Fall — 2004

Jamie Ruth Watson

With photo of her father, Jim Watson

“My dad remembered the day—in 1949—when it snowed and they had snowball fights. There was snow on Lincoln Blvd. and all over SMC!”

Jamie Ruth Watson didn’t officially go to SMC, but she might as well have. “It was actually my father who went there. He wanted to be an actor, wound up in photography, and eventually ended up being a Santa Monica policeman,” she says. “He died at the age of 43 when I was pretty young,” she says with a trace of lingering sadness. “But he loved the College, and he talked about it a lot.”

In near stream-of-consciousness mode, Jamie recalls some of her childhood as though it were only yesterday. “We were always at SMC doing something, and I have memories of it as a complete community center. We went to see what I thought were huge plays on the campus,” she muses. “We went to the planetarium, where we had star shows. And I learned how to swim in the pool there. Every summer, hundreds of us kids tramped over there every single day to swim. It was like magic!”

Jamie recalls also “the football games where it was like living next to Notre Dame,” and “my piano tutor, who was a young woman majoring in music. It was always ‘the College’ to us.” Jamie’s summertime splashing in the pool at SMC had a large influence indeed on her life. Most days she can be found swimming five miles of open ocean. And though she went on to Loyola and into a career as a library administrator in Santa Monica, SMC has always loomed large in her thoughts and memories. “It’s always been a high-profile place for me, and most of my friends’ kids go there before they transfer to Harvard or other colleges,” she says. “It has great academics, it’s a great ‘feeder’ school, and I think it’ll always continue to be a great resource for the community.”

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