Mono Monday : : Ancestor

My grandmother graduated from the University of California in 1899. In those days Berkeley was the only University of California campus, and, according some old family photo albums it had just two buildings. . My grandmother died when I was 10, but I remember going to visit her and my grandfather (my fathers parents) in their house in the Santa Cruz mountains, and sitting on the porch swing with grandma where she taught me to knit. I treasure both the picture of us together on the swing, and her elegant handwritten diploma on real sheepskin. It must have been quite unusual for a woman to graduate from University in 1899.

My mother had five brothers who were all older than her. They all went to college, but my mother, being a girl, was sent to secretarial school. Mom always wanted to go to college, so after my brother and I left the nest and my dad was retired, she enrolled in the University of California at Los Angeles from which she graduated cum laude in 1975 . She was 65 and unusual in her own way for her vision and persistence.

My father graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1935, and I followed in his footsteps, graduating in 1966. How things have changed on that campus since the days when it was two buildings. When OilMan and I left Berkeley three years ago, the campus, which takes up a large portion of the center of town, was filled to capacity with large, multistory buildings, sitting uneasily next to more graciously proportioned buildings from an earlier era.

I have included a picture of my own diploma in the extras. By the time I graduated (in the football stadium) in 1966 there were 25.000 students at Cal, and the large  hand lettered sheepskins were replaced by far less impressive mass produced diplomas. 

There is one more diploma, my favorite of all, a very large parchment with a blue ribbon and a gold seal, given to my grandfather upon the occasion of his graduation from grammar school in Colusa, California in 1892. 

I often ponder about what this says about how the value of an education has changed….