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Published: Thursday, October 29, 1998

Thursday, October 29, 1998

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HOMECOMING: Homecoming may not be the melee it once was, but a look back at UCLA's older traditions reveals that school spirit rages on.

By Trina Enriquez

Daily Bruin Contributor

We've come a long way, baby.

While homecoming week now comes and goes with barely a ripple, it once rocked the foundations of campus life.

Back in the days when the University of California, Southern Branch's football team was beaten by local high school squads, "homecoming" was a nonexistent word.

Nearly eight decades later, the No. 2 UCLA football squad gears up for its homecoming face-off against Stanford with a 16-0 winning streak under its belt.

Those seven decades have marked an evolving homecoming tradition at UCLA. Homecoming officially began in 1927, during the Southern Branch's last year at its Vermont Avenue location.

Departmental teas and an alumni dances were the order of the day, and that first year, pajama-clad revelers danced around a huge bonfire which illuminated the football field before UCLA defeated Occidental College, 8-0.

"They had to turn the fire hose on the old wooden gym to keep it from burning," said Johnny Jackson, the Alumni Association's executive secretary, in the 1952 Homecoming Guide.

Other traditions like the homecoming parade and coronation began in the 1930s.

The first parade, held in 1933, featured 52 floats winding their way past boutiques and old-fashioned ice cream shops throughout Westwood Village.

In those days, "Westwood was much more homey. It had charm," said class of 1926 alumna Ann Sumner.

In the 1930s, the population hovered between 6,000-7,000 students, and the smaller campus helped generate enthusiasm for homecoming events.

During World War II, however, when men were called to serve in the armed forces and concern for political affairs mounted, homecoming was temporarily put on hold.

"We didn't have a real homecoming," said Anne Berkovitz, class of 1947. "We focused more on what was going on in the world rather than what was taking place on campus."

Though a full-scale parade was canceled during the war years, students in 1944 did manage to create miniature floats that crossed the Royce Hall stage in an effort to maintain homecoming spirit.

After the war was over, though, people began to relax more, Berkovitz remembered.

Post-war years at UCLA represented a microcosm of the exuberance sweeping America. Thus, fall homecoming celebrations came back with a vengeance in the early 1950s.

By 1947, fireworks accompanied a parade which, in following years, would boast up to 80 floats and 100,000 onlookers thronging Westwood Boulevard.

An alumni picnic featuring piggyback relay races, a coronation ceremony presided over by Provost Clarence A. Dykstra and an All-University Dance at the Biltmore Hotel marked the 1947 homecoming celebration.

Though interest in dressing down for the "Pajamarino," as it was called, died out in the 1930s, bonfires were still a major event.

Sumner recalled that students would begin stockpiling material nearly three weeks before the bonfire was actually lit, and in 1950, a bonfire blast shattered a record 50 windows.

Enthusiasm for bonfires faded in following years because of the danger they incurred, but that didn't dampen spirits in the early 1950s. Publications from the time touted homecoming as the largest collegiate event in the nation, requiring months of preparation.

The celebration had grown from a weekend of dances and departmental teas in the late 1920s to a full week of festivities by the early 1950s.

During 1951's homecoming week, a torchlight parade with a street dance and show took place on Wednesday's Village Night.

Bruins even engaged the California Bears in a varsity debate as one of the week's events.

The following year, Royce Hall chimes rang out "The Farmer in the Dell" in accordance with that year's farm theme.

The 1952 homecoming committee staged a three-day carnival complete with square dancing, greased pig and pie-baking contests.

In addition, Westwood merchants decorated their store windows and provided a colorful backdrop for the parade, which culminated in the bonfire, lots of band music and yelling at Pauley Pavilion.

Spectators numbered more than 100,000 as the parade wound up in a street dance in a Westwood parking lot.

Homecoming was a very big deal, emphasized Jim Klain, a class of 1943 alumnus.

"A lavish Miss America-type contest preceded week-long activities," Klain said. "UC President Robert Gordon Sproul would come down and crown the queen."

Collegiate spirit thus reigned from the 1930s through the '50s, until it began to wane in the '60s and '70s.

The 1963 parade was abruptly cancelled when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, but beyond that, "the '60s were a freedom-loving time," Sumner said. "Old collegiate spirit had faded."

As the student population steadily increased, college campuses were sometimes embroiled in riots and students began giving up such "childish" concerns as homecoming, according to Sumner.

"Homecoming became less important in light of other concerns," said Klain, who had worked as a public events manager at Royce Hall.

"There were other kinds of programs students wanted to pay attention to," Klain added.

The social fabric of the university changed as the student population grew to nearly 30,000 by 1970.

In light of that, Klain speculated that perhaps the increasing size and complexity of UCLA dissipated the focus previously placed on events like homecoming.

Essentially, people were and continue to be more focused in doing their own thing.

"I suppose we live in a much more cynical society," Klain said. "Only a handful are interested in that Miss America thing now."

The dwindling interest in homecoming pageantry, however, won't stop thousands of screaming fans from invading the Rose Bowl this Saturday.

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