Feb 5, 2008 8:00 AM

In Memoriam

Ann Sumner

With the death of Bruin Pioneer Ann Sumner comes the passing of an era.

The 103-year-old UCLA alumna — who died Feb. 9 at her home in Westwood — had a love affair with the campus that lasted 86 years. From the moment she first enrolled at UCLA’s Vermont Avenue campus in 1922 until the day she died, Sumner's life was inextricably linked to UCLA. In fact, the loyal Bruin made her home on Westholme Avenue, just north of Sorority Row, to ensure that she stayed in close proximity to the campus she loved so well.

Sumner's remarkable accomplishments in relation to the fledgling campus began when she was just a teenager. As a junior writer for the Los Angeles Evening Express, she became friends with Regent Edward A. Dickson — who owned the paper — and his wife, Wilhelmina, who treated her like a member of the family. Dickson, of course, was the impetus behind the creation of the Southern Branch of the University of California, later to become UCLA.

A charter member of Delta Gamma sorority, Sumner graduated with a bachelor's degree in history in 1926 and became a full-time writer for the Express, where she served as the nation’s youngest women's page editor on a metropolitan daily newspaper. She also found time to write eight romance novels — with titles such as "The Love Talent" and "Dream Kiss" — which ran serially in more than 20 U.S. newspapers, six of which were published in book form. Sumner would later call them "junk," but admitted that "people enjoyed them. They sold like mad."

In 1932, Sumner was appointed by Ernest Carroll Moore, then head of the Southern Branch, to UCLA's brand-new news bureau and moved into the newly created job of chief publicist for University Extension in 1939, a job she held until her retirement in 1967.

During that period, Sumner involved herself in an astounding array of activities, including: founding member of Gold Shield, Alumnae of UCLA, in 1936; vice president of the UCLA Alumni Association from 1938-1939; president of the Los Angeles City Panhellenic Council from 1947-1948; president (and founding board member in 1937) of UCLA Affiliates; founding member, Friends of the UCLA Library, 1951; founding board member, UCLA Art Council, 1952; president, UCLA Faculty Women's Club, 1958-1959; member of the founding board of directors of the UCLA Faculty Center, 1959; and being the first woman to receive the UCLA Alumni Distinguished Service Award, 1962.

An endowment Sumner established with Gold Shield continues to provide funds to purchase life memberships in the UCLA Alumni Association for graduating Gold Shield scholars. So far, more than 215 life memberships have been awarded.

Named Writer's Digest's "Best-Dressed Woman in the Newspaper Business" in 1930, Sumner never went out without being impeccably dressed, from her white gloves and pearls to her stylish suits and hats.

"A fine morning walk," she would say, "is past the Faculty Center to pick up a copy of the Daily Bruin, north to Lu Valle Commons for a cappuccino, past the Murphy Sculpture Garden and south to the inverted fountain, thus passing halls memorial to Dodd, Powell, Bunche, Campbell, Dickson and Knudsen. I knew them all."

A memorial service will be held today, Feb. 12, at 1 p.m. at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 580 Hilgard Ave., Westwood. A reception will follow at the UCLA Faculty Center at 2 p.m.

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Roger W. Andersen, 67, a professor of applied linguistics at UCLA for 30 years, died on Jan. 22 after a battle with lymphoma.

A gentle man who enjoyed helping others, Andersen especially delighted in helping those in need in developing countries. His interest in other cultures led him to conduct research throughout Latin America that focused on second-language acquisition. This contributed to the public’s understanding of the way grammatical items are learned in a second language.

His research revealed the relationship among pidginization, creolization and second-language acquisition. The three were considered separate entities until Andersen showed how they were all aspects of the same phenomenon.

Andersen was a pioneer in the development of language-teaching materials for Quechua, a Native-American language of South America, based on authentic language use. His teaching materials included ethnographic films and interactive video disks. Andersen published his research in such prestigious journals as “Language” and “Studies in Second Language Acquisition.”

Andersen’s family says, "We will always remember him for his brilliant mind and love for people. He will be overwhelmingly missed and will always be in our hearts."

He is survived by his wife, Sonia; two daughters, Jennifer and Christine; and one granddaughter.

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Susan Arzouman, former chief administrative officer in UCLA's Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, died Jan. 17 at Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center in San Luis Obispo, Calif. She was 69.

Arzouman was born in New York in 1938, but raised in Illinois. She attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She launched her career at the Baylor University College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. Her relocation to Southern California in 1964 ultimately landed her at the UCLA School of Medicine, where she was chief administrative officer in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

During her years at UCLA she also became a part-time student, taking up painting as a hobby through UCLA Extension in 1985. Arzouman also took classes at Santa Monica College. She continued to grow as an artist, concentrating on colored pencil work. Her work was mostly figurative with her use of shape, design and color as the focus of her compositions. She participated in the Central Coast's Open Studios for several years.

Arzouman retired from her position at UCLA in 1992. She and her husband of 30 years, James, moved to Los Osos from Santa Monica in 1995.

Arzouman is survived by her husband, James; daughter Elizabeth Gunn; sons David and Michael; brother Peter Mackinnon; and five grandchildren.

Contributions in Susan Arzouman's memory may be made to the American Porphyria Foundation at 4900 Woodway, Ste. 780, Houston, TX 77056.

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Carl R. Mueller, a world-famous translator of classic plays in several languages and a revered professor emeritus in the theater department at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, died Jan. 27. He was 76.

From 1966 until his retirement in 1994, Mueller was a professor in the theater department’s critical studies program, where he taught theater history and literature, dramatic criticism, and playwriting. His research and many publications contributed greatly to the school's reputation as a leader in the training of theater and performance scholars. Mueller is known to have supervised more doctoral dissertations in his day than any other faculty member at the school.

Mueller's greatest fame was as an internationally acclaimed translator, especially of works in the modern German theatrical repertoire. Fifteen volumes of his translations from the German, Swedish, Italian and ancient Greek are still in print. He also wrote essays and book reviews for numerous publications, including the Los Angeles Times, The Drama Review, Theater Journal and Performance Review, often championing innovative and risk-taking interpretations of the classics.

When asked in 1998 to list six major professional accomplishments, Mueller selected his sojourn in Germany as a Fulbright scholar exploring the theater of Bertold Brecht, in 1960 and 1961, at Berlin's Freie Universitat, and five subsequent translations of major works by Georg Büchner, Frank Wedekind, Brecht and Arthur Schnitzler. The pairing makes sense, as Mueller's career as a translator was launched during his stay in Berlin, when he met with members of the Brecht family and obtained the initial permission for his series of authorized — and still definitive — translations of the plays.

One of his theater department colleagues, Assistant Professor Shelley Salamensky, recalled that Mueller's famed translation of Büchner's "Woyzeck" "was the first play I ever read that really electrified me. I forgot that, until I assigned the play this past fall, with the thought of discussing problems of reassembling Büchner's mysterious fragments into a coherent performance text. Who better to speak on that subject than my office neighbor? Among other things, we discussed the idea of an all-African-American production of 'Woyzeck' — what the African-American experience would bring out in the text, and vice-versa. He liked the idea and had much to say."

Mueller was a critic and scholar but also a man of the theater, and his translations were created with the needs of performance firmly in mind. This is probably why more than 300 productions worldwide were based on his translations.

One review of his rendering of Greek tragedies called them "an inspirational gift" for theater people, adding, "These translations soar to the heights one expects and needs from the world's oldest tragedies, while retaining a currency of feeling that is sometimes unnerving. These are not translations for the faint-of-heart."

"The previous generation of translators was scholarly and literary rather than dramatic," said Theater Department chair William Ward. "Carl was able to distill what the plays were about, the intent of the authors, in language that would work for performance and play for an audience. It was almost the equivalent of re-creating the works from scratch."

"He was truly a dedicated scholar," Ward said. "I've been seeing him working in his Macgowan Hall office nearly every day since his retirement, putting in a full day at his computer. On a more personal level, Carl was a genuinely kind man who was always a pleasure to talk with. All of us will miss him."

Born in 1931 into a German-speaking family of Hungarian ancestry in St. Louis, Mo., Mueller attended Northwestern University as an English major and then put his language skills to work as a U.S. Army liaison officer in Germany in the 1950s. He earned a master’s in playwriting and a doctorate in theater history and criticism at UCLA and, after his Fulbright journey and a stint at UC Berkeley, joined the UCLA Theater Department in June of 1966.

One of Mueller's former fellow students and theater department colleagues, Professor Emeritus John Cauble, recalled that "when Carl was a student, he received the Orenstein Award, given by the faculty to the student who had done more than anyone else for his fellow students, in terms of helping with their projects and encouraging their work. And as a colleague of Carl's, what I remember most of all is that he maintained that spirit through all of the 47 years he spent with us."

Mueller is survived by his brother Don, a retired Air Force colonel from Colorado Springs, Colo.; his sister Shari Mueller of Virginia; and two nieces and two nephews.

To make a donation to the Carl Mueller Memorial Fund, visit https://giving.ucla.edu/carlmuellermemorial.

For more information, please contact Bianca Roberts, executive director of development at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television at (310) 206-3620 or broberts@tft.ucla.edu.

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Pauline Louise Svenson, wife of UCLA Vice Chancellor Emeritus Elwin V. Svenson, died Jan. 26 at her home in Sherman Oaks, Calif., at age 81, after a battle with brain cancer.

Born Aug. 22, 1926, in Fitchburg, Mass., as the only child of Helen A. Lawson and Charles Berndt, Svenson and her parents moved to Los Angeles in 1942. Following graduation from Los Angeles High School in 1943, she enrolled at UCLA, earning her bachelor's degree in 1948 and her teaching credential in 1949.

While enrolled at UCLA, Svenson met her future husband, Elwin, and they married in December 1948. After starting their family in Pasadena, they moved to Sherman Oaks in 1958, where they raised their two sons, Paul and David, and their two daughters, Ann and Karen.

The UCLA service organization, Gold Shield, and the UCLA Art Council were the initial focus of her long-term commitment to volunteerism. In 1987, Svenson received the UCLA Alumni Association's University Service Award. In 1991, she continued her volunteerism as the founding manager of the gift store at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, serving in that role until 2003 and as a consultant until her death. Recalling her earlier days as a teacher in Inglewood, she also taught and served as a mentor in the UCLA museum studies program.

In addition to being active in the support programs of the UCLA Library, the UCLA arts programs and the UCLA intercollegiate athletic program, she was a longtime supporter of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the L.A. Opera and the Los Angeles Music Center. Her longtime presence throughout the entire UCLA community was always accompanied by elegance, grace and good will.

In addition to her husband, Elwin, Pauline Svenson is survived by four children and five grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at the Lenart Auditorium at the Fowler Museum of Cultural History on the UCLA campus at 4 p.m. on Feb. 16, followed by a reception. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made in Polly Svenson's honor to benefit the Fowler Museum at UCLA. Checks should be made out to The UCLA Foundation and forwarded to Lynne B. Clark, director of development, Fowler Museum at UCLA, Box 951549, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1549.

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