Costa Mesa : Best-Selling Author, Other OCC Alumni to Be Honored

Best-selling author Clive Cussler, author of “Raise the Titanic!” and six other suspense novels, will be one of five former Orange Coast College students inducted into the college’s Alumni Hall of Fame on April 25.

Other alumni of the Costa Mesa community college to be honored this year are Susan Huscroft, chief of pediatrics for the El Monte Comprehensive Health Care Center; Benny Ricardo, a National Football League player and sports announcer; Richard Shaw, an internationally recognized artist, and Cathy Barrett Sizemore, founder and owner of a Sacramento lobbying firm.

Plaques bearing each inductee’s likeness will be unveiled in the Orange Coast College library. A program preceding the unveiling of the plaques will be held in the college’s Robert B. Moore Theatre at 5 p.m.

In addition to writing seven novels--six of which were on the New York Times best-seller list--Cussler is an internationally recognized authority on shipwrecks. He is credited with discovering 50 historic underwater wreck sites, including that of the German submarine U-20, which sank the Lusitania.

Now a resident of Colorado, Cussler is a former advertising copywriter who lived in Orange County and attended Orange Coast College from 1967 to 1969. He was a student of the college’s fiction-writing professor, Pat Kubis, whose students have included several other best-selling authors.

This year’s event will be the third installation of distinguished alumni into the college’s Hall of Fame.