The second founding
On the dedication of Seaver College
This essay is part of a series celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of five major events occurring at Pepperdine University in 1975. The last two installments will come toward the end of the year.
The father of the hydrogen bomb, a US Senator, and Ronald Reagan were seated on an AstroTurf-covered stage in Malibu alongside some robed academics and a preacher. This rather odd party had come together to honor a retired musician, a little old lady who had donated her oil-drilling equipment fortune to build the college that was hosting the event. This might sound like the improbable setup to some impossible-to-predict punchline, but it’s actually a barebones description of a real historical event that stands at the end of one of the great achievements in the history of American academia in the twentieth century.
After weeks of archival research into this event, I can explain every detail except the AstroTurf, which remains a mystery. The dedication ceremony was held on April 20, 1975, at Pepperdine University, which was naming its new liberal arts college in Malibu for its primary benefactress, Blanche Seaver.
The Seavers
Mrs. Seaver was born in 1891 as Blanche Ebert, the youngest of ten children of Norwegian immigrants to Chicago. As a child, she showed musical talent, and by the time she was 35, she had written and arranged music for professional orchestras and had a major hit, “Just for Today,” performed by Irish tenor John McCormack. In 1916, Blanche married Frank Roger Seaver, a lawyer who had written the charter for Los Angeles County.
In 1919, Frank went to work for oilman Edward Doheny, who would become one of the richest men in America. For several years, Seaver served as Doheny’s legal counsel in Mexico (during this time, Doheny became embroiled in the Teapot Dome scandal). Seaver bought the Doheny Stone Drill Company in 1928 and renamed it the Hydril Company.
Under Seaver’s leadership, Hydril sold a critical piece of oil-drilling equipment called the blowout preventer, used on oil rigs around the world. Seaver became a very wealthy man, and he resolved to use his fortune to support private education in Southern California, building science centers at USC, Loyola, and his alma mater Pomona College.
Mr. Seaver learned about George Pepperdine College when he attended the 1960 Freedom Forum with his friend Henry Salvatori. He subsequently made some small gifts to Pepperdine, even remembering it in his will in 1964. This impressed his widow Blanche, who continued to support Pepperdine after his death.
Managing Mrs. Seaver
Eliciting donations from philanthropists like Blanche Seaver became more or less the full-time job of Pepperdine’s executive vice president William S. Banowsky in 1968. Mrs. Seaver had particular predilections that made her difficult to court: she insisted that her companions (1) wear American flag pins on their lapels, (2) refuse alcoholic beverages when offered, and (3) support her particular brand of patriotic capitalism.1 But Banowsky proved equal to the task, and his close relationship with Blanche would last for decades, producing many tens of millions of dollars in donations.
On November 29, 1969, Banowsky and other Pepperdine fundraisers offered Blanche a deal: in exchange for a donation of $8 million, Pepperdine would give the name Seaver College to its future liberal arts college in Malibu. Around this time, Blanche agreed to make the construction of the college in Malibu her top priority, and her donations over the years would far surpass the $8 million first contemplated.
But why, if the donations were in order, was the naming of the college delayed for more than five years until that day on the AstroTurf stage in 1975? Blanche’s nephew Richard Seaver, who managed her money following Frank’s death, insisted that the new college demonstrate its viability before taking the Seaver name. Only at the end of the college’s third year did he deem it acceptable to stake the Seaver family’s reputation on the new venture.
In the meantime, Pepperdine found other ways to express appreciation for the Seaver gifts. Due at least in part to prompting from Richard Seaver, Pepperdine’s governing Board of Trustees amended its bylaws in March 1975 to waive the requirement that trustees be members of the Churches of Christ so it could name Blanche a “Founder Trustee.” She was officially added to the board the day before the dedication of Seaver College.2
For many years, Blanche was upset that the university continued to bear the Pepperdine name, even as the central administration had moved to Malibu, which they had promised her would always be called Seaver. She repeatedly expressed dismay that the dedication had not produced Seaver University, of which Pepperdine College would be just one part. From the surviving record, I can’t tell that Mrs. Seaver harbored much personal animosity toward Helen Pepperdine, the founder’s widow, but she was distraught by references to the Pepperdine name when she thought Seaver should be elevated instead.3 She seems to have regarded the establishment of the college in Malibu as the university’s second founding, equaling or even eclipsing the earlier work of George Pepperdine.
The dedication ceremony
The dedication ceremony was scheduled for Sunday, April 20, 1975, a date chosen to allow former California governor Ronald Reagan to attend. The Fouch Amphitheater on the Malibu campus was chosen to host the event, but the orchestra (stage?) of the amphitheater being too small to fit everyone comfortably, a platform was constructed to extend the stage area. Perhaps it was to hide this platform that the AstroTurf was chosen.
The platform party included some prominent visitors, including US Senator George Murphy (D–Calif.) and Edward Teller, who invented the hydrogen bomb and became a distinguished visiting professor at Pepperdine in 1975.
The ceremony’s program was facilitated by Pepperdine chancellor M. Norvel Young. Donor Fritz Huntsinger led the pledge of allegiance, and the Pepperdine choir sang “Sweet, Sweet Spirit” (which Banowsky regarded as something of an alma mater for the Malibu campus) and Blanche Seaver’s most famous composition, “Just for Today.” James W. Fifield Jr., who was Mrs. Seaver’s minister at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, read scripture, and vice president Howard White led a prayer.
Ronald Reagan, who would soon announce his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, was introduced by Mrs. Seaver’s nephew Richard Seaver. Reagan’s speech meandered through jokes, remarks about the importance of small private colleges like Pepperdine, a brief biography of Frank Seaver, and words of appreciation for Blanche Seaver, who was in attendance.
Reagan was impressed by Pepperdine’s dedication to liberal arts education at a time when so many great universities had given themselves over to active research programs in the sciences:4
It was never a part of the American dream that we evolve into a robot society run by computers, centralized thought and values and action. […] I exhort those who teach and those who learn, who research and apply, to couple their work with reason and conscience and heart. It will be at such seats of learning as this that the balance between the solid state of matter and the inner state of man would be redressed.
Reagan evidently associated unchecked, technologically enabled social reforms with the threat of socialism, which launched him into a review of economist John Kenneth Galbraith’s book Economics and the Public Purpose. Reagan rejected Galbraith’s “new socialism”, saying such policies would impoverish America just as they had the USSR, and embraced instead the dynamism that enabled American colleges and universities to educate fully one-third of all students in higher education around the world. Bringing it back to the reason for the ceremony, Reagan closed by devoting the Frank R. Seaver College of Liberal Arts to two American patriots who believed in the American Way.
The event’s other main address was delivered by president Banowsky, whose remarks were later published as “A Spirit of Purpose,” a kind of sequel to his speech “A Spirit of Place,” written for the 1970 groundbreaking ceremony before the construction of the Malibu campus.
In his speech, Banowsky described the new Frank R. Seaver College as the crown jewel and academic heart of the university.5 The new school would be a residential liberal arts college teaching sciences, arts, and letters, and while other schools might join it on the Malibu campus in the future (schools of theology, public administration, and behavioral science were contemplated), Seaver College would be kept small—below a maximum enrollment of 1,800, to ensure personal relationships between faculty and students.
Banowsky also sketched out the future development of the Malibu campus, which still lacked a fine arts center, a theater, and an administration building, as well as additional housing for students and faculty. This building program was followed closely over the next two decades, resulting in the Cultural Arts Center, Smothers Theater, Thornton Administrative Center, Campus View faculty condos, and apartment complexes at Lovernich, Page, and Towers.
Like Reagan, Banowsky devoted much of his speech to describing the Seavers. He cast Frank as a second George Pepperdine, a “rugged individualist” whose business acumen enabled him to support patriotic, Christian (“value-centered”) education.6 Blanche he portrayed as a humble and grounded millionaire, pure in heart, one who rented her home, wore the same old dresses year after year, and neglected fine jewelry, grounded in the conviction that her vast resources were to be given away and not lavished on herself—a hero of faith and courage.
As his peroration, Banowsky borrowed from his earlier “Spirit of Place” speech, affirming the existence of “ultimate truth” and “an objective moral order.” He closed by situating Pepperdine squarely within the great tradition of Western universities from Paris and Oxford to Heidelberg and on through to Malibu, dedicating the new college “to the glory of God and the service of mankind.”
Mrs. Seaver was given an opportunity to speak as well. If Banowsky’s memoir is to be believed, she said, “Our pure American heritage is love of liberty and faith in God. […] Here, in this place, you have been given this wonderful opportunity to find the knowledge, the faith and the courage for the work you have been called upon to do.”7
At the conclusion of her speech, Mrs. Seaver was joined by Helen Pepperdine, George’s widow, who offered the honoree a copy of Faith Is My Fortune, Mr. Pepperdine’s biography. In this moment, the two leading supporters of Pepperdine were united, and the future of the university had never seemed so promising.
A second founding?
In the months and years following the dedication of Seaver College, there was a lingering conflict over how to understand the Seaver legacy vis-à-vis that of Mr. Pepperdine. In October 1975, the traditional Founder’s Day celebration in honor of George Pepperdine also honored Frank Seaver, perhaps an indication that president Banowsky wanted to recast the mythology of the institution by inducting Seaver into the pantheon.8 The tradition carried on at least through 1979, when the apostrophe was moved on the program, which declared “Founders’ Day.”9
Students, though, were hesitant to put Messrs. Seaver and Pepperdine on an equal footing. An editorial in The Graphic worried that Mr. Pepperdine’s “philosophical contributions have been pushed into the background by the donations of the Seavers,” calling the administration’s efforts to elevate Mr. Seaver “an affront to Mr. Pepperdine” who was “the true founder of the university.”10
For decades after the dedication, Banowsky felt strongly that Mrs. Seaver’s contributions were underappreciated by members of the cult of George Pepperdine. He worried that histories of the university, including David Baird’s for the university’s 75th anniversary, would give pride of place to Mr. Pepperdine, passing over Mrs. Seaver. Banowsky wrote as much in a private letter to Baird:11
He [viz., Mr. Pepperdine] lost his little college, died broke with a bad financial reputation and never had a thought of Malibu in his mind! Mrs. Seaver saved his reputation and sainted him. See how much credit she gets on Founder’s Day for founding the Malibu Campus and Pepperdine University and saving George Pepperdine’s Bacon. She will get None!
It’s true that (even adjusting for inflation) Blanche Seaver’s donations surpassed those of George Pepperdine. Without her contributions Pepperdine would not have become the university we recognize today. But it must also be said that Mr. Pepperdine, by virtue of being the chair of the board for almost twenty years, had a much greater influence on the school’s spirit and its direction than did the Seavers, whose contributions were primarily financial. This is what the Graphic editorial meant by contrasting Mr. Pepperdine’s “philosophical contributions” with Mrs. Seaver’s “donations.”
Still, Seaver College remains the heart of the university. When U.S. News ranks Pepperdine among national universities, it is ranking Seaver. Pepperdine has now been in Malibu a good while longer than it was ever at the old campus on Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles. In some ways, then, perhaps Banowsky and Mrs. Seaver were right to believe that the university had its second founding in 1975.
Suggested reading
W. David Baird, “The Miracle Takes Form,” Quest for Distinction, Pepp. Univ. Press (2016): 299
William S. Banowsky, “The Dedication of Seaver College,” The Malibu Miracle, Pepp. Univ. Press (2010): 305–320
Cynthia M. Horner, “Pep honors Seavers at dedication,” The Graphic, 2 May 1975: 1
Howard A. White, “The Miracle at Malibu,” Crest of a Golden Wave, Pepp. Univ. Press (1987): 167–68
These illustrations are from W. David Baird’s excellent chapter, “The Miracle Workers: Those Who Gave,” Quest for Distinction: Pepperdine University in the 20th Century, Pepp. Univ. Press (2016): 285.
See the minutes of the Board of Trustees, 19 Apr. 1975, vol. 8, Pepperdine University Board of Regents Records, Pepperdine University Archives and Special Collections (SCUA): 13–14.
William S. Banowsky, The Malibu Miracle: A Memoir, Pepp. Univ. Press (2010): 227–230.
“Text of Ronald Reagan speech delivered at Seaver Dedication,” 20 Apr. 1975, Box 2, Seaver papers, SCUA: 6. The only line from Reagan’s speech to be reported in the press was about the need for small private colleges to combat the trend toward “assembly-line diploma mills.” See, e.g., “Reagan dedicates college,” (Redlands) Daily Facts, 21 Apr. 1975: 6. Cf. “Schools Backed,” (Oxnard) Press-Courier, 21 Apr. 1975: 3.
The name of the college varies in different sources. Reagan called it the “Frank R. Seaver College of Liberal Arts”; Banowsky abbreviated it to “Frank R. Seaver College”; and some news reports from the event called it “Seaver College of Liberal Arts.” See “Reagan dedicates college,” (Redlands) Daily Facts, 21 Apr. 1975: 6. Over the next several years, the name would continue to be in flux. The program for the 1975 spring commencement calls it “Frank R. Seaver College,” but by August 1977 a commencement program has “Seaver College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences.” A 1978 university publication calls it “Frank R. Seaver College of Sciences and Liberal Arts.” See “People Special Report,” Pepperdine People, summer 1978: [6]. Today the ceremonial name of the college seems to be “The Frank R. Seaver College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences.”
William S. Banowsky, “A Spirit of Purpose,” Box 1, Pepperdine University Speeches collection, SCUA.
Banowsky, supra note 3: 318–19.
See Warren Robak, “Pep honors founder,” The Graphic, 17 Oct. 1975: 1.
Founders’ Day program, 17 Oct. 1979, Pepp. Univ. Archives Photographs Collection, SCUA.
Unsigned editorial, “The original founder,” The Graphic, 30 July 1976: 4.
William S. Banowsky to David [Baird], 19 May 2012, Box 14, Folder 4 (“Banowsky correspondence”), David Baird papers, SCUA.
Well done, Sam. I remember (sort of) much of this. I also remember my interactions with Mrs. Seaver and her handlers in my early days in Admissions. We had to go to great lengths to make sure Mrs. Seaver "saw" the Pepperdine everyone knew she wanted to see. Robin