestchmer's memoir demonstrated the importance of dedicated volunteers in local cultural organizations and how their contributions have created in our small community unusually diverse and thriving performing arts and musical organizations
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Robert L. Sinsheimer: The University of California, Santa Cruz During a Critical Decade, 1977-1987
Full text linkRandall Jarrell, documentary historian and head of the Regional History Project, conducted seven hours of taped interviews with Sinsheimer, UCSCs fourth chancellor during 1990-91, as part of the Project's University History series.Sinsheimer was appointed chancellor by UC President David Saxon in June, 1977. Formerly chairman of the division of biology at the California Institute of Technology where his work as a molecular biologist had earned him a distinguished international reputation. When approached with an invitation to consider heading UCSC he had come to the end of a long period of research and was receptive to a new challenge. His pre-eminent knowledge of the social implications and potential hazards of recombinant DNA technology and cloning methods in biology had deepened his concern about the necessity of promoting scientific literacy among non-scientists. Thus the UCSC chancellorship appealed to him since as a public institution it would give him a forum in which he could address these concerns.Sinsheimer was UCSC's first chancellor from outside the UC system. His predecessors included founding Chancellor Dean E. McHenry who had presided over the planning and building of the innovative campus from 1961 until his retirement in June, 1974. McHenry was succeeded by Mark Christensen, a professor of geology from UC Berkeley, whose brief tenure was concluded by his resignation in January 1976, after only a year and a half as chancellor. Angus Taylor, a veteran UC administrator, was appointed Chancellor in February 1976, and during his tenure stabilized the fledgling campus while a permanent chancellor was selected.Sinsheimer arrived to find a campus in need of direction with serious systemic problems. As an outsider he saw UCSC's organization and administration undermining its relationship with the larger UC system, of which it was a small and to some, rather insignificant member.UCSC's promising academic reputation and innovative early identity had significantly deteriorated by the time Sinsheimer arrived. The outside world (as well as segments of the Santa Cruz community) had come, however wrongly, to view UCSC as a flakey, hippie school, with a questionable academic reputation. Vietnam War demonstrations, drugs, and the campus's counterculture increasingly strained town-gown relations and UCSC's reputation throughout the state. Enrollment figures were down and there were rumors (unfounded) that the campus would be closed for budgetary reasons.In this volume, Sinsheimer describes why his tenure was a critical decade for the troubled campus. He discusses the many problems he encountered -- the campus's lack of a sense of direction, its ambiguous academic reputation, its complicated administrative structure -- and the changes and reforms he initiated to solve them and bring the campus more into line with the way other UC campuses operated. He also discusses his role as chancellor and the contributions he made to the campus's development, including the Keck Telescope and Human Genome Projects. He also talks frankly about controversies engendered by the Research and Development Park Initiative, college reorganization, the anti-apartheid and divestiture movement, and student activism. His narration includes a prescient analysis of why the UCSC of the 1970s needed to be more closely related to Silicon Valley and the region's proliferating high technology industries. His goal of establishing an engineering school was not realized during his tenure, but the work Sinsheimer accomplished in reorganizing and revitalizing the campus paved the way for one day having such schools at UCSC
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Kenneth V. Thimann: Early UCSC History and the Founding of Crown College
Full text linkThe late scientist's oral history memoir is published posthumously. Thimann died at his home in Haverford, Pennsylvania, on January 15, 1997. Founding Chancellor Dean E. McHenry made an inspired and imaginative appointment when he invited Thimann in 1965 to head what would become Crown College and to build the science faculty at UCSC. Prior to coming to Santa Cruz, Thimann was an internationally renowned plant physiologist and held the Higgins Chair in Biology at Harvard University. He was the first UCSC faculty member who was a member of the National Academy of Sciences. During his tenure at UCSC his illustrious reputation and intellectual distinction enabled him to attract to the fledgling campus top-notch scientists who would perhaps not have come here were it not for his presence. The scientists he recruited created what has become in only three decades one of the country's most distinguished group of science departments at a public university.Thimann's narration focuses on three major areas--building and developing Crown College, the campus's first science-oriented college; recruiting science faculty and creating graduate programs in the sciences; and his views on UCSC's evolution, including the narrative evaluation system, McHenry's chancellorship, and the founding of the Crown Chamber Players. Other subjects in his commentary include the decline of the college system in the 1970s, the founding of the Arboretum, and the Chicano Pre-Med Summer Program
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A.E. Whitford: Directorship of Lick Observatory, 1958-1968
Full text linkDr. Whitford was director of the Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton from 1959 to 1968. These were transitional years in the history of Lick Observatory. Dr. Whitford oversaw the completion of the 120-inch telescope, and the evolution of Lick Observatory from an independent campus of the University of California, to a sub-unit of the UC Berkeley Campus in 1958, to its incorporation as part of the new UC Santa Cruz campus on November 20, 1964. Whitford's narration not only covers the history of Lick Observatory during this period but also key figures and developments in the science of astronomy itself
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Ciel Benedetto: A History of the Santa Cruz Women's Health Center
Full text linkSanta Cruz Women's Health Center (SCWHC) director Benedetto traced the evolution of this unique community institution, celebrating its 25th anniversary at the time of this interview in the year 2000. Founded in 1974 as a pioneering, feminist health collective, SCWHC is now a thriving health organization operating in today's complex managed care environment. Benedetto guided the center through this transition, maintaining its feminist perspective while overseeing an annual budget of more than $1 million.SCWHC is one of the country's few remaining women's health centers, providing more than 8,000 patient visits annually in general medicine, gynecology, prenatal care, family planning, and pediatrics. The agency also offered information and referral services, low-cost acupuncture, free mental health and nutritional counseling, and health and HIV education.Benedetto began her commentary with a discussion of the agency's socialist-feminist political origins as a collective and its commitment to consensus decision making. This phase eventually gave way to a more traditional organizational structure as the agency matured.Benedetto detailed the agency's myriad activities, including its highly developed volunteer training program, which produced a remarkable number of alumni over the years who became agents of change as physicians, health care providers, and women's rights advocates.Among the other activities of the center were the production of its internationally distributed newsletter and health education materials; the provision of new contraceptive methods such as the cervical cap; and its participation in breast cancer research studies. SCWHC maintained its commitment to diversity in its staff and patient population over the years and a singular reputation among international health agencies for women and children
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Helene Moglen and the Vicissitudes of a Feminist Administrator
Full text linkHelene Moglen was hired for the position of dean of humanities and professor of literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the fall of 1978. She became the first female dean in the University of California system. A natural leader with confidence and stamina, Helene Moglen dedicated herself to multiple arenas of institution building at UC Santa Cruz. She served as provost of Kresge College from 1978 to 1983, transforming and revitalizing that college into a vibrant intellectual community, which became a home for several notable academic departments, including the dynamic and expanding American studies program and the prestigious history of consciousness program. She led the division of humanities during a period of reorganization and several controversial tenure battles, and reorganized and built what was then a fledgling student-run women’s studies program into what is now a thriving and nationally prominent feminist studies department, serving as chair from 1984 to 1989.During her career, she also founded and directed two centers for feminist research, the Feminist Research Focused Research Activity (1984-1989) and the Institute for Advanced Feminist Research (2003-2006). In 1985, Moglen lobbied then-Chancellor Robert Sinsheimer to be able to use the beautiful and historic Cardiff House for a brand-new UCSC Women’s Center, which she founded and helped build into a visionary institution that bridged the campus and downtown communities. Alongside these administrative accomplishments, Moglen became a well-known feminist literary scholar
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Harold A. Hyde: Recollections of Santa Cruz County
Full text linkA fifth-generation Santa Cruz County resident, Hyde has been in on the creation of organizations and institutions ranging from UCSC and Cabrillo College to the Community Foundation and the Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County. His contributions to California and Santa Cruz are documented in his oral history.Following infantry combat service with the U.S. Army in Europe during World War II and graduate studies in business at Harvard, Hyde returned to Santa Cruz County and a career at Ford's Department Store. By the late 1950s he was chairing a committee to promote a local bond issue for higher education, had been elected to Cabrillo College's first board of trustees, and was also on a local committee helping the University of California select a Central Coast location for a new campus. All this was in addition to his position as merchandising manager of Ford's.After the UC Regents selected the Cowell property for their next campus and named Dean McHenry founding chancellor, McHenry approached Hyde and offered him the job as vice chancellor of business and finance. Hyde was responsible for the start-up of all nonacademic aspects of the new campus.Central to Hyde's work was overseeing creation of UCSC's infrastructure, including construction of the first colleges, residence halls, and administrative buildings, and the siting of campus roads. He also hired key staff. Hyde held the vice chancellor position from 1964 to 1975, a period in which the campus grew from no students and some decaying ranch buildings to an enrollment of 5,600 students with modern classrooms, laboratories, residence halls, playing fields, performing arts theaters, and administrative buildings, including those for the Lick Observatory.Hyde's commitment to UCSC continued after he returned to retailing in 1975. He was a founding member of two groups supporting UCSC, serving as the first president of the Arboretum Associates and a trustee of the UC Santa Cruz Foundation
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