Alumni at SDSU Take to the Field for One Last Time

SAN DIEGO — At Aztec Bowl last Saturday, the twin concrete stands stood empty, seeming to stare moodily at each other across a football field that, in earlier days, rang to the chants of as many as 16,000 fans of the San Diego State University Aztecs and their opponents.

The old scoreboard, which sees limited action now, was lighted and displayed: Visitors 00, Home 99. And, as the twilight shades gathered along the hand-set cobblestone walls, old Aztecs began to drift toward the northern end of the field. Most wore black tie.

Some of the SDSU alumni were so eager to visit the site of former glories, in fact, that more than 20 couples arrived 30 minutes ahead of the official starting time of the university’s 1990 Annual Alumni Awards Gala. This 14th annual event, “Memories: An Evening in Aztec Bowl,” drew a record attendance of 560, a figure that organizers attributed both to the roster of alumni to be honored--it included journalist Eileen Jackson and her artist husband, Everett Gee Jackson--and to nostalgia for the stadium.

Aztec Bowl, a Depression-era Work Projects Administration arena dedicated in 1936, saw its last Aztec football game in 1966 and is scheduled to be demolished, after serving as the site of SDSU’s May 27 graduation exercises, to make way for a student activities center that will include a 12,500-seat stadium.

Gala chairwoman Yvonne Larsen, decorations chairwoman Betty Brayshay and their committee frosted the upper end of the field with grass-green carpeting and topped it with a great celebratory cake of a white tent, garlanded with red-and-black balloons and furnished inside with replicas of the school’s campanile and with tables set in the SDSU crimson and ebony tones. The tent was ordered with clear sides so that, said Brayshay, everyone could “see the scoreboard and share in the nostalgia we all feel for the place.”

Not many in the crowd needed visual clues to prompt feelings of nostalgia, but the committee spread them around the perimeter of the outdoor cocktail area anyway, primarily in the form of photographs taken of attendees back in their undergraduate years. Most examined these with some care, and then trundled off to stare for another moment at what for many was a true field of dreams.

Ben and Nikki Clay co-chaired a host committee of more than 40 couples that, without exception, were alumni or had at least attended the university. The idea was to give the couples a feeling of shared nostalgia, and it worked. Ben Clay recalled watching--or rather, not watching--a mid-1960s game against Fresno State that was so shrouded in fog that a spotter with a microphone had to be sent on the field to report the plays to the stands. Nikki Clay said that, in 1963, she rode around the field as queen of the high-spirited chariot races sponsored by SDSU fraternities; she represented Lambda Chi, which captured the trophy.

“We made the cocktail hour extra long just to give everyone time to reminisce,” said chairwoman Larsen, a 1952 graduate and a runner-up for homecoming queen. “I’ve been to lots of events on this field, and this stadium is filled with wonderful memories.”

The memories extended to the program, which offered photographs of important dates in Aztec Bowl history, such as the commencement address offered in June, 1963, by President John F. Kennedy, and the placement of a plaque in May, 1983, that named the bowl California Registered Landmark No. 798.

SDSU President Thomas Day offered an unexpected and solemn addition to the formal program by taking the podium to ask for a moment of silence in memory of Malcolm S. Love, who died earlier that day. Love served as president from 1952 through 1971 and is credited for raising SDSU to preeminence in the California State University system.

The program also included a welcome by Art Flaming, the outgoing president of SDSU Alumni & Associates, who informed the crowd that there are more than 100,000 SDSU alumni in the immediate area and then led the election of new officers, a most unusual feature at a fund-raising gala. Attorney Jim B. Kuhn was chosen to preside over the new slate of officers.

The decision to name a couple as co-alumni of the year was unprecedented, although the choice of the Jacksons was indisputably popular. Eileen Jackson, who for 60 years has reported the city’s social events for several newspapers and now writes a weekly column for the Tribune, let her husband do all the talking during the awards presentation.

“I was thinking that, with all this publicity, I might run for some office, like city dogcatcher,” Everett Jackson said to much laughter, adding, “but you were all on the beam in choosing Eileen for this honor.”

Named alumni of the year by the school’s seven colleges and Imperial Valley campus were attorney Dwight Stanford, a graduate of the College of Arts and Letters; executive Arch Rambeau, College of Business Administration; investment real estate broker and former San Diego Chargers defensive back Willie Buchanon, College of Education; engineer William Sevier, College of Education; Union of Pan Asian Communities executive director Beverly Yip, College of Health and Human Services; educator Elena Castro of the Imperial Valley Campus; San Diego Union columnist Tom Blair, College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts, and biochemist and medical researcher E. Aubrey Woodroof, College of Sciences.

The program followed a dinner of roast beef tenderloin bordelaise and strawberries Romanoff--rather more elegant fare than most guests recalled consuming on other occasions in Aztec Bowl--and preceded a live auction of five items particularly appropriate to the evening. The pace of the auction, conducted by 1961 graduate Bob Arnhym, picked up somewhat after a friendly San Diego skunk paid a call to the immediate neighborhood; a choice item on the block was the right to lead the SDSU Marching Aztec Band during halftime at the 1990 homecoming game against the University of Utah.

The attendance included Frank and Marsha Aronoff, Betty Hubbard, Tom and Tracy Stickel, Tim and Sharon Considine, Kay North, Tom and Judy Carter, Kim and Marilyn Fletcher, Roy and Judy Lessard, Anne Evans, Doug and Betsy Manchester, Tammy Smith, Dick and Liz Miller, Gordon and Karon Luce, Roger Conlee, George and Ethel Sorenson, Dick and Betty Meads, Bruce and Mary Hazard, Lee and Sharon Grissom and Bob and Patricia Menke.