My Long Journey Through MJC

My matriculation through MJC is in stark contrast with that of my four children, all MJC alumni who enrolled immediately after high school and transferred to four-year colleges to finish their degrees in the usual 4 years. I enrolled at MJC in 1949 and finally graduated from there in 1955, before transferring to Sacramento State to get my degree. What took me so long?

After graduating Modesto High School in 1946, I immediately went to work and bought my first car. After three years of common labor jobs laying track with the railroad, harvesting crops, shoveling gravel, I gained enough weight that I began to entertain the thought of playing football at MJC. My friend, Walt Ragland, who was already making a name for himself as an athlete at MJC in three sports, arranged for me to meet Fred Earle, the head football coach at MJC. In the fall of 1949 I enrolled in MJC and became one of Coach Pavko’s linemen.

When I read Bob Stewart’s featured MJC alumnus story (September 2017), I remembered how, like Bob, I also held Coach Pavko in high regard and can clearly recall how he used to growl at us linemen, saying he had a guy one year that would have “eaten your lunch.” Turns out the guy was future Hall of Famer, Gino Marchetti.
After the ’49 season I had to leave school and go back to work. I returned in the fall of ’51 and again played for Coach Pavko.  During that season I clearly remember riding the bus to play Weber College in Utah and being serenaded by the voice of Harvey Presnell, starting tackle, who later became famous on Broadway and in film as Harve Presnell.

I had to leave MJC partway through the ’51 season because I was drafted into the US Army. I married my sweetheart, Billie Jean Jones, on the eve of my departure for basic training. I shipped out to Korea in the winter of ’52 and spent the next year there.  Back in Modesto, after the war, Coach Pavko told me that, since I didn’t finish the ‘51 season, I still had eligibility to play football.

So at age 26, I enrolled in MJC one more time and got just enough playing time for Coach Pavko to recommend me to Sacramento State.  I graduated from MJC in ’55, six years after my first semester there. That fall at Sac State I had a knee injury that finally, and perhaps mercifully, brought an end to football for me. I was then able to focus on my academics and thanks to the GI Bill I earned my B.A. at Sacramento State in the winter of ’57, with one child by then and one on the way.  After the birth of our fifth child, I earned my teaching credential at Stanislaus State and had a satisfying career teaching math at my alma mater, Modesto High School.

Even though I was interrupted by a continuing need to work and the Korean War, I’m glad I persevered at MJC. My teammates, my coaches, teachers and fellow students all contribute to my fond memories of being a Modesto Junior College Pirate.

- Vincent Lane, Class of 1955