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In the 1960s Orange Coast College was one of the pioneer schools in teaching business data processing and computers. The U.S. Army sent 20 students per year to attend O.C.C. In 1963, three of the students in the class had already completed two years of college work and the Army agreed to sponsor their attendance at Fullerton to complete their four-year degrees while earning their A.A. in data processing at O.C.C. Franklin Harris and Joseph Seuss completed B.A.s. in business and I completed a B.A. in Spanish.
While at Fullerton, I took an elective computer course in the fall of 1964. The professor asked me if I would be willing to do a project for the alumni office, which had just been established. The names and addresses of graduates thru 1964 were available in punched cards and I merged and reformatted them, produced a consolidated list of the graduates and provided a system to make a first mailing to them.
After graduation I was assigned as a systems analyst on the army enlisted database in the Pentagon with fellow graduate Joseph Seuss. Following retirement I worked for a number of computer firms and for at time put my two disciplines to work as a systems analyst for the Organization of American States.
Ahhh, yes – 1967 – 40 years back. We were quite new to Fullerton in ’67; my husband was teaching at FJC (Fullerton College); two sons were at Troy High and Ladera Vista; the oldest son was in Vietnam. We lived on Victoria Drive at the intersection with Melody Lane, an easy walk to CSUF, so I began taking two classes as a history major with hopes of completing what the Great Depression had cruelly interrupted in 1937 – my B.A. It was a slow-go with midlife health problems, but at the end of spring 1975 the degree was mine, a full 40 years from its beginning at Oregon State in 1935.
Oh yes, I do remember the campus in those years. If rain, hot sun or too little time pushed me, I would drive over on Nutwood and park with no problem at the edge of an orange grove which claimed possession prior to the birth of Cal State and way ahead of the Marriott. I'm a bit hazy on specifics, but there was only a handful of buildings then, maybe five or six. The Titan football program was just being organized in the late ‘60s, if memory serves, with the L. A. Rams using their space for pre-season practice in late summer. The Arboretum was mostly on paper but was being vigorously planned and promoted.
Across Nutwood there was a very modernistic center with a movie theater and a few small stores. It morphed in a few years into a Bible college I believe, collecting along the way a very popular and frenetic Kinko’s, useful to both schools.
That year of 1967 was when CSUF, without much advance notice, hosted a sizeable group of Vietnamese students, cream of the high school age level who had passed exams in Vietnam under auspices of their government and ours. After several months of orientation and English language development, they were to be given a full four-year college education in this country and then return to help strengthen their own. A friend and neighbor of ours, Dr. Walter Klein, was then chair of the foreign language department, and he recruited us to be a “friendship family” for two of the boys. One obtained his B. A. in geography at CSUF; the other got his degree in electronic engineering at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Their stories are dramatic but can't be included here. Both reside in California with their families, “living the American dream,” and making solid contributions to this country and society. Our friendship grew almost into a family, which I love dearly and to which I am always Grandma.
