Newly Independent, 1934 - 1943
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Autonomy achieved, heady elation over newly won freedom soon turned into sober reality for the new UCLA Alumni Association. The lean Depression years spelled disaster for many alumni organizations nationwide. With no financial support from the University*, the UCLA Alumni Association also found itself in dire financial straits. Its 1,000 members were young, its bank balance zero, its prospects grim.
Its survival was largely due to the dedication of Executive Secretary Canaday. Shrewd, articulate, and hardworking, Canaday had been an enterprising student who had made some money in real estate; he now applied his skills to the problem of building a solid financial foundation for the Alumni Association.
In the beginning, the treasury was so low that he didn’t draw a salary check for six months and even borrowed $500 from his father to meet office expenses. Canaday and David Folz ’27, who succeeded Houser as president, developed an imaginative and ambitious membership campaign*, designed not only to solve immediate fiscal needs, but to ensure the Association’s future. An “Endowment Membership Program” called for the sale of five-year endowment memberships, which would provide the Association with five years of dues paid in advance. New members received a free copy of a new UCLA history book, California of the Southland, written by the Southern Alumnus editor, John Jackson ’27. The plan also provided for the award of two $150 Alumni Scholarships* to freshman students in 1936.
Despite the gloom of the Depression, the 1930s provided alumni with many lighter moments. The big snow of January 1932, for instance, was a rare phenomenon enjoyed by all who woke to find the Westwood campus blanketed by 2 inches of white stuff. Few students went to class that morning, snow fights and snowman-building were irresistible, and some 14 windows were smashed (several of these credited to the inexpert aim of certain professors). UCLA’s semi-official photographer, Thelner Hoover ’30, rushed over to campus to record the snow for posterity. The broken windows were forgiven.