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Physical Plant, circa 1930
(Photo courtesy of Special Collections and University Archives)
The Physical Plant Boiler Shop was designed by Howard Spencer Hazen and constructed in 1930 on the northeast ridge overlooking Alvarado Canyon.
The plant contained oil-fired boilers that provided heat to the campus during the winter. Maintenance and repair shops were located in a wing adjoining the boiler room.
The plant underwent repairs between 1935 and World War II, and the western wing of the building was extended in the 1940s as part of a Works Progress Administration project.
The Physical Plant Boiler Shop still contains boilers for heating the campus in addition to housing the Lock Shop. It now is part of a larger physical plant and maintenance complex on the northeastern edge of the campus.
Do you think you’ve had a hard life? Think again.
In 1978, Tchicaya Missamou was born in Brazzaville, Congo, the eighth of 16 children. While still a child, he became a soldier. He spent many years watching his child comrades being plied with drugs and alcohol in order to commit atrocities. When he was 19, he escaped and used his militia connections to convey jewels, computers, and white diplomats out of the country. He became a rich man, but a hunted man, and his house was destroyed and his family brutalized in front of him by his own militia. With the help of his father and European acquaintances, he made his way first to Europe and then to America.
While working at a martial arts studio in California, Missamou met a recruiter for the U.S. Marine Corps. He joined the Marines and served on several military deployments, including Iraq, where he was instrumental in the discovery and release of Private Jessica Lynch in 2003.
Missamou became an American citizen and is now a successful businessman who owns and operates a personal training facility—The Warrior Fitness Camp—in Valencia, California. He also is pursuing a Ph.D. in education. He lives in Saugus with his wife and three children.
Missamou will discuss his amazing journey to the American Dream and his memoir, In the Shadow of Freedom: A Heroic Journey to Liberation, Manhood, and America, on Thursday, March 15, at 2 p.m. in Room LL430 of the San Diego State University Library. The presentation, which is sponsored by the Aztec Parents Fund, the Veterans Center, and the SDSU Library, is free and open to the public. We hope you can join us. You’ll leave inspired!
Author David Matlin will read from his recently released novel, A HalfMan Dreaming, on March 14 at 7 p.m. in Room LL430 of the SDSU Library as part of the Spring 2012 Hugh C. Hyde Living Writers Series. The event is free and open to all.
Matlin is a novelist, poet, and essayist and the author of 10 books. His first novel, How the Night Is Divided, was nominated for a National Book circle Critics Award. Prisons: Inside the New America, published by San Diego State University Press, is based on a 10-year experience teaching in one of the oldest prison education programs in the nation. Matlin is an associate professor of English and Comparative Literature at SDSU and teaches in the MFA program.
For more information, contact Meagan Marshall at marshall_Meagan@yahoo.com. Additional information can be found on Facebook by “liking” The Living Writers Series.