Education: Keep Moving

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On any other campus, the new degree might have sounded fantastic. But not at the University of Southern California. As everyone knew, the man financing the degree and the four-year course behind it was none other than old Captain Allan ("Keep Moving") Hancock himself, the chairman of the board of trustees. Coming from him, a bachelor of science in the liberal arts with a major in television sounded perfectly natural.

Southern Californians have grown used to the captain's doings. At 76, he is a leathery, laconic philanthropist whose personal fortune has been a source of never-ending wonders. He is a marine biologist, an aviator, a sea captain, a locomotive engineer, an accomplished cellist. In his own way, he is also something of an educator.

Bits & Bones. The captain began being an educator shortly after his father died, leaving behind some 3,000 rich Los Angeles acres, but scarcely a penny in the bank. To help support his mother, young Allan started digging up the tar pits on his land, selling the tar as fuel and roof-patching. Gradually the pits began to yield something else—the well preserved bones of ice-age animals, trapped in the tar many centuries ago.

Though only an average student in school, Hancock became fascinated by the bones, soon was reading everything he could on biology and anthropology. Meanwhile, he struck oil, wildcatted himself into more millions than he could count. After that, he was free to follow his interests wherever they led.

In addition to bones, marine biology began to fascinate him, and he decided he should have a mariner's license in order to explore the ocean himself. He joined the merchant marine, won his master's ticket, later fitted out a complete marine laboratory aboard a tuna clipper, and put it at the disposal of U.S.C. He also plunged into music, began buying up the finest cellos until he owned one of the best collections—Amati to Guarneri—in the world. When the Los Angeles symphony orchestra tumbled into the red, he reorganized it, filled up its coffers—and for two years played at its first cello desk.

Sloths & Cadets. But his interests were anything but narrow. In 1928 he turned to aviation, backed two Australian pilots, Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith and Charles T. P. Ulm, in the first transpacific flight ever made. Then, at 53, he decided to learn to fly on his own. That same year, he founded a College of Aeronautics at Santa Maria, and later put that, too, at the disposal of U.S.C. During World War II, the college turned out more than 8,000 cadets, including eight of Jimmy Doolittle's Tokyo raiders. Today it is one of the best schools of its kind in the U.S.