Purchased for 50 cents in a rummage store, Harry Higgens matriculated symbolically in 1956 at Los Angeles State College (now California State University at Los Angeles).
Tinted in pastels and oval-framed, the photo image of a World War I doughboy became the patron saint of journalism majors frustrated with the banalities of student government and the college administration.
LA State, an upper-division campus of commuters, was just emerging from dusty bungalows into permanent structures. It had no roots, no student housing, no freshmen or sophomores to harass. It was terminally dull.
Both student and administration leaders desperately contrived ersatz “traditions” that fell flat. Notably, the mascot name: Diablo.
Harry became LA State’s resident gremlin, spotlighted in an unused office cubicle of the weekly student newspaper, College Times. The cube was filled with old romance novels and recipe books and called the Harry Higgens Foundation Society Memorial Library.
Harry soon served as the linchpin for imaginative ruses and other silliness played out on campus, in communities as far away as Portland, Ore. and on Johnston Island in the central Pacific.
Countless escapades were sponsored in his name, with most of the early ones noted in news columns and advertisements of the student newspaper.
Perhaps the most dramatic—and risky—campus coup by Higgensites was the appropriation of official LA State press-release letterhead, envelopes and postage for a mailing to area print and broadcast news media. The “official” release announced that Col. Harry Higgens (U.S.A., Ret.) had succeeded Howard S. McDonald as president of LA State.
Many community newspapers and radio stations used the release without checking its validity. And campus and state investigations never did find the culprits.
Then there was the porno episode, duly noted in the College Times . Higgensites planted a time capsule containing blue photos in the freshly poured foundation of the new library building.
Off campus, the most imaginative stroke in Harry’s name involved another news release.
Harry’s name and address just happened to be in the 1962 telephone book for Portland. One of his followers (with the same phone and address) decided to announce Harry as a tongue-in-cheek candidate for county sheriff to complement the already crowded field of declared butchers, bakers and candlestick makers.
Harry’s news release pointed to his service as a deputy sheriff of Grasshopper Junction, Ariz. One of his platform planks called for the elimination of vice, “a thorn in the side of the City of Roses.”
Nothing happened for two or three weeks. No one called for interviews. Obviously local news people had simply chuckled and dismissed Harry as just another oddball.
Then it happened.
The political editor of one of Portland’s three daily newspapers bylined a story on Harry’s candidacy, with no hint of sarcasm. His straight report caused a TV newscaster to also use the story. That newscaster later would be elected governor of the State of Oregon.
The author of Harry’s news release eventually was exposed as a “flack” by the duped political editor. But a columnist for a competing newspaper disagreed, celebrated the Higgens hoax in print and berated his competitors for failure to verify sources.
Harry would have liked that.
Plank owners in HHFS were Jim Bald, Nick Beck, Edward Weston Bonny II, Charles Britton, Anton Calleia, Beverly Copeland, Laurie Fagan, Merv Harris, Hal Keating, Eric Lorenzen, Jack Martin, Tom McConnell, Ben Mintz, Jim Monroe, Al Pagliari, Helen Real, Carl Spring, Jim Voigt and Jim Wong.
Now in their 70s and retired, the Higgensites contributed immensely to publishing’s major revolutions: cold type, modular makeup and electronic information systems at dozens of West Coast publications and in the netherworld of public relations.
This website offers those veteran journalists, usually separated from subjectivity, opportunities to finally vent their spleens.
Harry really would have liked that.
