Claremont Insider: Passings

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Passings

The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that former Claremont Mayor Enid Hart Douglass passed away in Sunnyvale on October 17th. Douglass graduated from Pomona College in 1948 and later at CGU became a pioneer in the field of oral history.

Douglass helped found Claremont Heritage, served on the Claremont Planning Commission beginning in 1978, and was elected to the Claremont City Council in the 1980s. The Times obituary said, in part:

When she entered Pomona College in 1944, "there were about 32 men on campus" because of World War II, she said in a 2002 oral history. One veteran who returned to the school after the war was her future husband, Malcolm Paul Douglass.

They married soon after she graduated in 1948 with a bachelor's degree in government.

After he earned a doctorate in education from Stanford University, they moved to Claremont in 1954 so he could teach at what is now known as Claremont Graduate University.

"Between child two and three," as she phrased it in the oral history, Douglass earned her master's degree in history in 1959 from the university. She wrote her master's thesis on the Claremont Planning Commission.

"When you think of Enid, you think Claremont," said Ginger Elliott, executive director of Claremont Heritage. "She was an example of the kind of people who make the town special to us, an academic who gave a lot to the community and who worked hard for projects that were really worthwhile."