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Passing the Torch |
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The gritty, work-hard town of Colton, with its rail yards
and rumbling big rigs, is much farther away from Claremont
than the 25 miles the maps let on. Many high-schoolers there
won't go on to a four-year college; it would be safe to
assume that few have ever heard of Pomona College.
 But
Pomona knows Colton. Thank John Fisher '67 for that. From
1995 until he retired in 2004, the high-school AP history
teacher sent to Pomona a steady succession of applicants,
students who wouldn't typically be looking to an elite
liberal arts college. In all, eight of his 10 picks wound up
graduating from Pomona. One didn't get in; another was
admitted but went elsewhere. Still, 80 percent is quite a
feat when you're talking about a school that admits fewer
than one in five applicants.
For his keen eye for students with Pomona potential -- and
his ability to motivate them to excel -- Fisher is the
recipient of Pomona's 2007 Distinguished Service Award for
alumni, which will be presented during the April 27-29
Alumni Weekend.
"You see these unspoiled, hardworking, great kids and you
see they want more,'' says Fisher, known for an animated
teaching style heavy on mnemonic devices, hearty
congratulatory handshakes and frequent writing assignments.
"(But) they don't know what Pomona College is, let alone how
Pomona might catapult them into professional lives they
might otherwise only dream of."
That started to change in 1995, when Fisher pointed three of
his top Colton High students to Pomona. They all got in.
They all enrolled, choosing Pomona over other top-ranked
schools.
Part of that first group, Aaron Bruhl '99 was also admitted
to Harvard and Stanford, but he picked Pomona because he
liked the idea of attending a small school where he could
build close ties with professors. He did just that,
graduating summa cum laude and going on to Cambridge as
Pomona's Downing scholar, then to Yale's law school. Now
he's a law professor at University of Houston. "I don't
think I ever had a teacher who brought more excitement to
learning," writes Bruhl in a tribute to Fisher upon the
teacher's retirement after 22 years. "That Pomona College
had produced such a person was one of the main reasons that
I decided to go there. It was just the right place for me,
and that decision is responsible for many of the
opportunities that I have had since then."
Salina Serna '99 led the first generation of her family to
go to college. After graduating from Pomona, she went to
University of Washington Medical School. Dr. Serna is now a
hospitalist at Centinela Hospital in Inglewood, Calif.,
caring for patients with internal medicine diagnoses.
Terry Roberts '99 today is chief operating officer of the
computer software firm, SL-Tech, and is pursuing his MBA at
UCLA. He remembers how Fisher would rush to the door before
class let out to give each student an enthusiastic handshake
and a slap on the back that "if you weren't really on guard
almost sent you flying across the hallway. The enthusiasm
was always there, every day, every class, through the whole
year," says Roberts.
The next year brought to Pomona Richard Mendoza '00, who
went on to Yale's law school and served as a clerk for
Ferdinand Fernandez, former Pomona Trustee and judge in the
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Today
Mendoza is an associate with the law firm of O'Melveny &
Myers in downtown Los Angeles.
The list goes on: After earning his graduate degree in
chemistry from UC Irvine, Tom Vasquez '02 returned to Pomona
where he is now the Organic Chemistry Lab coordinator.
Gricelda Gutierrez '03 teaches Spanish at Fontana High,
where she helps with a program encouraging students to go on
to college. Heather Valenzuela '03 is working on her
master’s degree in teaching at Evergreen State College in
Washington State, with plans to teach either high school
biology or middle school. Kelly Baden '04 works for Warner
Music in Burbank. "He's the one who brought Pomona to my
attention," says Baden, the last of the bunch, graduating in
2004 with an American Studies Major. "It was perfect."
Fisher, to no surprise, shares that same fondness for his
Pomona days, when he majored in international relations and
later government, played on the basketball team and went to
Liberia for a summer as part of the Crossroads Africa
program. The kind of student who had to work hard at his
classes, he always felt fortunate just to have been
admitted, gaining an appreciation for "what Pomona can do to
open up the world for a regular person who doesn't have a
lot of advantages."
Fisher remembers how one of his Pomona College professors,
Michael Armacost, encouraged him to enter the teaching
profession. In a recent letter to Fisher, Armacost writes
"The great thing about the teaching profession is that one
never knows when and how one will shape another's life. You
clearly have influenced countless students, and for that you
can be very proud, as I am for you."
Though he is now retired, Fisher’s influence in the lives of
his students will play out for years to come. He used to
bring to class a clay torch, taken from a smaller-scale
replica of the State of Liberty that had once been a movie
prop, and encourage each of his students to hold it. "I want
you to all feel what it's like to have the torch," he would
tell them. "Pass it on, pass it on."
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