Dolores, a history
Concerning the origins, abuses, and reincarnations of Pepperdine's most influential statue
What’s with that plaster baby? You know the one: the painted statue of a young girl holding a towel on Adamson Plaza. Namely, Dolores. Where does she come from and why does Pepperdine make such a big deal about an unremarkable depiction of a demure toddler at bath time?
To answer this question, we’ll go back to the earliest days of George Pepperdine College, trace how the institution grew up alongside Dolores in south Los Angeles, recount the drama of her disappearances, and follow her to her new home in Malibu.
Birth of a tradition (1941–1955)
When George Pepperdine decided in February 1937 that he wanted to start a college, he surprised everyone involved by announcing that he would aim to open by that fall, even though he had no campus, no faculty, no curriculum, no students, and only seven months to get everything in place. So you can understand why construction was ongoing when the school opened in September. In fact, construction of major buildings carried on through the first few years of the college’s existence, with the library opening in 1939 and the auditorium in 1940. It’s during this period of campus construction we first meet Dolores.
In the spring of 1941, a construction crew was tasked with building a fountain in the center of the campus quad, to honor the class of ’41.1 They had picked out frog statues spitting jets of water, but they needed something to decorate the fountain’s central pedestal, a squarish birdbath. While buying supplies downtown, they found the perfect decoration: a plaster statuette of a girl with a towel. There was only one problem: the statue’s towel hid a pipe for water to spray from, making the whole thing look like “a small boy getting relief.”2 But they rerouted the pipe to fix that problem and installed the statue.
Because of her central place on campus, it didn’t take long for the newcomer to make a splash. The Graphic’s gossip column welcomed her as soon as she was in place, at which point her name seems already to have been fixed as Dolores, presumably after the hit song performed by Frank Sinatra and Tommy Dorsey that was released that spring.3 The name stuck, and she has been known as Dolores ever since.
Dolores was embraced right from the beginning. Before Pepperdine had a mascot, it had Dolores. A tradition quickly formed to paint her or dress her up in accordance with events on campus: a green beanie to match the freshmen during orientation or a lei for the luau. The central fountain became one of the primary meeting places on campus. Devotionals were held at the surrounding benches, songs were sung over its plashing, and graduates marched under the statue’s watchful eye to commencement exercises.
Around this time, Pepperdine began issuing a Dolores award for distinguished alumni, giving a miniature replica of the statue to winners. The details of the award are a little hazy, but it seems to have been instituted by Oly Tegner while he was chair of the education department, to honor outstanding graduates. Future winners of the award included Helen Young. Dolores was obviously seen as representative of the Pepperdine spirit.4
Disappearing act (1955–1966)
But the Dolores tradition that’s most distinctive didn’t begin until May 27, 1955, when she was stolen from her pedestal.5 For months, no one knew where she had gone, until she was restored during homecoming in November.6 The archival record is frustratingly vague as to what happened, but it seems likely that students from El Camino Junior College in Torrance stole the statue as a prank right before graduation.7
From that point on, Dolores was a constant target for pranksters, going missing in 1959, 1960, 1965, and 1966. Nor was it always students from rival schools; sometimes the confessed thieves were Pepperdine students.8 But she always turned up relatively quickly and re-assumed her position at the center of the fountain. Until one time she didn’t.
In October 1966, Pepperdine hosted a mission workshop, inviting students from other schools connected with the churches of Christ. Following the closing session, Dolores went missing. Accusations flew every direction. Sister schools Abilene Christian, Lubbock Christian, and Oklahoma Christian all caught flak, as did neighbor Loyola. Recriminations even touched Pepperdiners, including a group agitating to replace Dolores with a bronze replica. But it was ultimately determined that the pranksters belonged to Columbia Christian College of Portland, Oregon.9
Rebirth (1967–1981)
Dolores returned to campus a couple months later in bad shape.10 The college took the opportunity to renovate the fountain, which took several more months. And when Dolores was finally re-installed, it was a different Dolores! It’s tricky to piece together what exactly happened—in part because the archive is missing issues of the Graphic from the fall of 1967—but probably the original suffered too much damage from her last kidnappers to be repaired. Whatever the cause of the switcheroo may have been, the renovated fountain as it stood in early 1968 featured a decidedly different Dolores, one without any towel at all and with both hands on her right hip.11
As far as I’ve been able to establish, the new Dolores was accepted by the campus community. Certainly, the old traditions carried on, with funny costumes12 and another disappearance in 1970.13
But as much of the university’s attention moved from Los Angeles to the new Malibu campus in the 70s, Dolores was a constant, steadily keeping watch over the urban campus as it slowly began to fade from everyone else’s view. Still, she had grown to be such an important part of Pepperdine’s identity that she couldn’t be left behind forever. When the university sold the L.A. campus in 1981, it said goodbye at a party called Pepperdine Day. One of the highlights of the celebration was the careful removal of Dolores from her fountain to be taken to Malibu.14
Dolores in Malibu (1982–2012)
In September 1982, a ceremony was held in Malibu to dedicate Dolores on Adamson Plaza near The Rock. Her new home featured a plaque that called her “our special keepsake from the Los Angeles campus.”15
Malibu students applied themselves zealously to their observance of the old traditions. Practically overnight, she was given a pedicure, and within two weeks she had been snapped off at her thin ankles and stolen, leaving behind nothing but plaster feet with sloppily painted toenails.16 The director of alumni relations pleaded with the anonymous pranksters to return the keepsake,17 but she stayed missing for almost six months.
Then, one night after a late study session, Seaver students Liz Whatley and Bob White were leaving the student government offices when they noticed that Dolores had been returned to her plinth.18 She was repaired and reinstalled in February 1984.19
But an example had been set, and just a couple months later Dolores went missing again and stayed gone for several more months. Larry Keene, director of alumni relations, again pleaded for her return in the pages of the Graphic, confessing, “For years I have had a special love affair with a woman other than my wife. Her name is Dolores.” The tradition of stealing the statue, he said, was never intended to include such long absences.20
In October 1984, Dolores turned up on the side of the road at the intersection of Malibu Canyon Road and Seaver Drive, her head cracked and her body crumbling. New director of alumni relations Doug Plank feared she wouldn’t survive another stint out in the elements and decided to move her indoors.21 She was refurbished and unveiled at homecoming in March 1985.22
Despite the best efforts of her caretakers in the alumni office, Malibu had not been kind to Dolores. Of the 44 months after her removal from the L.A. campus, she had stood in the plaza for less than three months, spending the rest of that period either missing or being repaired.
Following this rocky start, Dolores largely ceased to be an object of interest for students at Malibu, with references to the statue petering out. The 1988 yearbook says she was behind glass in the Thornton Administrative Center.23 In 1996, she re-appears in the HAWC.24 By 1998, assistant director of campus life Sharon Beard told the Graphic that Dolores was often passed between the alumni office and the troublemaking brothers of Psi Upsilon.25 Moving Dolores inside and behind glass probably contributed to the diminishment of her popularity with students, but the statue had become so fragile that she could no longer stand up to wind and rain.
Catalogs of Pepperdine traditions written during this period often mention Dolores but get many of the facts wrong, either because no one knew anymore or because no one cared to get the details right. Her decline in popularity may be due in large part to The Rock, which took over as the primary target for campus daubers and pranksters.26 Among alumni, however, especially those from the Los Angeles campus, Dolores continued to stand out in their memories of Pepperdine.
The modern era (2012–present)
For the celebration of Pepperdine’s 75th anniversary in 2012, the university announced Dolores would make a comeback. But the statue installed on Adamson Plaza that fall wasn’t the one brought from the L.A. campus thirty years earlier. Instead, it was a new one modeled on the original 1941 Dolores with a towel.27
The new statue was the result of a process initiated by the alumni relations office’s Matt Ebeling, who understood what Dolores meant to former students. He took one of the miniature replicas given as an award and, with the help of the department of Planning, Operations, and Construction, created a 3-D scan that was scaled up to produce a new statue of Dolores.28 Because the award had been based on the original towel-bearing version, the new Dolores looked like the first one rather than the 1967 statue that had been brought to Malibu in 1981. The 2012 replica is a good but not perfect re-creation of the 1941 statue, with a relatively larger head and chubbier body than the original, perhaps because those dimensions worked better on the small scale used for the award.
Students once again embraced her, quickly catching on that she was to be painted and costumed.29 I haven’t found evidence of the new Dolores going missing since 2012, which is probably for the best since the tradition of abuse destroyed her predecessors. The painting fad seems to have died out in recent years as The Rock has proven the more popular canvas for student groups, maybe in part because of its more favorable location.
So, 83 years after her first installation the long-suffering Dolores—now in her third iteration—still watches over Pepperdine from her plinth. Her admirers have long said she sees everything on campus and says nothing,30 but her endurance across the decades can tell us a lot about Pepperdine. More than perhaps any other symbol, Dolores links the modern university to its earliest days, outliving whole schools and campuses. Although she first came to us by arbitrary happenstance, she is not just some creepy baby statue. She is the spirit of Pepperdine.
“Work Progresses On Fountain, Senior Project,” The Graphic, 26 Mar. 1941: 1, 3.
C.H. Shipp to Helen Young, 5 May 1973, Folder 4, Box 26, Baird Papers, Pepperdine University Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA).
“The Grapevine,” The Graphic, 2 Apr. 1941: 2. As to the origin of the name, see later speculation in “Ebb and Flow,” The Graphic, 24 Sept. 1954: 2. A later rumor says that the statue was called “Baby” for a period. If that was true, it was in spite of this early christening in the Graphic.
Although the name of the award has changed, distinguished alumni are still (at least sometimes) receiving Dolores statuettes today, including Dale Brown, Seaver’s distinguished alumnus in 2024.
“Dolores 1941–1955,” 1955.
“Dolores Arrives On Schedule Friday Night: Statue Is Returned As Announced,” The Graphic, 18 Nov. 1955: 1.
See Dick Shoulders, “Straight from the Shoulder,” The Graphic, 4 Nov. 1955: 2, which says in code that Dolores had been returned to a GPC faculty member (which was true), but also that “the perennial nudist” had been painted yellow, which may not have been accurate. Shoulders hints at the connection to El Camino JC.
See, e.g., Carol Campbell, “Stone Maiden Caper: Phantom Skulker Absconds with Campus Mascot,” The Graphic, 10 Sept. 1965: 2.
Bill Rempel, “Plot thickens as search for Dolores expands: Nation-wide dragnet unearths prime suspect in kidnapping,” The Graphic, 10 Nov. 1966: 2.
Bill Rempel, “Dolores back home safely,” The Graphic, 12 Jan. 1967: 1–2.
See, e.g., “Fountain statue Dolores, ca. 1967,” University Archives Photograph Collection. Cf. "Dolores 1968," The Graphic, 23 Feb. 1968: 12.
See, e.g., “Fountain statue ‘Dolores’ adorned in t-shirt at Pepperdine College, circa 1968” and “Fountain statue Dolores wearing a freshman ‘beanie’, late 1960s,” University Archives Photograph Collection.
“Where Is Dolores?” The Graphic, 10 Sept. 1970: 2, though this disappearance ended up being a misunderstanding. Dolores had been taken down for safekeeping. See “Not missing... ...just resting,” The Graphic, 17 Sept. 1970: 1.
“Removing Dolores fountain statue after sale of LA campus, 1981,” University Archives Photograph Collection.
See Pepperdine University Plaques, SCUA.
Reid Sams, “Dolores statue missing again: Only painted toenails of tradition-filled Dolores remain,” The Graphic, 14 Oct. 1982: A2.
See, e.g., The Graphic, 28 Oct. 1982: A2, promising no consequences for the thieves if they returned the statue.
“Dolores returned to pedestal,” The Graphic, 7 Apr. 1983: A3.
Kevin Wood, “Dolores back on pedestal,” The Graphic, 16 Feb. 1984: A6.
Larry Keene, “Pepperdine tradition broken with theft of school mascot,” The Graphic, 11 Oct. 1984: A6.
Parris Ward, “‘Deteriorating’ Dolores may spend winter indoors,” The Graphic, 15 Nov. 1984: A3.
“Homecoming 1985,” The Graphic, 7 Mar. 1985: A3.
Sheena Leatham, “Homecoming '96 events planned for Feb. 23–24,” Pepperdine Voice, Jan. 1996: 7; cf. Trish West, “‘Forever Young’ celebrated,” Pepperdine Voice, Apr. 1996: 1, 6.
Dawn Safian, “The Rock ventures to Vegas,” The Graphic, 5 Nov. 1998: A3.
See, e.g., Kathy Millar, “From Dolores to The Rock, traditions evolve,” The Graphic, 16 Feb. 2006: B2.
“Dolores is reborn on Founder's Day,” The Graphic, 20 Sept. 2012: A2; cf. Whitney Irick, “Waves anticipate Founder's Day,” The Graphic, 13 Sept. 2012: A3.
Matt Ebeling, email communication to author, 11 May 2024.
Tara Jenkins, “Meet Dolores: A part of history or the ghost of Pepperdine’s past?” The Graphic, 2 Apr. 2015: B4.
See, e.g., Phil Pennington, “A Penny’s Worth: And Dolores blushed,” The Graphic, 24 May 1957: 3.