IN THE BEGINNING
Thank you for your great work on Santa Clara Magazine! My wife Mary and I are class of ’77. We greatly appreciate your articles and the connection the magazine provides us to Santa Clara. Please let Father Kevin O’Brien, S.J., know we very much enjoyed learning about him in your Winter 2019 edition interview and that he is an inspiration to us both.
Tim Meissner ’77
Thank you for your kind words. We agree that Fr. O’Brien is, as you say, an inspiration as the University’s new leader.
You can’t swing a dead cat without seeing something about the new president.
Anonymous
The idiom “to swing a cat” alludes to slang from the 1700s about a type of whip called a cat-o’-nine-tails used to punish offenders in the British navy. Apologies if our excitement in introducing readers to Santa Clara’s new president has punished you thusly!
LEGACY: Summer 2019
Some Mission history: Mary McSwain Bennett Love, with her husband and eight children, trekked across the country with the second party of pioneers on the Oregon Trail, arriving in San Francisco in 1843. In 1845, Mary moved down to the Santa Cruz mountains and bought a sawmill—said by some to be the first west of the Mississippi. Mary eventually moved to Santa Clara, taking residence in an adobe house in the Mission gardens. Mary was my great-great-great-grandmother, so you can imagine my joy in seeing the Mission as the cover of Santa Clara Magazine. My main purpose here is 1. To ask if you know the date of the photograph of the Mission, and 2. To lay claim to being an alum with the earliest direct connection to the Mission and the college.
Paul A. Conrado ’56
1. University archives tells us that cover image dates around 1854 and may be the first photo ever made of the Mission Santa Clara. 2. Though we cannot verify your claim, we commend you on your skills as a familial archivist; Mary sounds like a tenacious spirit!
GIANERA SOCIETY
I regret missing the annual affair [at Grand Reunion] honoring Father William Gianera, S.J., whom I have fond memories of meeting at registration when I arrived at Santa Clara as a freshman in 1945. Fr. Gianera acknowledged that he knew my family, especially my older brother Bill ’38. It was well-known that Fr. Gianera took great pride in recognizing individual students and addressing them by name when encountering them on campus. Albeit, Santa Clara was much smaller at the time, but still had wonderful values and spirit, and a great football team! I am pleased to learn of the current excellent status of Santa Clara, and we wish the new president, Father Kevin O’Brien, S.J., success with his challenging future endeavors.
Philip Helfrich ’51
The Gianera Society was surely sorry to miss you, a member of the Centennial Class. Congratulations on 75 years of being a Bronco!
NEW HIRE:
Please join SCM in welcoming our newest team member: Lauren Loftus. As associate editor, Lauren will be instrumental in shaping the story of Santa Clara University. Lauren most recently served as assistant director of storytelling with University Marketing and Communications, before which she was the associate editor of PHOENIX magazine in her home state of Arizona. Her writing has also appeared in The Washington Post, Arizona Republic, and KJZZ-Public Radio.
CORRECTIONS:
The Fall 2018 issue of Santa Clara Magazine misidentified the city in Texas where immigrant children were being held. It is Tornillo, not Trujillo. The detainment center has since closed, and then reopened as a Customs and Board Control center for adults. Children are now detained in other locations, including in Homestead, Florida.