Ann Sumner ’26

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By Narges Zohoury | Excerpted from The Daily Bruin | Photo by Tyson Evans/Daily Bruin

In 1926, Ann Sumner ’26 was among the first to graduate from UCLA. The University had just become a four-year institution, and more changes were on the way.

To this day, she can’t get the University out of her sight – literally. The campus is visible from her house located just off Hilgard Avenue. Sumner graduated with a degree in history. Sitting in her home on a summer afternoon in late July, not long after her 100th birthday, she tries to recall the details of the history she did not learn in class but witnessed firsthand at UCLA.

Sumner talks about her education, her career and her life – all of which were closely knit to the University.

“She was never married, so (UCLA) has been her child,” says Mary Ann Knudson, Sumner’s niece. “That’s all I ever heard, all my life … it was always UCLA,” she says.

Life as a Student
Sumner’s UCLA in the 1920s was very different than today’s school. She attended the University when it was located on Vermont Avenue – before it moved to Westwood in 1929.

Yet some things never change.

Even then, the rivalry between USC and UCLA was strong. “My most vivid college memory is coming out of a tunnel at the (Los Angeles Memorial) Coliseum … tears just running down my face,” she says, remembering a day when USC beat UCLA. “We didn’t beat them for many years, until long after I graduated.”

Another thread connecting UCLA through the years is Greek life. Most girls at the time were involved in the Greek system.

“I was a Delta Gamma,” Sumner says. “UCLA was the first university to have full Panhellenic,” she adds proudly.

Although some details have faded, Sumner talks about other things as if they happened yesterday. “I remember my classes vividly,” she says. “I was a history major and had great history professors.”

Aside from classes she remembers being named the best-dressed woman on campus, her long skirts sweeping the floor. She also remembers the Prohibition of the 1920s.

“I have some bitter memories,” she says. “One of our girls got her pin lifted because she got drunk” at a fraternity house.

Though alcohol was prohibited, social life was still alive at UCLA. “There were teas. People would go to tea dances,” Sumner explains, adding that they were very fashionable. “The boys would sneak in flasks (of alcohol), and the waiters would serve it in teacups,” she says.

As her student years at UCLA were coming to an end, UCLA was awaiting a great change of its own – the move to Westwood.

A Journalist and a Writer
Though she did not become a full-time journalist until after she graduated from college, Sumner’s fate was decided early on. “My mother had said, ‘Your father was a newspaperman, and you are going to be a writer, too,’” Sumner says. “She gave me a toy typewriter.”

Sumner got a job at the Evening Express, the area’s afternoon paper, when she was in high school. She continued to work there while she attended college. She took on the job full time after her college graduation.

The paper was owned by Edward Dickson. A painted portrait of him hangs on her wall. Dickson, the only member of UC Board of Regents from Southern California, later became the man known as the “godfather of UCLA,” and was behind the expansion of the University and its move to Westwood.

Sumner stops to explain that the Dicksons did not have a child, so she became the child they never had before turning back to her memories of writing.

“I started to write books,” she says. Sumner’s first book began as an article in the Express. Her other books ran in hundreds of publications nationwide, as it was common at the time to run chapters of books in big newspapers and magazines. The publication of her first book went hand in hand with her return to UCLA.

“The postman had come, and I was unwrapping my first book,” she says. “I was at the Express one day when I got hired at UCLA by Dr. Moore,” she says, referring to Ernest Moore, UCLA provost. “He knew me only as a student,” she says. “He asked if I’d come to University, and I did come.”

She stopped writing after she started working for the University’s News Bureau, the equivalent of today’s public relations office.

“I sold three or four more after I came to the University,” she recalls. “[But at UCLA,] I couldn’t write the same dopey love stories that I wrote at the paper. I [got] used to writing academic radio speeches for Dr. Moore, and I couldn’t write cheap love stories that paid so well.

“So many people have asked me why I didn’t go on writing books like that – cheap love stories. I couldn’t do it after I got on campus. It was too academic ... (the) people I met and everything else.

“I loved the paper, I loved journalism and I loved the University. So it was just a case of moving from one love to another, really,” she said in a 1970 interview that was later transcribed into her oral history.

Back to the University
“At first, I did research for what is along the arch on Royce Hall,” she says. “Then I worked for the catalog for (UCLA) Extension,” she says, explaining how there were only a few courses and the catalog was only a few pages. With Extension’s expansion, Sumner later became the chief publicist for the institute and was there until she retired in 1967.

During her time at UCLA, Sumner was involved with many groups – most of which still exist today and were founded on the grounds of service and making the University more known in the community. Primary among those is Gold Shield Alumnae. She explains the motivation behind Gold Shield, a service group of which she is one of the founding members.

“A couple dozen of us got together because, whenever you mentioned the University to anybody, they thought you meant USC … It never occurred to them that there was another university in Los Angeles,” she says.

She adds that they felt the need to introduce the University to the community.

Gold Shield initially comprised 12 women in 1936 was the counterpart to Blue Shield, the men’s group. The group brought UC Berkeley professors to Los Angeles to give a series of lectures to introduce UCLA to the city. Today, Gold Shield raises funds and awards scholarships and grants to students and faculty.

It’s All Relative
“I was named after her,” says Knudson, who remembers visiting her aunt as a child.

“I was afraid to even be around her when I was kid … I was afraid to not be using the right word,” she says half-jokingly about Sumner, always has well spoken. “I always admired her and thought that she was a special lady. She was prim and proper.”

On a recent visit, Knudson took Sumner for a wheelchair tour of the campus. That’s how the two found out about all the current construction on the campus. Also a UCLA alumna, Knudson talks about her aunt’s extensive involvement with the University.

“She was so involved – socially, academically, spiritually and physically,” she says. Then she laughs and adds, “How close can you be to the campus without being on it?”

Knudson says that even today, her aunt can be found at the University – more specifically, at the faculty center, which she helped establish in 1959.

And the Story Continues
After almost a two-hour interview, Sumner starts to get tired. Considering all her experience and involvement, she has a simple piece of advice for today’s generation. “Get a sense of history. It’s a great measure,” she says.

“It a great major, too,” she adds.