I was born in Los Angeles in 1923 and graduated high school in June of 1940, and then in September I went on to UCLA. And that was the start of the rest of my life!
I wasn’t really nervous to go to UCLA. My sister Mary Jane Reilly ’42 preceded me by two years, so I knew what to expect. There were no dormitories on campus then, other than one dormitory for 60 girls called Hershey Hall, and houses for fraternities and sororities close to campus. I’d walk to school or drive a car or take a bus, because we lived about an hour away from campus.
High school graduation, 1940; in uniform at age 21.
I did not join clubs or activities, really, because of commuting. My sister was in a sorority, though, and she would employ me and a couple of other friends of mine as waiters whenever her sorority had a dinner or event. My sister was in the sciences and spent most of her time in the building behind the library, so I didn’t see her that often; we each did our own thing. There were only eight buildings on campus when I was there, and they had just completed the ninth one.
One thing that surprised me was that the freshman and sophomore male students had to be in the ROTC. We all had uniforms and we met, marched around and studied whatever they wanted to teach us.
Apart from that, sometimes it felt like high school. Back then, UCLA had only 5,000 students, so at lunchtime a lot of students would congregate on the quadrangle there in front of Hershey Hall, or in front of the library and Royce. One thing that did stand out to me, though, was that all of our classes were taught by men who were full professors, not assistants or anything. All in all, I knew it was a great opportunity to learn.
When you went to UCLA then, you were required to take a science. I took geology, and it was my favorite class — in retrospect, I should have continued studying it, because I liked it so much. But my dad was a teacher and my uncle was a teacher, and I never even thought about doing anything other than majoring in history and becoming a history teacher. Looking back, I see I had many choices, but I never once thought about changing what I was going to do, and nobody ever told me to, either.
Family photos throughout the years.
The first history course I took at UCLA was on English history, and then the next one was on U.S. history, which is the topic I enjoyed the most. I still remember a lot of things we learned in that class, and enjoy talking about them when they come up. I have always liked history.
I always enjoyed seeing Kenny Washington and Jackie Robinson on the field and on campus! Once I saw Kenny Washington throw a pass 70 yards, the longest pass of the time.
My favorite place on campus was Kerckhoff. You’d go down there to get something to eat or to see people you knew. I also liked the library — we often went there to study or to get a book that we might want to read, or that some professor had recommended.
I was on track to graduate from UCLA with my classmates in 1944, but then the war came along. The Navy called me up when I was just a semester short of getting my degree, but I returned after the war and graduated with the class of 1947.
Seeing the college campuses my children and grandchildren have gone to and what they’re doing now is 180 degrees difference from what my experience was. All my children graduated from schools in the UC system. I didn’t need to give them advice about that — I’m proud of everything they do, and proud that they accomplished most everything that they wanted to.
READ MORE ABOUT WILLIAM A. REILLY ’47 at the UCLA Alumni Association.
