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THURSDAY, JUNE 11, 2009
San Diego Community Newspaper Group
www.SDNEWS.com Volume 14, Number 31
July 4 fireworks display up in air La Jollan appeals for financial support BY ALYSSA RAMOS | VILLAGE NEWS
In an effort to revive La Jolla’s annual fireworks show, La Jollan Adam Harris has sent distress signals through sites such as Facebook and Twitter, asking residents to step up and donate to the iconic event. “I assumed that [one of the local committees] were writing the checks,” Harris said. But he soon found out that La Jollan George Hauer and various sponsors spent
MELON CANNONBALLS Students from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) take a break from the books on June 5 with the 44th annual Watermelon Drop on campus. UCSD student Jennifer Uren (above) cuts free watermelon slices for students after the annual splatfest. The watermelon served, of course, was not from one dropped from a tall building. UCSD students and “Watermelon Queens” Karen Reis and Janessa Werhane (left) toss a watermelon off the seventh story of UCSD’s Urey Hall, with the longest impact piece reaching 60 feet away — far from the annual Watermelon Drop event record. The Watermelon Drop originated with UCSD's first undergraduate class in 1965. VILLAGE NEWS | DON BALCH
York, UCSD founding chancellor, physicist dead at 87 BY ALYSSA RAMOS | VILLAGE NEWS
Herbert Frank York, atomic bomb developer and founding chancellor of the University of California, San Diego, died May 19 at Thornton Hospital. He was 87. York became attached to the explosive side of physics early in his career. Despite his contributions to atomic bomb development as a young researcher, he later in life “championed arms control...” and was known as an “ambassador for peace, stability and civility in the international theater,” UCSD media spokesperson Pat JaCoby reported. As a young graduate student in 1943, York was recruited by the
University of California Radiation Laboratory (UCRL) at Berkeley. He worked on the Manhattan Project, developing the first atomic bomb— which the Allied Forces eventually used against Japan, effectively ending World War II. “Not only did we complete the project,” York reportedly wrote in a memoir, “but we ended the war.” After World War II, York earned a Ph.D. in physics at the University of California, Berkeley, eventually joining the school’s physics department as an assistant professor. York directed the UC Lawrence Livermore Laboratory from July of 1952 to March of 1958 and continued to advise American presidents
regarding the future of nuclear laboratories. While York worked at Livermore, he researched classified programs under the government’s Atomic Energy Commission, programs such as hydrogen bomb development. York became the first chief scientist of the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the Pentagon, Washington, D.C. President Eisenhower named York the first director of defense research and engineering, where he served as civilian supervisor of missile and space research. SEE YORK, Page 9
large amounts of cash on the show each year. Then, on June 1, Hauer announced he could not continue supporting the event. “The rising costs of permits and other city fees, like police and parking enforcement, have brought the overall cost of staging the annual event to about $27,000,” Hauer said in a press release. SEE FIREWORKS, Page 9
June 12, 15 will be tassel time for UC, LJ high school seniors BY ALYSSA RAMOS | VILLAGE NEWS
University City High School (UCHS) and La Jolla High School (LJHS) seniors graduate next week, celebrating the occasion with customary pomp and circumstance on the schools’ respective campuses. LJHS will graduate about 391 seniors Monday, June 15 at 2 p.m. on the school’s Gene Edwards field,
behind the school on Fay Avenue, with La Jolla Madrigals choir singing during the commencement ceremonies. UCHS fetes the 2009 graduating class of 394 Friday, June 12 beginning at 2 p.m. at the UCHS stadium, 6949 Genesee Ave. “This year, there are 177 students graduating with academic SEE SENIORS, Page 3
VILLAGE NEWS | DON BALCH
Herbert York, seen here at a speaking engagement at UCSD a few years ago, died May 19. The famed physicist helped develope the atomic bomb and was a founding chancellor of UCSD, among many other accomplishments.