Pierce Marks 50th With Reminiscences

As country music blared in the Pierce College Campus Center Monday and current students took in a display of memorabilia from the early days of the agricultural school, some of Pierce’s first students and instructors took a trip down memory lane.

They talked about the Army barracks in which they had classes and the bulls, cows and sheep they tended after the college opened its doors 50 years ago on Sept. 15, 1947.

Dean Head, 77, thumbed through photographs of strapping young men in dungarees and a campus that was trying to get a foothold in the San Fernando Valley.

He was to have graduated in Pierce’s Class of 1950, but after three semesters and a wedding, he decided to return to making a living as an auto mechanic.

Still, as evidenced by the mint condition of his 1949 yearbook and photographs, he never forgot his time at the fledgling college.

As he flipped through the pictures, Head recalled a bull that had eaten the new paint off the wooden slats in its pen and died of lead poisoning soon afterward.

“There were things that we had to learn the hard way,” he said.

Monday’s campuswide celebration was one of many planned to commemorate the founding of the college, which was named for Los Angeles school board President Clarence W. Pierce.

Although it is now a sprawling campus with a curriculum that ranges well beyond agriculture classes, Monday the college celebrated its roots as a place for young men to learn about farming and raising animals.

“[Instructors] were all dedicated to agriculture,” said Lindsay Boggess, who taught animal husbandry at Pierce from 1947 to 1982.

“We put in our hours, not because we had to, but because we loved to do it. It was in our blood.”