Oxy Billboard Pays Tribute to Inaugural Class of College’s Athletics Hall of Fame

Occidental College isn’t know for advertising on billboards. But if you drive south on Eagle Rock Boulevard, between the Glassell Park Recreation Center on Verdugo Street and W Avenue 36, you will see an eye-catching billboard with the words “Occidental College” painted across the top.

Framed against a blue sky, well above the boulevard tree line, the largely black-and-white billboard is titled “Athletics Hall of Fame.” It shows images of three Oxy athletes—a football player, a (female) tennis player and a diver. (See photo.)

The billboard congratulates the eight members who make up the inaugural class of the college’s 2012 Athletic Hall of Fame. Among them is Jack Kemp, Senator Bob Dole’s vice presidential running mate on the 1996 Republican presidential ticket and the nation’s third-ranking small college passer as well as a Little All-American honorable mention in his senior year at Oxy.

Kemp, who graduated from Occidental in 1957 and died in 2009 at the age of 73, was honored by the college in May last year in a well-attended ceremony that concluded with the unveiling of his statue in Patterson Field.

He and the seven other athletes on the billboard will be inducted into the Athletics Hall of Fame in a formal ceremony in Kemp Stadium on Friday, Oct. 26, during Oxy’s 125th anniversary Homecoming and Family Weekend celebration. Click here for further details.

The billboard was installed in the last week of September, according to Occidental College Director of Communications Jim Tranquada. The space, said Tranquada, was generously donated by an Oxy alumnus.