Bequest denied

Pepperdine and the West Coast cat food king

Early in May 1966, Pepperdine College was notified of a million-dollar bequest from the estate of D. B. Lewis, a member of the President’s Board. News of the event was reported widely at a time when the national press rarely mentioned Pepperdine. The New York Times even made space for a story on the will, which was of general interest for two reasons.¹ First, Lewis had also left million-dollar gifts to the right-wing John Birch Society and to conservative commentator Dan Smoot, so the will was reported as funding right-wing activism. Second, the money left to Pepperdine was of particular interest because it was given on the condition that the school would grant an honorary doctorate to Smoot, raising concerns about academic integrity.

The deceased, Dallas Bedford Lewis, had been the president of Lewis Foods, which manufactured pet foods for the Skippy and Dr. Ross brands.² Lewis had bought the rights to the Dr. Ross brand in the mid-1950s and proceeded to make it famous with a sustained TV ad campaign featuring such memorable jingles as “It’s got more meat and it’s got more flavor” and “Dr. Ross dog food is doggone good. Woof!”³ Lewis made Dr. Ross into one of the largest buyers of advertising in the early days of television,⁴ but he had in mind more than just selling pet food. He used his ad spend to support conservative political commentary.

Among the beneficiaries of Lewis’s advertising budget was Dan Smoot, a former FBI agent who published a weekly newsletter called The Dan Smoot Report.⁵ The Smoot Report later grew into a radio program and then a television program sponsored by Dr. Ross’s pet foods. Following the initiation of the brand deal in 1956, the canned stew began to take on a decidedly conservative valence among Smoot’s audience, who wrote in to say they had switched dog food brands to support Smoot’s commentary.⁶

Smoot’s brand of politics blended constitutional conservatism with anti-communism, anti-globalism, and a conspiracist tone. Tuning in to the Smoot Report any given week, you might hear that a new government program was unconstitutional, that the UN threatened to form a world government, or that the Supreme Court was full of secret communists.⁷

Just as Smoot was gathering steam, Pepperdine College was also beginning to establish a reputation as a politically conservative institution. Beginning in 1959, Pepperdine hosted an annual Freedom Forum, a major public event featuring speeches from nationally prominent conservatives like Senator Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.), William F. Buckley, and Milton Friedman. Pepperdine’s political brand differed from Smoot’s, however, tending to favor fiscal conservatism and anti-communism over Smoot’s conspiracist anti-globalism.

Pepperdine’s plan to project a conservative public image may have been sincere, but it was also aimed at raising funds from wealthy businessmen in Southern California. The strategy was inspired in part by George S. Benson, the president of Harding College in Searcy, Arkansas, who had brought his small liberal arts school to national prominence by embracing conservative politics. It’s no surprise, then, that Pepperdine quickly connected with D. B. Lewis, who became a member of the President’s Council by 1957.⁸ Lewis’s name appears in Pepperdine Freedom Forum programs throughout the early 60s.⁹

The President’s Council had been formed by Pepperdine president Hugh Tiner in 1955. The council was an advisory board, separate from the college’s governing Board of Trustees. By offering businessmen spots on the council, Tiner hoped to inspire donations to support the college. Fundraising had become an urgent matter following the 1951 dissolution of the founder’s George Pepperdine Foundation, which had been almost the sole source of funds in the school’s early years. The President’s Council never gave enough to balance the budget under the Tiner administration, so the school slowly consumed its endowment until 1957. That year, Norvel Young became president and found that so many consecutive years of budget deficits had left almost nothing to support the college. Young worked hard to improve the school’s fundraising, finally re-balancing the budget in 1958 with the help of donors like Lewis, the cat food king.¹⁰

By the time of Lewis’s death in April 1966, Pepperdine had established a national reputation as a conservative institution. Though Pepperdine’s conservatism was more moderate than that of Smoot and the Birchers, no one was surprised to find the college named in the will of a longtime supporter like Lewis. What was shocking about the bequest was that it had strings attached: to receive the million-dollar gift, Pepperdine would have to award Smoot an honorary doctorate.

Pepperdine’s fundraisers were probably less surprised by the bequest’s condition than the general public. Lewis must have had a dream of Dr. Ross sponsoring Dr. Smoot because he had been trying to cajole Pepperdine into granting Smoot a degree as early as 1964, when he wrote a letter to vice president William Teague. In his response, Teague said that Smoot’s work was “well known to us” without making any firmer commitment to honor him.¹¹

As soon as Pepperdine administrators were notified of the condition in Lewis’s will, they expressed their misgivings about selling an honorary degree, even if it would have allowed the college to begin rebuilding its endowment.¹² To his credit, Smoot was also loath to accept an honor that had been bought and paid for.¹³

Some members of the college’s faculty were appalled to find Pepperdine lumped in with “extremist organizations” like the John Birch Society. A hastily assembled faculty petition with a score of signatures urged the college to refuse Lewis’s bequest, hoping such action would begin to undo Pepperdine’s politicization.¹⁴

The Graphic wrote an editorial along the same lines as the faculty petition, rejecting any political alignment of the college and recommending a rejection of the funds on the principle that honorary degrees were not for sale.¹⁵ But before the editorial even made it to the printer, Pepperdine took decisive action.

President Norvel Young released a statement on May 5, 1966, the day after the New York Times story on the will, announcing that the college refused on principle to accept Mr. Lewis’s bequest. Although the college was “deeply appreciative of being remembered in wills,” Pepperdine believed that “whatever the merits of a proposed recipient, the academic process precludes awarding a degree based upon the contingency of any gift.”¹⁶ The statement was printed in The Graphic and reproduced widely by the news media.

The press was suitably impressed by Pepperdine’s principled stand. Major newspapers around the country printed editorials praising Pepperdine for “high principle,” “courage of conviction,” and “integrity.”¹⁷ Small-town papers, even ones in conservative areas, were effusive in their praise.¹⁸ The story was repeated like a modern parable of a poor little school tempted to betray its principles for a princely sum.

Reuel Lemmons, editor of the Church of Christ journal Firm Foundation and trustee of the college, was impressed with the college’s character at a time when “all our colleges are in financial straits and struggling for survival,” urging his readers to “look with pride and support with conviction any school that has that much principle” and to send their children there “with confidence.”¹⁹

The media response was so dramatic that it became a story all its own, covered in the next week’s issue of The Graphic, which proudly declared Pepperdine “one of the most widely publicized colleges in the country these past several days.”²⁰

The most interesting response, though, was from an unlikely source. A group of union leaders from Fresno announced a national campaign, urging a million union members across the country to donate one dollar each to replace the money Pepperdine had forfeited, saying, “Any college or university which has the guts to turn down $1 million for a principle deserves support.” Pepperdine historian David Baird points out that accepting money from a labor union would have been “difficult to explain” for the college, given its outspoken economic conservatism.²¹ It’s unclear how much money Pepperdine ever received from the union effort.

The unions weren’t the only ones feeling generous when they learned of Pepperdine’s principle: Benjamin Dwight Phillips, a wealthy member of the Christian Church, decided to support Pepperdine after reading about its rejection of Lewis’s bequest.²² As I discussed in a recent essay, Phillips died before the gift was finalized, but his widow Mildred Welshimer Phillips eventually donated the funds to build the Phillips Theme Tower on Pepperdine’s Malibu campus, which is probably the best thing to have come from Lewis’s will.

Much has been made of the Smoot affair over the years. Trent Devenney, Doyle Swain, and their party of critics cited the Smoot affair as evidence that Pepperdine hypocritically presented itself as a conservative institution without taking more concrete steps to support movement conservatism.²³ Historian David Baird pointed to the faculty’s anti-Smoot petition as evidence of ideological diversity at a school that has sometimes been imagined as uniformly conservative.²⁴ Both these interpretations strike me as plausible, but there’s another interpretation that seems even better.

I’m a little surprised I haven’t found anyone discussing the Smoot affair in the context of Pepperdine’s later practice of using honorary degrees as a carrot to attract donations in an arrangement that sometimes looks like an explicit quid pro quo. In a sequel to this essay, I’ll tell a story about Pepperdine and the Shah of Iran and try to answer the question of just how much the institution practiced what it preached about honorary degrees.

1. “Millions Willed to Right Wingers,” New York Times, 4 May 1966: 35.

2. Before Mr. Lewis bought the Dr. Ross brand, it had sometimes been accused of sourcing its meat from sea lions and whales. See Seanacchie McCue, “Sea Lion Devastation,” San Diego Natural History Museum, 2006; cf. “8 Tons of Whale Meat Shipped to L. A. From Here,” (Santa Cruz) Sentinel, 16 Apr. 1936: 3.

3. See, e.g., Steve Nyland, “Dr. Ross’ Dog Food is Dog Gone Good! (1950’s commercial),” YouTube, 13 Mar. 2017.

4. Smoot called Lewis “the biggest TV advertiser on the West Coast […] where he had been buying advertising time since the beginning of television.” See Dan Smoot, People Along the Way: The Autobiography of Dan Smoot, Tyler Press (1993): 239.

5. Another conservative sponsored by Lewis was James W. Fifield Jr., the minister at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, whom I discussed in my recent essay Pepperdine among the denominations. See Smoot, supra note 3: 237.

6. See Smoot, supra note 3: 240.

7. You can read back issues of The Dan Smoot Report at Internet Archive.

8. Lewis was a member of Tiner’s President’s Council before Norvel Young became president in 1957. See “Bequest has condition: $1 million declined,” The Graphic, 6 May 1966: 3.

9. See, e.g., programs for 1960, 1961, 1963, 1964, 1965, and even 1966 (though the 1966 event was scheduled to take place after Lewis had died, the program must have already been printed).

10. Around 1961, Young renamed the President’s Council; from then on, it was called the President’s Board, perhaps to give members the (inaccurate) impression that the body had some governing authority over the college.

11. William Teague to D. B. Lewis, 11 May 1964, Box 42, “Lewis, D. B. 1958–1966” file, Young papers, Pepperdine University Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA).

12. The New York Times reported that Pepperdine’s vice president William J. Teague “indicated skepticism as to whether the institution would accept the $1-million.” See “Millions Willed,” supra note 1.

13. See The Graphic, supra note 8.

14. Arlie Hoover et al., petition, c. May 1966, Box 25, “One Million Dollars 1966” file, Young papers, SCUA.

15. Unsigned editorial, “$1 Million?,” The Graphic, 6 May 1966: 6. See also the news story in the same issue: “Bequest has conditions: $1 million declined,” The Graphic, 6 May 1966: 3.

16. M. Norvel Young, “A Statement from Pepperdine College,” Box 42, “Lewis, D. B. 1958–1966” file, Young papers, SCUA. Cf. M. Norvel Young, “Bulletin,” The Graphic, 6 May 1966: 1.

17. See “Not for Sale,” Washington Post, 10 May 1966; “No Price High Enough,” Phoenix Gazette, 12 May 1966; and “Pepperdine College adds stature,” Houston Chronicle, 13 May 1966. All reproduced in “Editorials Reprinted,” Box 42, Young papers, SCUA.

18. See, e.g., whg, “The Right, Too,” (Lovington, NM) Daily Leader, 20 May 1966: 2; cf. J. G., “Not for Sale,” Idaho State Journal, 11 May 1966: 4.

19. Reuel Lemmons, “On Turning Down a Million Dollars,” Firm Foundation 83.23, 7 June 1966: 354.

20. “College rejection of $1M gets national coverage,” The Graphic, 13 May 1966: 1.

21. W. David Baird, Quest for Distinction: Pepperdine University in the 20th Century, Pepp. Univ. Press (2016): 120.

22. Norvel and Helen Young, oral history interview by Jerry Rushford and Bill Henegar, 8 Aug. 1995, Pepperdine University Archives Oral History Interviews: 14:02ff.

23. See Doyle Swain, “The Odyssey of Pepperdine University,” Box 56, “Odyssey of Pepperdine” file, Howard A. White papers, SCUA: 6. For more on Devenney and Swain, see my essay Devenney; or, the modern Elpenor.

24. David Baird, “Pepperdine University and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism in Southern California,” Box 14, Folder 5, Baird papers, SCUA: 10.