At 5-Foot-2, She Stands Tall as Warden

Margaret Hambrick says she intends to be “highly visible” as warden of the downtown 1,000-prisoner Metropolitan Detention Center, which opens in November. At 5-foot-2 and 115 pounds, Hambrick is relying on her management style. “I am small,” she says, “but once I begin interacting with the inmates, they realize that I am indeed in charge of the institution.”

As a warden, she likes to be “out and about, talking with staff and inmates and listening to their concerns, working with them in solving problems.”

Hambrick, 37, has worked in corrections for 17 years, most recently as deputy assistant director of the industries, education and training division of the federal prison system in Washington. Its jurisdiction includes UNICOR, the government-owned corporation that last year sold $318 million of prisoner-produced goods--from beds to military uniforms--to the federal government.

“I did not go to college with the intention of going into corrections,” she says, but a summer teaching job at a corrections facility while working on a degree in education at West Virginia University diverted her career course. Later, while warden of the Robert F. Kennedy Center in Morgantown, W. Va., she earned a master’s in public administration.

Educational and vocational training programs are a high priority with her and, although the federal offenders will be incarcerated at the new detention center only while being processed through the courts (an average of 90 to 120 days), Hambrick says, “I believe we can provide opportunities for them to improve their basic literacy. We also will probably offer opportunities for English as a second language.”

This is in keeping with her philosophy that “it’s possible for those inmates who choose to rehabilitate themselves.”

The new warden, married to West Virginia banker David Hambrick and the mother of a 4-year-old son, finds her work interesting, challenging and occasionally harrowing. “Anyone who’s been in corrections for as long as I have has been through several trying times. Let’s just say I have experience in handling emergency situations.”

UCLA Honors Kenneth Bailey, Its First Ph.D.

Kenneth Bailey, honored by UCLA last week as recipient of the university’s first Ph.D. in 1938, says it was economic reality, not academic fervor, that spurred him to go for his doctorate in history. “Those were depression years,” he recalls, “and I was making a better living at UCLA at various student jobs than most people were doing on the outside. I couldn’t afford to leave.”

Bailey, who has been a senior lecturer at UC Irvine since retiring six years ago as professor of history and director of the teacher education program at Irvine, acknowledges that he “didn’t have any career goal,” only a fantasy of being a football coach, when he enrolled as a UCLA undergraduate in 1931.

At UCLA he was a sometime first-string guard on the Bruin football team--”We got beat by SC, 79-0. I was one of the guys that got knocked down and got up.” Later, he says, “We quit playing them. I was an old man before we beat SC.”

He also played rugby and was on the boxing team. “I really thought I might be a boxer until my final fight (as a heavyweight in the Pacific Coast Intercollegiate finals) I got knocked out.”

A scholar, he wasn’t. Bailey says with a laugh, “I went on probation my first year at UCLA.” He credits his academic turnaround to a few instructors who were determined “to see to it that I made it. Then I grew up all of a sudden.”

Bailey did become a football coach, at Oceanside-Carlsbad Jr. College (now Miracosta College). “I got that out of my system in a hurry. The things I thought would be fun in coaching weren’t the things we were doing.” Rather, he found himself riding herd on truant athletes, trying “to make students out of them and keep them out of trouble.”

As for history, Bailey says, “I never found anything I liked better.” At 76, he still hasn’t.