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Thursday, October 29, 1998

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HOMECOMING: Homecoming may not be the melee it once was, but a
look back at UCLA’s older traditions reveals that school spirit
rages on.

By Trina Enriquez

Daily Bruin Contributor

We’ve come a long way, baby.

While homecoming week now comes and goes with barely a ripple,
it once rocked the foundations of campus life.

Back in the days when the University of California, Southern
Branch’s football team was beaten by local high school squads,
"homecoming" was a nonexistent word.

Nearly eight decades later, the No. 2 UCLA football squad gears
up for its homecoming face-off against Stanford with a 16-0 winning
streak under its belt.

Those seven decades have marked an evolving homecoming tradition
at UCLA. Homecoming officially began in 1927, during the Southern
Branch’s last year at its Vermont Avenue location.

Departmental teas and an alumni dances were the order of the
day, and that first year, pajama-clad revelers danced around a huge
bonfire which illuminated the football field before UCLA defeated
Occidental College, 8-0.

"They had to turn the fire hose on the old wooden gym to keep it
from burning," said Johnny Jackson, the Alumni Association’s
executive secretary, in the 1952 Homecoming Guide.

Other traditions like the homecoming parade and coronation began
in the 1930s.

The first parade, held in 1933, featured 52 floats winding their
way past boutiques and old-fashioned ice cream shops throughout
Westwood Village.

In those days, "Westwood was much more homey. It had charm,"
said class of 1926 alumna Ann Sumner.

In the 1930s, the population hovered between 6,000-7,000
students, and the smaller campus helped generate enthusiasm for
homecoming events.

During World War II, however, when men were called to serve in
the armed forces and concern for political affairs mounted,
homecoming was temporarily put on hold.

"We didn’t have a real homecoming," said Anne Berkovitz, class
of 1947. "We focused more on what was going on in the world rather
than what was taking place on campus."

Though a full-scale parade was canceled during the war years,
students in 1944 did manage to create miniature floats that crossed
the Royce Hall stage in an effort to maintain homecoming
spirit.

After the war was over, though, people began to relax more,
Berkovitz remembered.

Post-war years at UCLA represented a microcosm of the exuberance
sweeping America. Thus, fall homecoming celebrations came back with
a vengeance in the early 1950s.

By 1947, fireworks accompanied a parade which, in following
years, would boast up to 80 floats and 100,000 onlookers thronging
Westwood Boulevard.

An alumni picnic featuring piggyback relay races, a coronation
ceremony presided over by Provost Clarence A. Dykstra and an
All-University Dance at the Biltmore Hotel marked the 1947
homecoming celebration.

Though interest in dressing down for the "Pajamarino," as it was
called, died out in the 1930s, bonfires were still a major
event.

Sumner recalled that students would begin stockpiling material
nearly three weeks before the bonfire was actually lit, and in
1950, a bonfire blast shattered a record 50 windows.

Enthusiasm for bonfires faded in following years because of the
danger they incurred, but that didn’t dampen spirits in the early
1950s. Publications from the time touted homecoming as the largest
collegiate event in the nation, requiring months of
preparation.

The celebration had grown from a weekend of dances and
departmental teas in the late 1920s to a full week of festivities
by the early 1950s.

During 1951’s homecoming week, a torchlight parade with a street
dance and show took place on Wednesday’s Village Night.

Bruins even engaged the California Bears in a varsity debate as
one of the week’s events.

The following year, Royce Hall chimes rang out "The Farmer in
the Dell" in accordance with that year’s farm theme.

The 1952 homecoming committee staged a three-day carnival
complete with square dancing, greased pig and pie-baking
contests.

In addition, Westwood merchants decorated their store windows
and provided a colorful backdrop for the parade, which culminated
in the bonfire, lots of band music and yelling at Pauley
Pavilion.

Spectators numbered more than 100,000 as the parade wound up in
a street dance in a Westwood parking lot.

Homecoming was a very big deal, emphasized Jim Klain, a class of
1943 alumnus.

"A lavish Miss America-type contest preceded week-long
activities," Klain said. "UC President Robert Gordon Sproul would
come down and crown the queen."

Collegiate spirit thus reigned from the 1930s through the ’50s,
until it began to wane in the ’60s and ’70s.

The 1963 parade was abruptly cancelled when President John F.
Kennedy was assassinated, but beyond that, "the ’60s were a
freedom-loving time," Sumner said. "Old collegiate spirit had
faded."

As the student population steadily increased, college campuses
were sometimes embroiled in riots and students began giving up such
"childish" concerns as homecoming, according to Sumner.

"Homecoming became less important in light of other concerns,"
said Klain, who had worked as a public events manager at Royce
Hall.

"There were other kinds of programs students wanted to pay
attention to," Klain added.

The social fabric of the university changed as the student
population grew to nearly 30,000 by 1970.

In light of that, Klain speculated that perhaps the increasing
size and complexity of UCLA dissipated the focus previously placed
on events like homecoming.

Essentially, people were and continue to be more focused in
doing their own thing.

"I suppose we live in a much more cynical society," Klain said.
"Only a handful are interested in that Miss America thing now."

The dwindling interest in homecoming pageantry, however, won’t
stop thousands of screaming fans from invading the Rose Bowl this
Saturday.

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