Pacific University group leaving Hawaii

Title

Pacific University group leaving Hawaii

Description

A group from Pacific University at the Honolulu airport, about to travel home from Hawaii to Oregon in May 1959. The original slide is slightly blurry. Based on an article that appeared in the Pacific University Index (May 18, 1959, p. 2), this group was likely attending a speech tournament on Oahu. "Bedecked with leis and smiling happily were the four representatives to the University of Hawaii Invitational speech tourney who returned to campus this morning at 5 a.m. carrying six trophies." They may have been recruiting Hawaiian students for Pacific University during the same trip.

Group members named in the article included the students: Larry DePolo (Class of 1962; the man without glasses, right); Deanne Dayton (Class of 1961, the woman wearing a lei); and Steve Hanson (Class of 1962; the man with glasses, left). The fourth student in the group, John Randlett (Class of 1962), does not appear to be in the photograph; he may have been holding the camera. The students were accompanied by Professor Fred Scheller (the man with glasses, right). These names match a handwritten caption on the original slide, which appears to have come from the offices of Fred Scheller. It reads: "Leaving Hawaii - the [K---?], Deanne, Larry, Steve."

Hanson, Dayton, DePolo and Scheller are wearing leis that were likely given to them by friends on Oahu. Hanson and Dayton are carrying Northwest Airlines bags. The women who are not wearing leis were probably seeing off the group as they left the island. The article noted above states: "They also visited the parents of several Hawaiian students attending Pacific and Sam Luna, Pacific graduate and husband of Madean Luna, Pacific senior, drove the students and Mr. Scheller to the airport and saw them off when they left this morning." The women in the photograph may be from the Luna family.

This photograph relates to the earliest efforts of Pacific University to recruit students from Hawaii. Hawaii became a state about three months after this photograph was taken in 1959. Fred Scheller was one of the founders of Pacific's Hawaiian Student Club, Na Haumana O Hawai'i, which was organized that fall with twenty members who were from the state of Hawaii. A group that appears to have included the same people are in another photograph from 1959, which has been identified as the first group from Pacific University to recruit students from Hawai'i (see PUApic_010595). Given the expense and difficulty of traveling to Hawaii in 1959, the "speech" trip and the "recruitment" trip may have been the same event. Students from Hawaii would eventually make up a significant percentage of Pacific's student body.

Identifier

PUA_PeoSlides_002

Date

1959

Date Created

May 1959

Subject

Student Activities

Pacific University

Spatial Coverage

Honolulu, Hawaii

Format

Slide

Source

Pacific University Archives