When Betty Connors won the
Berkeley Citation last month she became an equal of Albert
Einstein, Edward Kennedy, Satyajit Ray, Josephine Miles and the
others who have been honored in this way. In her case, the
citation marked years of dedicated service to the Committee of
Arts and Lectures at UC Berkeley.
Mrs. Connors
retired from CAL at the end of the year to sustained applause
from the academic and performing arts community. She was the
first person hired for the committee and expanded its operation
from a one-person affair to a multi-million dollar enterprise.
The Berkeley
Citation was only one award recognizing Mrs. Connors'
achievements. She received awards from the Association of
College, University and Community Arts Administrators and the
International Society of Performing Arts Administrators at their
conferences in New York last month and she won the California
Association of Dance Companies' Award.
Mrs. Connors was
a senior at UC Berkeley in 1945 when she was hired to work on
the committee. In the following years she saw first Hertz Hall
and then Zellerbach Auditorium added to the campus performing
space.
These new sites
were able to accommodate the expanding programs offered by CAL
in music, dance, theatre, film and lectures, all of which,
according to CAL chairman Travis Bogard were the results of Mrs.
Connors' dedication and effort.
She not only
signed up new performers and expanded the program, she became
hostess to traveling artists who came through Berkeley and
corresponded with many of them, including Issac Stern, Frank
Lloyd Wright, Lili Kraus, Marcel Marceau, Andrea Segovia, Louis
Armstrong, and Robert Lowell.
The CAL staff now
includes 70 persons, and CAL is the largest presenter of arts
events in Northern California and the largest presenter of dance
events in the country. Last year, 324,008 persons attended CAL
events.
When Mrs. Connors
came to California in 1940 she was ill with asthma and in need
of a job. She found one, stuck with it, and contributed, in the
course of 34 years with the committee, to the cultural
enrichment of the entire state.
Now she is ready
for relaxation. The first thing she plans to do, she said, is to
"collapse." Then she hopes to travel to American cities and live
in each for several months.
But she is not
planning to leave for good. She said she would rent out her
home, and eventually, as all her friends hope, return to
Berkeley.
__________
Erickson,
Barbara. "A Lifetime of Dedication to UC's Arts." The
Independent &
Gazette. Tues, January 8, 1980, p. 17.