H. McDonald; Former Head of Cal State L.A.

Howard S. McDonald, who took over both the embryonic California State University, Los Angeles, when it was known as the Los Angeles State College of Applied Arts and Sciences, and Los Angeles City College, is dead.

McDonald was 92 when he died Saturday at a daughter’s home in Los Alamitos.

McDonald, who came to Los Angeles from Brigham Young University where he had been president from 1945 to 1949, was in effect the second president of Cal State Los Angeles after P. Victor Peterson, named to head the school when it was created in 1947.

But McDonald was given responsibility for both Los Angeles State and City College under a plan where City College would act as a freshmen and sophomore feeder system into L.A. State’s junior and senior classes. Both then shared the North Vermont Avenue campus, which today remains home to City College, while the four-year school has been moved to State University Drive off the San Bernardino Freeway.

It was the immediate influx of World War II veterans, coupled with a burgeoning interest in higher education, that soon forced the formation of two separate campuses.

From 1956 to 1958, McDonald also headed San Fernando Valley State College when it too was a branch of Cal State Los Angeles. The school now is California State University, Northridge.

McDonald was a World War I veteran who served in France after graduating from Utah State University and then obtaining master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of California, Berkeley.

He taught and was an administrator in San Francisco before becoming superintendent of schools in Salt Lake City and then president of BYU.

When McDonald retired in 1962, Cal State Los Angeles had grown to an enrollment of 16,000 students, then the largest in the state system.

McDonald next became regional representative for the U.S. commissioner of education under the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. He later accepted the presidency of the Salt Lake Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He retired finally in 1969.

Two daughters, Ruth Boyer and Melva Orgill survive him, as do seven grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren.