’. . . One of the fundamental points of so-called intelligence (is) to be able to observe.’

Alvena Storm taught geography at San Diego State Teachers’ College and SDSU for 40 years before retiring in the mid-1960s. Hip operations have forced her to use a wheelchair, but the 84-year-old professor emeritus still drives her car, exercises at a swimming pool and tapes books for the Braille Guild. She once led class excursions on a dirt road to see the alluvial plain in Mission Valley, and bought corn at a farm about where May Co. is today. Former students now take her on outings to the Anza Borrego Desert -- where she dragged them on field trips decades ago. She is appalled at the overcrowding at the university where she once saw jack rabbits, coyotes and deer, but delighted that she will soon become the first woman to have a building named for her at SDSU. Staff Writer Nancy Reed interviewed her at her Point Loma home.

I grew up on a ranch where things had to be done. I was oldest in the family, and I often helped my father with a lot of things girls probably didn’t have a chance to do. I helped him butcher an animal. There was no division between men’s and women’s work.

As a result, I think this helped me through any feeling that I was different. There were only two women who were majors in geography for most of the time I was in the department at UC Berkeley in the middle 1920s.

A great many people felt that I was foolish and a little off the beam because I was going into a field where there weren’t many jobs, and certainly not many jobs for women.

My advice is: if you know what you want to do, and are reasonably good at it, you should do it. There is nothing sadder than when people somehow drift into something that they don’t really enjoy. It leads into bitter old age.

I suppose I just like country. I like people and I like to see what people have been doing with the country. Geography has infinite variety.

If you’re enthusiastic about a particular thing, some of that goes over into the students. Teaching is a subjective sort of thing, and you don’t reach everyone. You push them along and encourage them, and if they find what they like to do, well then, that’s adequate reward.

I often refer to the period of the ‘30s as what I think of as the golden years. We had moved (the college) out to the new site. We had a new beginning, new curriculum.

We had a great many exceptional students who could have gone anywhere but didn’t have the money during the Depression. We got some people that might have been drained off by other institutions.

During the ‘30s, if students had a chance to go to college, then they were going to make the most of it.

We were small enough to know the students very, very well. We saw them between classes--it was a time when students had to have chaperones at social functions, and we saw them as advisers to clubs.

The change came with the war--suddenly we had crowded classes. Student organizations were not as all-important. So we lost a lot of the personal touch.

I had something I liked to do, and it was something I could combine with having a family. My son is a psychiatrist. I think, perhaps, we gave him an enthusiasm for study. We encouraged him to observe. That is one of the fundamental points of so-called intelligence, first you have to be able to observe. Some people don’t. They can look at something and not know what they saw. You have to be able to remember it and to be able to use it somehow.

Too often we tell youngsters not to ask silly questions. You can keep their curiosity alive. If you kill it when they are 6 or 7, well then, they may never get it back again. You can’t answer all the questions--but you can tell them enough to keep them looking.

I miss the college students. They are full of pep and vinegar and they have a certain amount of wonder left in them. They are ready to debate.

Some of my old students are my very best friends today. Most of my colleagues are gone.

I have students who come back. I saw one the other day. He was from Mexico and went back there. He’s pushing 70 now. He greeted me. And he leaned over and said: “We didn’t know how young we were.”