Occupational Center Honors Ex-Leader

The West Valley Occupational Center was just a group of bungalows vacated by a Los Angeles Unified School District middle school when Calvin Dellefield got his hands on it in 1965.

He convinced the district that the area needed a vocational school for adults to fill a void in the work force being felt among Valley-based industries.

“I was in personnel before I got into education,” Dellefield said. “I saw people untrained for jobs and I saw jobs going begging because there was no one to fill them.”

So for five years, Dellefield presided over what was to be a model campus for vocational schools across the country.

On Tuesday, the campus community dedicated its park to him as a physical reminder of his achievements there.

“He is our founder, our leader,” said Alberta M. Poverny, a counselor at the center and one of the original teachers. “We wouldn’t have [the occupational center] if it wasn’t for him, and we wouldn’t have the other vocational centers in LAUSD, or in the nation, if not for him.”

After leading the West Valley campus, Dellefield was executive director of the National Council for Vocational and Technical Education from 1969 to 1975.

Dellefield and others said that the key to the center’s success has been that it did not have an intrusive leader at the start, a person who had to have a hand in everything. “I thought it was important to get the best and the brightest in their field to teach here, and I got out of their way,” he said.

The quarter-acre park, which is maintained by the center’s landscaping class, was filled Tuesday with teachers and administrators, old and new, who came to honor the 74-year-old Orange County resident.

The dedication, many said, was long overdue.

His former secretary, R. Elizabeth Graffell--who Dellefield said was his “right hand” through the beginning years--serenaded her former boss with ballads, including a rendition of “Wind Beneath My Wings.”

Before accepting the honor and a certificate from Councilwoman Laura Chick’s office at Tuesday’s ceremony, Dellefield said he was impressed with the campus today, far different from the way it was when he was its leader.

“I’m thrilled with it,” he said. “It looks great, but more importantly it doesn’t look like it did when I was here. It has changed and it’s grown.”