When Jarel “Jerry” Ervin drops names like Batchelor, Pierce, and Watkins he’s not talking about the buildings at UC Riverside. He’s recalling memories of people he interacted with during his early days on campus.

The 96-year-old lifelong Riverside resident began working at the campus in 1949, when it was the UC Citrus Experiment Station, beginning a 43-year career and an association with UCR that has continued as a family tradition.

Ervin had a front row view of many notable milestones in UCR history including the establishment of the campus. Ervin was also among the first class of students in 1954, studying part-time while continuing to work at one of the campus greenhouses.

During a recent visit to the campus, Ervin pointed out a framed photo hanging on the wall at the Stable at the Barn. The photo shows the original Barn from the 1940s with a horse in front of the old wooden structure back when it was actually a horse stable. He remembered cheerfully how one of the horses was named Jerry and co-workers would tease him about it. He recalled often seeing Leon Batchelor, the longest-serving director of the Citrus Experiment Station, who now has a building on campus named for him.

“Dr. Leon Batchelor, he was quite a gentleman,” Ervin said. “He had a thoroughbred horse down here at the Barn and used to come down and ride it every morning.”

Another interaction with a notable figure of University of California history happened on a January 1950 morning when then-UC President Robert Sproul was leading a tour of state leaders including UC Regents of the future UCR campus.

Ervin, who was working at what was then known as North Wing, now Chapman Hall, heard someone shouting from below and looked out the window to see Sproul leading a group of about 20 men in business suits in front of Ervin’s car that was parked out front.

It was a yellow 1941 Oldsmobile convertible with a black top that Ervin described as a beautiful car. But he had just driven from Idaho through a blizzard the night before, returning from a family trip, so it was covered in mud.

“I heard this loud voice say ‘Anybody who has a car like that ought to wash it once in a while,’” Ervin said with a laugh, adding that he got a chance to meet Sproul later that day.

Ervin has enjoyed sharing his memories of UCR with fellow alumni and retirees. In April, he spoke to other retirees at an event held by the UCR Retirement Center. He is in the process of donating an old desk that Batchelor used to sit at in the 1950s to the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences. At the upcoming Homecoming weekend, alumni like Ervin will be among those honored at different events.

It was a chance encounter that led Ervin to UCR.

Raised in Riverside, Ervin graduated from Riverside Poly High School and Riverside City College before attending Stanford University where he initially planned to study medicine. But after a year of college, Ervin decided he wasn’t interested in pursuing that career, dropping out to return to Riverside.

Shortly after he got home, in January 1949, a winter storm blanketed much of the city in six inches of snow, Ervin said. He found a temporary job for a citrus grower “running thermometers,” which involved driving a jeep to six groves in the Arlington area and take temperatures every hour during the night to make sure the citrus did not go bad.

While working that job, Ervin ran into a high school friend who was leaving his job at the Citrus Experiment Station to go to UC Berkeley and wondered if Ervin might be interested. Ervin went in for an interview and began working what he thought would be a short-term job on Jan. 19, 1949.

Ervin worked as a technician in a lab overseen by James Martin, a soil microbiologist whose work went on to become influential in the field. They studied citrus replant problems, soil microorganisms and structure, and experimented with fumigating soil.

Initially in the North Wing, the lab moved to one of four new greenhouses built in 1952, some of which remain to this day.

Ervin said he doesn’t remember when the job became a life-long career.

“I just fell in love with the work,” he said. “The more I worked, the better I liked it. Every day you were learning something new. It was exciting in that way.”

Ervin recalled watching the transformation of the campus from mostly trees and trails to the construction of early buildings like Batchelor Hall, a new administration building, and gymnasium. The Barn, which had mainly been a stable, started serving food.

In those early years, wildlife could be seen often on campus, Ervin said. They saw skunks, rabbits, owls, snakes, coyotes, racoons, and more. One warm day a peacock wandered into the administration building and startled the chancellor’s assistant at her desk. There were occasional sightings of mountain lions, including one that frightened a visitor from Italy eating his lunch at Picnic Hill.

When UCR opened in fall 1954, it was a rainy, wet season with students having to walk through muddy paths and across a large field, Ervin said. Students began putting down wooden planks so they could walk across, establishing the early paths for the campus, he said.

Ervin also began to experience life as a student when his department head arranged for him to take one class per term. He was one of 141 students in the inaugural class.

Ervin laughed as he recalled names and stories from that first class which included Chuck Young, the class president who went on to become a UCLA chancellor. Ervin was busy working the day students decided to carve their names in wet cement but classmate Doug Mumma wrote his name in for him. Originally located outside the gymnasium, the slabs are now at the HUB Plaza, where Ervin’s name can still be seen.

Ervin graduated in 1967 with a bachelor's degree in soil science, continuing to work on soil research in the greenhouses. He retired in 1991.

UCR has meant a lot to him and his family over the years, Ervin said.

His late wife Paula, who he had met from their shared interest in musicals and community theater, started college in 1958 when their children were in elementary school, graduating from UCR in 1969 and going on to become a high school teacher. She also worked on campus at the bookstore when it was located in the basement of the women’s gym. 

Their daughter, Wendy, attended for a year in 1971 and worked in the Agricultural Extension Department from 1974 to 1976. Their son, Wesley, graduated from UCR in 1973.

Ervin feels fortunate to have met many of the formative people from the campus’ history and to witness and participate in the agricultural advancements made by its researchers.

“It’s been my family,” he said of the university. “It’s been such a huge part of my life.”