Welcoming back a special lady
BY Cynthia Lee & Anne Pautler
UCLA TODAY
For the last 75 years, Louise Kerckhoff has existed in the shadow of her esteemed husband, William.
That’s probably the way this modest woman, who died in 1946, would have wanted it. She built Kerckhoff Hall in 1930 as a memorial to her late husband and a fulfillment of his dying wish to give the new campus a student union.
So William’s name is on the front of the building, although she provided the $815,000, the single largest donation to UCLA at the time, to construct and furnish it. In the building’s stained-glass windows are etched symbols of his career as a successful lumber company owner and pioneer in the development of hydroelectric power. It is his face that generations of student leaders have seen every time they met in wood-paneled Kerckhoff 417, where his portrait is enshrined.
Louise Kerckhoff remained invisible, even though she put so much of herself into the building’s creation, hiring the architect, craftsmen and decorators to erect this stately Collegiate Gothic building with its graceful archways and grand spires. She visited the building site almost daily during the 14 months of construction. She chose each rug, each window treatment, every chair and desk. Students, she said, should have beautiful things around them.
But as the years went by, people’s memories grew shorter. In the 1980s, ASUCLA publications and presentations even misidentified her for a few years as “Ida” Kerckhoff after someone misread a photo caption and switched her first name with that of UC President Robert Gordon Sproul’s wife, a former ASUCLA manager recalled.
Now after 75 years, Louise Kerckhoff finally has a presence in the building that is so central to student life at UCLA. “We’re very excited about it,” said ASUCLA manager Patricia McLaren. “What she did was wonderful.”
On Jan. 20, at a celebration of the building’s anniversary, staff, students and alumni, including former and current leaders of student government and media, joined Josephine Holmes McLain, the couple’s granddaughter, to see an elegant portrait of the donor of Kerckhoff Hall unveiled. ASUCLA commissioned Los Angeles artist Adrian Gottlieb to paint her sitting in one of Kerckhoff Hall’s original chairs. Her painting will hang opposite her husband’s recently refurbished portrait.
“ASUCLA wanted to commission this painting a few years back, but it just did not have the funds to do it,” said Lisa Perez, marketing director. “When we realized the 75th anniversary was coming up, we decided to get it done. I hope she’d be pleased. I think she would.”
At the Jan. 20, 1931, dedication ceremony where state and university officials praised Mrs. Kerckhoff’s efforts before nearly 6,000 students, Louise Kerckhoff, overcome with emotion, spoke not a word.
One of her oldest friends, Allen Balch, spoke on her behalf.
“She did not look forward to a ceremony of this kind,” Balch told the gathering. “She has no wish for public prominence. Her choice, indeed, would have been to have had no ceremony. But here in the presence of all these students of the university and of its president and of you all, these generous words of appreciation and consideration touch her deeply.”
Then Louise Kerckhoff simply handed the key to the building to California Gov. James Rolph Jr., who accepted it on behalf of the people of California.
For more information about Mrs. Kerckhoff and the 75th anniversary of Kerckhoff Hall, go to:
http://www.uclahistoryproject.ucla.edu/fun/ThisMonth.asp. |
