24 REFLEXION | 2022-23 | AIA Utah Interviews with Local Legends Fred Babcock BY FRAN PRUYN Fred, when did you decide to become an architect? I was a junior in high school. Art had always been my passion. In high school, I was blessed to have an art teacher I responded to and enjoyed and learned from. One evening after class, I was sitting in the classroom doing some lastminute stuff on a project, and he came up to me, and he said, “Fred, what do you want to do when you grow up?” I said, “Well, I’d like to do something connected with the arts. I’ve thought about maybe going into commercial arts. And he looked at me quizzically and said, “Are you sure?” I said, “Why do you ask?” He said, “I don’t know that too many of them make much of a living doing that. And I know you enjoy math. Have you ever thought of architecture?”I hadn’t. I was in a small town in Idaho. I didn’t know if there was an architect in the community, but when he said that, it got me pondering. I graduated high school and was in my first year of college at Idaho State University, which had a fledging architecture department. Halfway through that first year of architectural studies, my professor called me into his office and said, “Fred, I’ve been thinking about you. I don’t think Idaho State is the place for you. I’d like to suggest you think about maybe furthering your education somewhere else.” Where’d you go? My dad and I did a little research and discovered that Roger Bailey had just come to the University of Utah. He had great credentials and a reputation and was beginning this program here. That got me to move to the University of Utah, which I ended up loving. The first-year class that year at the University of Utah had 60 students, and not one of them was a woman, that would have been in 1957. Of that 60, I was the only one who continued on and actually graduated with that class. Others came back later to do it. It was an arduous program. When did you graduate? It was a five-year [program], and I graduated in 1962 with my Bachelor of Architecture. I then decided I might like to be involved in teaching. I applied to Columbia University in New York and was accepted. We had the scholarship, my brand-new wife had a job, and then we discovered we were going to have a baby. We questioned if we wanted to travel clear across the country to New York City. I applied to the University of California in Berkeley and was accepted, and they accepted my AIA scholarship. I spent a year doing graduate work at Berkeley and, in 1963, received my master’s degree. Then what happens? 1963 was an interesting time at the University of California. It was a great time to be there because you could be part of it if you wanted to, but you could walk on by, which I chose to do. It created a big upheaval; it was the hippie generation, and I visited several firms in San Francisco, but they weren’t looking for people. It was a difficult time to find meaningful employment. And San Francisco was, even then, an expensive place to live. I looked into coming back home, and we had our first child at the end of that year. Becoming a father put a different slant on me looking at where I should go. Our second “Local Legends” interview in this issue is with Fred Babcock of Babcock Design Group. We appreciate the time he spent with us and are happy to share his story with you.
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