Every year the Alumni Association Board chooses very special members of the CR alumni community for induction into the Hall of Fame. This year's inductees were chosen for their outstanding achievements and special commitment to the North Coast community. The inductees were honored at the 2006 Commencement ceremonies in May.
Hillary Reed - in her own
words...
In August 1995 I packed up my old, oxidized, leaking,
burnt orange Toyota Celica with almost all my possessions and headed west. It
was a commemorative journey over the winding Highway 299. Not knowing what
lay ahead or where my journey would take me, I was finally headed to the
coast. Since the time I was seven years old, I knew I wanted to live in the
cool climate with lush ferns and ocean views. Finally, I had arrived.
My first destination was College of the Redwoods'
dormitory. This was a foreign place for a straight-laced Shasta county girl
who had just graduated from Anderson Union High School. Purple carpet and Bob
Dylan were among a few of my first fond memories of this strange scene. Soon
I met others like myself from the small towns of Fort Bragg, Bieber, and
Weaverville; these people are still my good friends to this very day.
The Dental Assisting Program brought many rewarding
challenges during my first year at CR. At the time I did not realize the
1995-96 school year would be a life-altering experience. Originally choosing
the program for the fact that I would achieve a certificate and gain a
profession all in a year now seems ironic. Once the year had ended, I
successfully passed the state and national board exams, attaining my
registered dental assistant and certified dental assistant licenses. This
allowed me to once again pack up the old Celica and travel down another
highway to Fort Bragg, for new adventures and further accomplishments.
Moving in with my aunt and taking a full-time job with a
local dentist, I continued taking courses at CR's Mendocino coast campus.
Eventually I moved out on my own, bought a new car, married, and achieved
additional dental assisting certificates and licensures; yet I still found
time to continue as a CR student. Finally in 2001 I earned my AA in technical
preparation from CR with honors. I was very pleased. Fulfilling one goal, I
knew I had more I wanted to accomplish. I wasn't quite through with what CR
had to offer.
Luckily my employer was very supportive of my
accomplishments and my furthering my education. He granted me a flexible work
schedule and still kept me on as a full-time employee. Leaving the office in
the early afternoons to return late in the evening allowed me to take some of
the science classes I needed to complete my dental hygiene prerequisites.
Unfortunately, I took all the prerequisites offered at Mendocino and had to
begin a weekly commute to the Eureka campus. At this time both my husband and
I worked and lived in Fort Bragg and felt we could not leave. So in the early
morning hours, up treacherous Highway 1 with the log trucks I went, journeying
back to CR’s Eureka campus to attend an 8:00 a.m. class.
Eventually in August 2003 I completed all my dental
hygiene prerequisites, in addition to achieving my AA in natural
science/mathematics with honors. Again I was pleased, but still CR had more
to offer. However, this time the offer was different--the offer was
employment. My employer, Dr. Jolliffe, had announced he would be retiring;
and I had accepted a part-time position as an instructor with CR in the dental
assisting program for Fall 2003. This opportunity meant I would continue to
commute twice a week for a semester, but this time it was to teach
an 8:00 a.m. class. Even though I was teaching and commuting, I still found
tie time to continue taking classes at the Mendocino campus.
In January 2004 my husband and I were able to purchase a
home in Loleta, which enabled me to work as a part-time instructor, assist a
local pediatric dental office, and continue my education at CR, fulfilling the
bridge course requirements needed to attain a BS degree in Business Health
Administration from Franklin University. CR gave me yet another opportunity,
and in fall 2005 I gladly accepted the Coordinator position for the Dental
Assisting Program.
My journey has been successful in part due to the
devoted educators at CR. Karen Sperry, Bob Winn, Bob Zvolensky, and Ralph
Reiner all have encouraged me throughout the years of my voyage. For ten
years I have continually taken classes at CR, all the while working as a
dental assistant. CR has allowed me to fulfill my dreams, truly receiving an
education that works. Never did I think that one day my eventual destination
would lead me back to that same purple carpet that is now the flooring in my
office. Each day I have a subtle reminder of where I have come from and how
CR has changed my life.
Noel Hilliard, Hilliard
Lamps.
Noel initially attended CR because he was
fortunate to see the new campus from Highway 101 on one of his travels to Sacramento from his Coast Guard duty station on the Oregon
Coast. He had been looking to stay in Oregon after his discharge but the
exciting new campus and the beauty of Humboldt County really drew him in. He
started CR upon discharge in the spring of 1972 and he graduated with an AA
degree in 1973.
CR was his second college experience. He
attended Sacramento City College right out of high school with
the primary reason of avoiding the draft. After a year and a half of spinning
his wheels there and with the military draft on his heels, he entered the U.S.
Coast Guard for the only reason of avoiding war duty in Viet Nam. After
spending four years in the Guard, and feeling like the world and his high
school friends were passing him by, he became one very motivated student.
“At CR I thoroughly enjoyed my instructors.
They were high quality, energetic, enthusiastic, and charismatic, and they
seemed to be as motivated as me. I sopped up my education like a sponge. I
hadn’t been a great student at SCC but I soon learned that my new attitude
combined with exciting teachers made excelling academically fun and easy.”
“My focus was art and general ed and I took a
lot of classes. I can honestly say that CR was host to the best college
teachers I have ever had. They were fun, energetic and accessible. There
were even a few teachers there that were so good I took every course they
taught.”
“CR taught me about resources too. I was
fortunate to work in the library part time and learned a great deal about how
to answer questions, for any subject. This was helpful later as we built our
business very slowly, one answer at a time you might say.”
About our business of building lamps. “Well, I
built my first lamp when I was 18, a few more when I was in the Coast Guard
and a few more when I was a student at CR and Humboldt State.
During my student years I didn’t take it seriously but I made a little money
from it and that was fun but I never thought about it as a career. Later,
after my BA degree from Humboldt I found myself making more lamps and within a
few years we were working at it full time and taking it very seriously. Both
with degrees in art my wife Janene and I were starting to really have fun
making “Artistic Lamps”. We were struggling, working hard, really hard,
hand-to-mouth really, but we had a vision of success down the road. And many,
many years later we are here, still in Arcata with a healthy business that
seems to have a life of its own. But as I told you a few years ago, at one
point maybe eight years ago I was going through some old papers that I had
done while at CR and I came across this paper I had done for a art history
class entitled “ What I would do as an artist today”. I had forgotten about
writing this paper completely and I was stunned and amused as I reread it that
I described myself as an artist who was making contemporary artist lamps as
his art. It was fun to see that the real dream or idea for this business
started somewhere back at CR. For what its worth, I am a person who believes
in the power of the vision and somehow I am sure that that paper had a lot to
do with the manifesting of Lamps by Hilliard.”
Hilliard Lamps has been in business for 30 years
now. They have a business that could be located anywhere and they have chosen
to be located in Humboldt County. Noel states, “I remember one
of the more prominent reasons to be self-employed was to be able to stay in
the Humboldt region. Beautiful and diverse I think Humboldt County is the
best place to live on Earth. I also think that the slower pace of Humboldt
contributes heavily towards the high quality of the various products that are
made up here. We have more time to make it right!”
“I am very proud of our business and our
products and I am proud of the nine good jobs with benefits we have created
and maintained here over many years. I am proud that we have very little turn
over of employees here and I love our new building in Arcata.”
(Check out our web site at hilliardlamps.com to
see some of what we do. Within that check out our collectors list. I like it
because it says that many who purchase our lamps can have whatever they
want-and they choose a Hilliard Lamp.)
