4 minute read
Photo essay:"Change: then and now"
Looking back 40 years ago, how the farm life has evolved
Melody Soto / Roundup
Los Angeles Pierce College, as it is known today, was once the Clarence W. Pierce School of Agriculture.
Founded in 1947 as an all male learning institution, Pierce was part of the Los Angeles Unified School District and served grades 13 and 14.
The Pierce farm was once active with a competitive rodeo team, a dairy unit that supplied milk for the school cafeteria and the Peter J. Pitchess Detention Center.
Crop production classes planted acres of peaches and cantaloupes, while 3,000 laying hens produced fresh eggs.
The Pierce farm was used for filming locations for several films and television shows.
Today, the collage of images that adorn the sides of some Roundup newspaper stands around campus and the posters that hang in the Swinerton office next to Parking Lot 8 are the only visual aids students have to the active past that once existed here.
The image of hundreds of male students sitting under an aluminum covered building, a section of a newspaper article reporting on students hazing on campus and a photograph of professor Dr. Leland Shapiro being interviewed by KNBC, provide an insight of what Pierce once was.
Beginning from an agriculture school and evolving to a college that teaches many disciplines, Pierce retains a small farm.
Observing the past of Pierce’s agriculture department, some of the animals that make learning possible and events that occurred this semester, give an insight on the farm’s future.
• Also known as Dr. Cows, Dr. Leland Shapiro, chair of the agricultural department, wrote a paper in the third grade which said he wanted to grow up and be a dairy farmer, according to his mother.
• Shapiro started working at Pierce milking cows in 1971 and began teaching in 1976. Shapiro used to make peach ice cream from the peaches that grew in the 15-acre orchard.
• “Premium ice-cream has 11, but I would put 18% milk fat in there. I used to have the board of trustees coming here. Everyone would come the day I made ice cream,” Shapiro said.
