To make a donation to the Ovnick Memorial Fund click here, or scan the QR code at the bottom of the page.
Merry Ovnick, whose two decades as editor of the Southern California Quarterly helped make it one of the leading outlets for scholarship on the history of California and the West, died unexpectedly March 23 after suffering a stroke. She was 81.
A Celebration of Ovnick’s Life will be held at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 14 at The Doctor’s House in Brand Park, 1601 West Mountain Street in Glendale. Directions and other details can be found below.
Ovnick, a professor emerita of history at Cal State Northridge, served as the Quarterly’s book editor for two years before becoming editor with the Spring 2005 issue. She retired on Dec. 31, 2023, having produced a massive double issue on the reinterpretation of San Gabriel Mission and its collections with guest editor Stephen Haeckel of UC Riverside.
“Merry took very seriously what she saw as her role as the guardian of the history discipline’s standards while at the same time encouraging young doctoral students to publish their first journal article in the Quarterly,” said Jim Tranquada, president of the Historical Society of Southern California (HSSC), the journal’s publisher since 1884.
“She was a unique combination of meticulous rigor and empathy who was proud of her record of never having missed an issue, never having published late, and–after much jawboning with the HSSC board–getting the Quarterly online,” Tranquada said.”She set very high standards for everyone who will follow in her footsteps.”
To honor Ovnick’s legacy, the HSSC has created the Merry Ovnick-Doyce Nunis Quarterly Endowment, a permanent fund to provide financial support for the Quarterly’s editor and help ensure that this important journal can continue its exploration of the rich, diverse and complex history of Southern California and the West.
Named for Ovnick and her predecessor as editor–Nunis (1924-2011) was Quarterly editor for 43 years–the Endowment already has received its first major gift: a $25,000 matching gift from an anonymous donor. Gifts to the Endowment will help the Society double the size of this generous donation.
As a history professor at CSUN, where Ovnick taught from 1985 until she took early retirement for medical reasons in 2009, Ovnick helped shape generations of students by teaching a wide range of courses in U.S., urban and cultural history with a multidisciplinary approach.
“She is perhaps best remembered for having created the remarkably successful and popular interdisciplinary course, “Los Angeles Past, Present and Future,” which is offered by the History, Political Science, and Urban Studies departments,” said Jeffrey Auerbach, professor of history and department chair at CSUN.
“She also developed an internship program that for many years served the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences as a whole and continues to serve the History Department,” Auerbach said. “Merry was extraordinarily effective at identifying the right internship for each student and making sure that students got a quality educational experience. For many students, these internships were gateways to successful careers in such diverse fields as museums and historic preservation, teaching, business, and government.”
A Los Angeles native who decided she wanted to become a history professor at age 13, Ovnick
received her undergraduate degree in history from UCLA, her master’s from CSUN and her doctoral degree from UCLA.
A former president of the Southern California Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians, Ovnick’s 1994 book, Los Angeles: The End of the Rainbow, was a pioneering effort to examine the social history of Los Angeles through the lens of residential architecture. It treated home ownership and construction as a social force, arguing that each era’s building style created a vision of Los Angeles that attracted and channeled waves of immigrants.
Ovnick is survived by her daughters, Karen Boss and Lara Thompson, and her brother, Dennis Wickham.
Directions
From I-5, take the Western offramp and head north (toward the mountains) until you come to Mountain Avenue. Turn right on Mountain and drive two blocks–the entrance to Brand Park will be on your left. Turn left and follow the signs to the Doctor’s House, which is in the upper portion of the park.
Parking
Please park in the parking lot above the baseball diamond that will appear on your left. There will be a short uphill walk to the Doctor’s House from the parking lot. A limited amount of parking for those with limited mobility will be available on the shoulder of the access road to the Doctor’s House above the parking lot.
The HSSC and partners have created the Nunis Ovnick Endowment Fund for the HSSC Quarterly:
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