By Wayne Ginsburg

Several local men and women who were critical in the creation and early operation of Woodland Community College will be honored next week.

The Woodland Community College Foundation will recognize the contributions of five women and two men — five of whom worked tirelessly to bring community college opportunities to this area and two who represent the first staff at the local campus more than three decades ago.

The second event of its kind, the WCC Foundation Founders’ Day Dinner will take place Wednesday in Building 800 at the college, 2300 E. Gibson Road in Woodland. A social hour and live entertainment will start at 5:30 p.m., followed by a catered dinner at 6:30 p.m. and the program at 7 p.m.

“Just as it takes rich soil, water, sun and care to cultivate crops, it takes cooperative efforts, tenacity and dedication to grow an idea, a dream into fruition,” said Gary Sandy, a Yuba Community College Trustee and local representative. “The men and women being honored at the Founders’ Day Dinner are a select handful of the key players who worked tirelessly to plant and grow what we now know as Woodland Community College.”

Sandy will emcee the event, which will honor historical contributors, as well as focus on the WCC agriculture program, projects and services. The 2013-14 Founders’ Day event honorees include:

* Virginia Pohl (posthumous honoree): A mother of four and a junior high teacher, Pohl played a key role in gathering local momentum in the early 1970s for a college in Woodland. An English teacher at Lee Junior High School, Pohl saw a need for higher education in this area and began writing letters to the editors of local newspapers and organizing meetings to focus energy toward creating a college district.

Although later it was determined that the area was too small for its own district, Pohl chaired a committee that ultimately played a critical role in Woodland’s eventual connection to the Yuba Community College District.

* Dorothy Leathers: Along with a direct connection to agriculture — she and her husband farmed several acres of land in the Sutter Basin near Knights Landing for more than 50 years — Leathers served as the local representative to the Yuba Community College Board of Trustees for 22 years.

The mother of six children, Leathers and her husband were extremely active in a variety of boards and commissions, and she was a key leader as a trustee during WCC’s move from a small, rented building on California Street to its current spacious site on East Gibson Road.

* Betsy Marchand: As the first woman on the Yolo County Board of Supervisors, Marchand’s determined spirit to support the interests of local families played a key role in acquiring the land needed for WCC. With a strong résumé of cooperative projects between various government agencies and local resources, Marchand was able to connect a project to expand the Yolo County jail and find a permanent campus for WCC.

Needed infrastructure in Woodland’s Southeast Area had previously made East Gibson Road an unlikely option. But a series of events in the early 1980s culminated with Marchand fighting for and winning a grant of more than $13 million to build a new jail, roads, water, sewer and other necessary utilities to develop the land on which WCC sits today.

* Eyvind Faye (posthumous honoree): One of two chosen to serve as the first local representatives on the Yuba Community College Board of Trustees in 1976, Faye was a well-known, community-minded local farmer. After serving four years in the U.S. Army at Pearl Harbor, Faye returned to his family’s corporation near Knights Landing and continued his family’s legacy of an enormous prune, walnut and field crop farming company.

In 1948, he became director of Sunsweet Growers Inc., and from 1959 to 1976 he was chairman of the Board of Sunsweet and several other ag-related boards and commissions. The father of three was also extremely involved in local youth-related venues, and Faye served as a trustee on the boards of education for Grafton Elementary, Woodland schools and then later as a charter trustee for this area on the YCC board.

* Darlene Gray: Books have a special place in her life — and at WCC, thanks to Gray’s 29-year career at the Woodland campus. In 1982, the Yuba Community College District hired Gray as a library technical assistant, back when the local campus bookstore, library and media center were all housed in a single portable building on California Street.

During her years in this position, Gray created a vast library system that is still in use at WCC. After retiring, Gray added another chapter to her career by assisting in the redesign the Clear Lake campus library, and she later helped open a new campus in Williams.

* Edith Klenhard: The first professor of nursing for the Woodland campus, Klenhard played a key role in the creation and growth of a licensed vocational nursing program for local students. Drawn to nursing as a child, Klenhard graduated from the University of Minnesota, spent six months in Colorado during World War II and then moved to Hawaii where she worked as an emergency room nurse and began teaching.

Soon she met and married a California native, and in 1948 the newlyweds moved to Stockton, then later to Yolo County. Klenhard began working for Woodland Memorial Hospital, raising a family and teaching nursing in Sacramento. When Woodland was made part of the Yuba Community College District in the early ‘70s, Klenhard was asked to join the staff and launch the nursing program.

She taught hundreds of students during her 17-years at WCC before retiring to spend time with her family.

* Paul Leathers: One of the original 12 staff members, Leathers passed along a wealth of knowledge about plant science and other agricultural subjects to thousands of students over his 30-plus years as a teacher in Woodland secondary schools and as ag instructor at WCC.

Although the first college classroom he taught in was a multipurpose room at Douglass Junior High, Leathers grew the WCC ag program to include several greenhouses, lathe buildings and gardens for hands-on learning opportunities. And although now retired, Leathers maintains his roots in area farming and history, volunteering at a local ag museum and collecting antiques.

Additional information is available on the WCC Foundation website at www.wccfoundation.net.

Betsy MarchandW

Darlene GrayW

Dorothy LeatherW

Edith KlenhardW

Eyvind FayeW

Paul LeathersW

Virginia PohlW

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