UCLA recognizes an early backer who had been largely forgotten
No classroom building or dormitory at UCLA is named after Reginaldo Francisco del Valle. Nor does any plaza, fountain, auditorium or library wing bear the name of the state legislator and Los Angeles civic activist who died in 1938 at age 84.
The name does not register with most UCLA professors, and the school's official history mentions Del Valle just once, only in passing.
Such an omission is historically and morally wrong, contends UCLA medical school professor David Hayes-Bautista. For the past several years, Hayes-Bautista has been crusading to gain recognition for what he describes as Del Valle's crucial role in founding the state teachers college that later became the University of California's first campus in Los Angeles.
"It certainly would be nice to do something to commemorate him, with a statue or portrait or a building on campus named after him," said Hayes-Bautista, an epidemiologist and demographer who is director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture. Such a step also would be a reminder that a California-born man from a Mexican ranching family had a plan in the 1880s that benefits today's students.
Hayes-Bautista had a breakthrough in his campaign last month when the written program at the inauguration of UCLA Chancellor Gene Block prominently mentioned Del Valle.
In the program, a brief history of UCLA explained that the first UC campus was created in Oakland in 1868 and soon moved to Berkeley. Southern Californians then clamored for public higher education in their own region and got it "thanks largely to the skilled efforts of a Latino State Assemblyman, Reginaldo Francisco del Valle," the program declared.
Del Valle's legislative maneuvers and heavy lifting in the Assembly and Senate led to the 1881 establishment of a state teachers training college in Los Angeles, despite intense competition from cities around California for the funding and honor. That college, called "the Los Angeles State Normal School," was initially downtown and shifted in 1914 to a bigger location on Vermont Avenue in East Hollywood. UC Regent Edward A. Dickson and Normal School President Ernest Carroll Moore then forged a partnership to bring a UC campus to the Los Angeles area. After much debate in the Legislature, a UC "southern branch" was approved in 1919 and allowed to take over the Normal School campus.
