Those fashionable nurses

A Mount student in the complete nursing ensemble leads
the Class of 1955 from their Capping Ceremony in Mary Chapel.

Bicycling midwives in their smart
East End nursing uniforms.

FANS OF THE BRITISH SERIES Call the Midwife love the nurses' immaculate light-blue uniforms with maroon caps, matching sweaters, and a jaunty a secret-agent-style gray trench coat.

That era, the late 1950s and early 1960s, must have been the Golden Age of nursing fashion, because Mount students in the same decade had their own unique outfits – a crisp grey shirtwaist dress with thin white stripes, covered by a starchy white pinafore and topped off by the official MSMC nurses' cap, presented during the annual capping ceremony in Mary Chapel.

Collar detail of the Mount nurse's cape.

But the most wonderful part, the pièce de résistance, had to be the dashing thigh-length navy cape with bright red lining.

These were made of a heavy wool (think Navy peacoat) and had a standup collar with M.S.M.C. embroidered in shiny gold.  A chain at the back allowed it to be hung on a hook without damaging the fabric.

Unlike the midwives of Nonnatus House, Mount nurses probably never made their speedy rounds on bicycles in their capes, and if they had they would have roasted in the heavy wool. But what an impressive sight they would have made!

Thanks to Alanna Madrid '15 in the Alumnae Relations Office, we recently acquired for the Archives a cape in perfect condition that was worn by a member of the Class of 1953 -- only the second baccalaureate nursing class in California history. Another alumna donated her dress, pinafore and cap several years ago, so we now have the complete ensemble from the first years of MSMU's nursing department. Stop by for a visit – there's more to archives than papers and photos!

Lighting the holidays

The Circle is lit and cookies and hot cocoa await. (2013)

IT'S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS on our two beautiful campi. With the end of the semester looming, there won't be time later to create and enjoy the holiday environment, so even as we're looking forward next week to turkey and pumpkin pie, the Associated Student Body is putting the finishing touches on Christmas wonderland at Chalon and Doheny.

Circle fountain in ribbons and bows.

Tonight is the traditional Lighting of the Circle at Chalon. Everything from the hedges to the fountain is festooned with little white lights, ribbons and ornaments, ready for the the Flipping of the Switch at 6 p.m. sharp. (Our heroic electrician Haig Papelian has been wiring up for days.) The Campus Ministry Band will be accompanying carols, Santa Claus will put in an appearance, and ASB will be ready with hot chocolate and cookies.

Over at Doheny, the celebration is tomorrow, with more cocoa and cookies and a Christmas-themed photo booth. Theannual Christmas Magic at the Mansion will be celebrated after Thanksgiving, a party for all the staff and faculty of MSMU. The already amazing Doheny Mansion is even more exquisite in its Christmas finery. Here's a preview.

Doheny Mansion at sunset with Christmas lights aglow.

We recently unearthed a Christmas tradition from yesteryear at MSMU. There's an undated, un-labeled photo of students in pajamas, bathrobes and topcoats trooping down the Grand Staircase at Chalon. They're carrying candles and everyone's mouth is open. From there we got as far as guessing "Christmas caroling," but didn't know the context until we tripped over it in the 1960 yearbook.

Mystery photo at last explained. 

The caption explained what was going on.

 Warmly dressed and lighted candles in hand, the resident students begin their traditional custom of Christmas caroling to the Sisters. The girls walk from the Mount campus down to the House of Studies [now Carondelet Center], where they exchange songs with novices and postulants. Hot chocolate and doughnuts are served when they return.

(Those CSJ novices and postulants would be about the same age as the Mount students, and some of them might even be classmates and friends.)

Here's to  90 years of Christmas traditions at Mount Saint Mary's University. May these coming hectic days of shopping, cooking, and preparation all be merry and bright.  

Green Week

Mount freshmen sing a goofy song for a couple of upperclasswomen
circa 1960 during Green Week. They're wearing their official "dinks."

THE MOUNT IS WRAPPING UP Welcome Week, the annual series of events that orient incoming students to life at Chalon and Doheny. Besides the fun and games, Welcome Week comprises a set of rituals that have been going on for a long, long time. Some things don’t change, like introductions to residence life and information about various clubs and activities. And food, parties, and movies.

But some things do. Like… free cigarettes.

We'll get to those in a moment.

"Green Week," as it was known during the 1950s and 1960s, was organized during the previous year by the sophomore class. More than just information, Green Week provided a true initiation to Mount life. Here’s what the schedule looked like for the week of September 22, 1952:

• Monday - Introduction to Student Government 
• Tuesday - Lectures by seniors on "Student and Personal Responsibility" followed by a fashion show featuring the proper attire for classes, dances and around the dorm
• Wednesday - Talks on grading systems, rules and regulations 
• Thursday - "Frosh Frolics" in the afternoon followed by a movie and mixer evening with freshmen from Loyola University 

"Frosh Frolics," sometimes known as "Freshman Follies," was an annual variety show written, produced, and performed by the incoming freshmen. The purpose was to acquaint the boarders with the day hops, or as we would call them today, resident students and commuters.

A Lucky Strike "prom date" ad from 1952.

In 1952 the "Frolics" theme was "Video Varieties" featuring send-ups of the TV shows of the day (remember, this was the era of "I Love Lucy"). Also on the program were four students doing the Charleston for a "Roaring 20s" number, background music by a newly formed freshman jazz band, a dance performance by the Mount’s Hawaiian students, a skit called "Rocket MSMC" spoofing the harrowing drive up Bundy and Chalon, all interspersed with comedy commercials -- including Lucky Strike cigarettes.

Cigarettes seemed to abound during Green Week. Did the tobacco companies send free samples? Freshmen were required to provide cigarettes for all the faculty and upperclasswomen (juniors and seniors) who asked for them. In fact, smoking was quite popular in those days, with plenty of ashtrays in the student and faculty lounges.

For the non-smokers, freshmen handed out candy bars and lollipops.

Frosh "Mounties" also had to wear their official purple-and-gold "dinks" (beanies) and to perform silly songs on demand. Upperclasswomen could also demand spontaneous military-style marching drills in the Circle. It was a wacky week.

Mount "freshies" were included in other schools' activities. The all-male Loyola U. – the Mount’s “brother” school – hosted an annual freshmen-only picnic for incoming students at the Mount and other Catholic colleges, Immaculate Heart and Marymount.  For a weekend “mixer” at the Mount in late September – swimming party and sock hop for resident students – the Green Week planners invited members of more than sixty fraternities from among local colleges and universities.

Then as now, the fun eventually comes to an end. Classes started up in earnest the following Monday and everyone got down to the hard work of reading, papers and tests. And the sophomores started plotting next year’s Green Week.

If you’d like to know more about life at the Mount over the last 89 years, please browse our online collections of campus newspapers, yearbooks and photos.

The tradition of ivy

PRESIDENT McELANEY-JOHNSON has been holding town hall meetings the last couple of weeks to discussion ideas and visions for the next strategic plan. Among the topics is looking at past traditions  that would be viable today, and showcase the College's long, distinguished heritage.

Traditions? Heritage? How do you spell A-R-C-H-I-V-E-S?

This picture reminded us of one tradition we've noticed -- garlands of ivy. If you look at the feet of this group -- the Class of 1931 with commencement speaker Joseph "Mr. Los Angeles" Scott -- you'll see on the steps of the Lecture Hall festoons of fresh ivy. 

We've seen a number of old commencement photos showing the juniors lining stairs and walkways for the graduating seniors, who processed across Chalon to the ceremony. The juniors all held a length of vine, creating a special route of honor.

We'll be on the lookout for other beautiful, simple traditions and will post them here.

Uniforms aloft!

FOUND SOME OLD BINDERS in the back of a drawer -- about which more in a minute -- and among the contents of #2 were a couple of clippings from the Los Angeles Times and Santa Monica Evening Outlook. There are no dates to be seen, but it was easy enough to figure out that it's shortly before graduation in 1954.

The Times photo shows four ASB officers, left, hoisting their discarded uniform skirts up the flagpole in the center of the Circle. The Outlook picture, taken from further away, shows more skirts pinned to a "halyard" running the length of the flagpole. A big crowd is gathered around. The captions explain that the College was observing the annual "hoisting" of the skirts to celebrate the seniors' freedom from their navy-blue uniforms.

Uniforms, part of life at the Mount from the beginning, finally went away in the mid-1950s, not long after these photos would have been taken.

It's always fun to discover a long-lost tradition (did they want "hoisting the skirts" to sound a little naughty?) that I can pass along to Betty Jiminez for next year's "Did You Know?" posters for Homecoming.

These binders are fascinating. They're a mishmash of documents spanning five decades starting in the 1930s. There's everything from handwritten notes to old mimeographed questionnaires. They document some pretty significant histories, though, like a rundown of college costs in the 1930s to a typed draft seeking permanent accreditation for the secondary teaching credential in 1946. There are handwritten highlights of 1953 or 1954, as if for a speech or report.

Some of the papers may have originated with a Sister pretty high up in administration, because there is CSJ memorabilia in #3. They accumulated in folders and at some point, probably about 1975, they ended up in the binders, where they've lain forgotten for almost another 40 years. It's my turn to take the next step -- acid-free folders and Mylar sleeves -- and hope to give them another 40.

Sink or swim

BEVERLY HALPIN CARRIGAN '52, a regular Archives pen pal, did some reminiscing this week in an email about Freshman Orientation in the late 1940s when she came to the Mount.

There was no Welcome Week, Orientation or much else to get students into the campus groove. Orientation in 1948 consisted of being assigned to a Big Sister who showed you the ropes: answering questions, describing courses and teaching the finer points of Mount etiquette. The word crap was not to be used, Bev discovered. "My response was that my mom used it all the time," Bev remembers. "Needless to say I expunged it from my language."

Freshmen were required to study together in the Coe Library four nights a week "under those dreadful chandeliers," she recalls. (Evidently they cast as little light then as they do today.) The Associated Student Body and club representatives made presentations in the Little Theater (now the Hannon Theater) and you were on your own. "No, we 50 or so first-year students had to sink or swim!" Bev writes.

No problems for Bev Halpin -- from what we can see in her scrapbooks in the Archives (available for viewing), she took to college like like a duck to water. She won a scholarship to graduate school in social work, married a lawyer who is now a retired Colorado Supreme Court judge, and is very generous with her alma mater.

In 2005 Bev and her husband, Jim, created the Beverly Halpin Carrigan '52 Endowed Scholarship to promote study in social work or social science. Bev wanted to help other young women achieve what she did, to get them into the swim, so to speak, at MSMC.

Thanks for the email, Bev, and thanks for all you do for the Mount.

Hello, Ladies (and Gentlemen)

ON THE THRESHOLD of the 2011-2012 academic year, Chalon is buzzing -- although you can't hear it. People are moving a lot faster, lingering projects are finally being wrapped up (like the new 24-hour study room), the desks that got cleaned out in July (and the contents sent to the Archives) are filled with new staples and pens, and Office Depot is delivering printer paper practically by the forklift. Time to get going!

For the freshmen who might see this, here is a photo of your academic ancestors, the Class of 1929, the ones who started the school you're now attending. Things were different when they started college...

• The student body numbered 25, and it would be decades before a male student was accepted.
• There was just one degree -- bachelor's -- and a handful of majors.
• The faculty, staff and administration were almost all nuns, and they wore habits.
• Nuns did the cooking and housekeeping, served the sit-down meals and did the resident students' laundry.
• Almost everybody was Catholic. Students went to Mass (in Latin) every morning wearing academic garb over their uniforms.
• Los Angeles was a small town (pop. 650,000), and MSMC's first Westside location was thought to be practically in the boondocks.
• Almost no one had a car, although some dreamed of having their own airplanes.

Welcome to the Mount, ladies and gentlemen. Remember that, like these young women in the picture, you'll get out of the College whatever you decide to put into it. I hope you'll make some history of your own. And aren't you glad you don't have to wear a uniform?