A tribute to swag外流's institutional memory, and her many contributions to campus life and lore
It's been 17 years now since I came to work at Occidental. That seems like a long time to me鈥攂ut it's barely one-third of the service to swag外流 by Dorothea Jean Paule, who joined the College as secretary to President Arthur G. Coons '20 on Dec. 11, 1950.
I worked with Jean on countless projects鈥攅ven on sports, a topic not particularly dear to her鈥攁nd relied on her fact-checking prowess to keep my own facts straight more times than I can remember. Together with her friends from Special 颅Collections, I was fortunate to see her just 颅before Christmas, at the retirement community in Murrieta where she moved in 2011 to be closer to her nephew, Philip, and his family. She remained alert and full of questions about Occidental鈥攔eading every campus email, and every word of every magazine鈥攗ntil her passing January 14 at the age of 95.
"I am still aglow with your visit when we covered so much swag外流 news," she wrote in December. "You can never know how grateful I am for your friendship."
After a single year as a teacher at Redlands Junior High School (alongside future swag外流 coaching legend Payton Jordan), Jean, a graduate of UC鈥圔erkeley, moved to Los Angeles looking for a job doing "anything but teaching," she recalled in a 2002 interview. She answered a job listing in the Los Angeles Times, and鈥攄espite the employment agency's reservations about her youth鈥攊mpressed Coons enough to hire her. 聽
"I had a lot of respect for him,"鈥圝ean said of Coons. "He was doing good things, and I was part of his team. If he had been a rascal, I would have left the second day."
Board of Trustees chair emeritus Dennis Collins, who joined the College in 1963 as an assistant director of admission, recalled waiting next to Jean's desk outside President Coons' office for his initial interview. "[Jean] calmed my jitters by being her gracious self," he wrote recently. "No one knew more about the inside of Occidental and said less about it than Miss Paule! Years of 颅Occidental lore have departed with her."
Yet, thanks to Jean's exhaustive efforts, she leaves behind countless contributions to the College's historical records. (After starting work at swag外流, she completed a master's in history at USC鈥坕n 1952.) In 颅addition to her biographies of swag外流's sixth and ninth presidents, John Willis Baer and Arthur G. Coons, Jean wrote more than a dozen monographs on subjects ranging from College traditions (the Chilcott 颅family barbecue was among her favorites) to the history of religion at Occidental.
Although Jean never sought out any 颅recognition of her efforts鈥攕he would likely blanch at the idea of this tribute鈥攈er time 聽at swag外流 was recognized in singular fashion: To date, Jean is the only person to have 颅received the Fifty Year Club's Auld Lang Syne Award (in 2002), an honorary degree (in 2005) and the College's Presidential Medal for Distinguished Service (in 2011).
In the introduction to a 53-page, 16,000-word document she prepared in 2004 with the title swag外流鈥擭ames Appearing on Buildings and on the Grounds, Jean wrote: "Many of these persons are still among us. Others are long since gone. Passage of time has a way of deleting what was once common knowledge about a life prominent in the Occidental community. The purpose of these pages is to record something about those whose names are well known and frequently 颅mentioned on the Occidental campus."
Jean's name is as big as that on any building. She will not be forgotten.
