'We showed them the way'
For USF’s first students, so much sand ... and opportunity
By PAUL GUZZO // University Communications and Marketing
THE OLD USF SPECIALTY LICENSE plate hanging on Barbara Holley Johnson’s wall reads “BHJ 1.” It’s not a declaration of fandom — it’s a fact.
Johnson, ’63, Life Member, was USF’s f irst-ever student, first to apply and first accepted.
“It’s still surreal,” she says. “I guess I’ll always be a part of USF history.”
USF turns 70 this year. State officials approved the university on Dec. 18, 1956, the start of what would become one of the nation’s top public institutions and a cornerstone of Tampa Bay’s higher education, research, health care and economy.
Johnson has had a front-row seat to watch it grow.
So has Jeanne Dyer, ’64, Life Member, a fellow member of USF’s charter class and, for the past decade, a technology coordinator and instructor with the university’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, which offers non-credit courses for adult learners.
“I don’t think any of us could have predicted that the university would be the size and have the impact that it does now,” Dyer says.
The charter class had 1,997 students, 134 faculty members, 61 courses and three buildings.
Today, USF has approximately 50,000 students and 2,300 faculty members spanning three campuses that offer more than 200 majors and concentrations, all of which led to the university securing membership in the prestigious Association of American Universities — a coalition of leading research-intensive institutions of higher learning.
But for the charter class, USF symbolized something simpler: opportunity.
“It was a godsend,” Dyer says.
As a little girl, she was the teacher when playing with her cousins.
As a teenager, she explored chemistry. She tried to extract chlorophyll from spinach to create a light green color for a perfume she made.
“It didn’t work, but it got me hooked on chemistry,” she says. “But I thought a career in it was just a dream because college didn’t seem possible. Then, when I was in junior high, my father told me that he read in the newspaper about a new state college coming to Tampa.”
If USF was born in December 1956, it was conceived in December 1954. That’s when Florida legislators Sam Gibbons and James Moody, over coffee in downtown Tampa, flirted with the idea of bringing a public university to Tampa Bay.
A few months later, while sitting at his kitchen table, Gibbons drafted an 80-word bill to establish such an institution.
Legislators chose Temple Terrace’s shuttered World War II-era Henderson Airfield — actually, the airfield’s razed practice bombing range — as the site.
They officially approved USF in 1956 and on Sept. 5, 1958, Gov. LeRoy Collins broke ground on the campus. As a crowd of 500 looked on and with the rumble of bulldozers in the background, Collins said, “This event will not be measured solely within state limits. It is a prominent landmark in America’s educational history.”
In October 1959, USF began accepting applications for its inaugural semester scheduled to begin in fall 1960.
Barbara Holley Johnson smiles during a visit to campus.
Saunders strolls with a few of the 34,000 employees she oversaw as president and CEO of Wellstar.
Despite being a 20-year-old mother of two toddlers and pregnant with a third child, Johnson was encouraged to apply.
“My goal was always to be a mother and housewife,” she says. “But my mother thought I would enjoy a career, too. She was right, but it wouldn’t have been possible without USF.”
Johnson hand-delivered her application at the admissions office, a white Victorian house in downtown Tampa.
“I had no idea that I was the first,” she says. “Then I received an acceptance letter telling me that my student ID number was 0001.”
She gave birth in July and, a month later, attended orientation and registration. She chose elementary education as her concentration due to her love of children.
Dyer majored in natural sciences and minored in education.
Back in 1960, “campus was just a desert,” Johnson says with a laugh. “There was a lot of sand, and not much else. If the wind was blowing, the sand got in your teeth.”
She and Dyer joined a crowd of 6,000 for the official opening on Sept. 26, 1960. Guests got a quick tour of the then-1,700-acre campus, traipsing through sand (no sidewalks yet) to see the three finished buildings: administration; the University Center and its cafeteria, classrooms and dorm space for 45 female students; and the chemistry building.
“As we walked from building to building, we followed the same route every day through the sand,” Dyer says. “Over a few months’ time, our walking created dredged paths in the sand.”
Turtles roamed campus and burrowing owls popped out of holes.
Johnson’s first semester went well. Her 3.5 GPA suffered only from a C in bowling, a course held at a local alley.
“We were really laying track for the College of Nursing at USF.”
– Candice Saunders
“You had to take four activities for physical education,” Johnson says.
Professors would at times notice her student ID number.
“They would ask me if I was really the first student,” Johnson says. “Even back then, it was a real talking point.”
Chemistry students grew especially close with Professor Jack Fernandez, often staying after class to continue their experiments or assist with his research.
“On the long nights, we’d want a cup of Coke from the machine — there were no bottle machines in those days, only cups, and syrupy tasting liquid came out of the machine,” Dyer says. “They cost a dime, so we would put nickels in nitric acid until they weighed the same as a dime and get the soda for half off. It was just innocent fun using what we knew.”
Seeing the opening of the Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing is enough to make Dyer chuckle, since the charter class marveled at technology like air conditioning and calculators.
“Nobody had air conditioning at home,” Dyer says. “So, we bundled up in sweaters.”
The campus developed during the charter class’s time here, adding a library, residence hall, physical education building and a life science building.
Landscapers planted grass and masons laid sidewalks.
“They paved the paths we’d created,” Dyer says. “We showed them the way.”
In December 1963, USF celebrated its first 326 graduates.
Gov. Farris Bryant told them they were the “first wave of a new force landing on the beachhead of tomorrow.”
Johnson launched a 30-year career as a teacher in Hillsborough County Public Schools.
Dyer graduated the following spring and started her 41-year career as a public-school chemistry teacher.
“USF has grown from this desert university to this powerhouse,” Dyer says. “It’s been exciting to watch it grow and be a part of it.”
Jeanne Dyer shows off her graduation medallion.