feature / alumni / illustration / veterans
November 08, 2024
By Mike R. Winder
Images courtesy of the Player sisters

ENDOWED SCHOLARSHIP FOR VETERANS CREATED BY ALUM’S DAUGHTERS EXPANDS ITS REACH 

Undergraduate students will now benefit from the legacy of World War II veteran Ross Dimond Player

According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Veteran’s Day is about “honoring America’s veterans for their patriotism, love of country and willingness to serve and sacrifice for the common good.” 

Here at ArtCenter, our history has been enriched significantly by individuals who served their country. In fact, the GI Bill® of 1944—which provided World War II veterans with funds for college education, housing and more—sparked a student population explosion that caused the College to outgrow its original campus on 7th Street near Los Angeles’ MacArthur Park and forced it to move into larger quarters. 

One such veteran who attended ArtCenter thanks to the GI Bill® was alumnus Ross Dimond Player (BFA 51 Illustration), who served with the 21st Marine Corps and fought in the Battle of Iwo Jima in the Pacific theater. After being wounded and honorably discharged, he returned home, married his childhood sweetheart, Madelyn, and studied at Utah State University. After two years at USU, Player transferred to ArtCenter at the recommendation of a teacher. On his application to the College, when asked to describe why he was interested in the field of commercial art, he wrote: “Feel that I have talent along this line and am anxious to become established in this work.” 

After graduating from ArtCenter, he moved back to Utah and raised four girls: Marguerite (Peggy), Maureen and twins Sally and Nancy. And during all that time—indeed, for the majority of his 40-year career—he worked as a graphic designer for the Eastern Iron and Metal Corporation (EIMCO), which manufactured mining equipment for projects around the world. According to Nancy, her father was especially skilled when it came to taking two-dimensional renderings and, via airbrush, turning them into photorealistic paintings.

When Player passed away in 2012, he left each of his four daughters an inheritance. Deciding they wanted to do something that would honor the memories of both their mother and father, the sisters pooled their inheritances and created an endowed scholarship at ArtCenter. Established in 2012, the Ross Dimond Player and Madelyn Maberly Player Endowed Memorial Scholarship provides financial support for ArtCenter students, with a preference for veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces.

To date, the endowment earnings from the fund have provided approximately $25,000 in financial support. When it was originally established, the scholarship was earmarked specifically for adults studying in ArtCenter Extension, the College’s continuing studies program. This year, ArtCenter is proud to announce that this scholarship has been expanded and is now available to undergraduate student veterans, allowing the College to reach even more individuals who have served our country. 

“We all thought that would be a much more meaningful legacy than going on a trip or paying off something,” says Nancy, who adds that around the same time the scholarship was established that U.S. troops were returning home from the eight-year-long Iraq War. “It felt like a natural thing to do: to support veterans coming back from serving and to help them find peace in their own creativity. That’s what Dad did.” 

According to Nancy, one of the main reasons the sisters decided to establish the scholarship was because they all felt that their father attending ArtCenter had dramatically changed the trajectory of their parents’ lives. “I think about those two kids from Rupert, Idaho moving out to Los Angeles, living in a Quonset hut with a bunch of other kids who were also back from the war. They were all healing. And it changed their life, because when they came back they weren’t small town kids anymore.”

“He talked about how he liked his classes and how much he learned,” says Marguerite, when asked what her father shared with her about ArtCenter. “He talked about doing the studies with models. He really liked the human form. He learned about muscle structure and physical proportion. I remember, as a kid, watching him draw—he was so fast! It was incredibly fun to watch. But even better than that was when he would create things from clay—ducks and other animals.”

“It changed the trajectory of their lives, and it taught them they could do anything,” adds Nancy. “So it’s a big deal to get an education. And I saw a note that Sally wrote, it must have been right after we talked about creating the scholarship, that said, ‘Great idea! Where would we be without art?’”

All the sisters recall watching their father working diligently on freelance jobs in the evenings, whether it was brochures and patches for the nearby Brighton Ski Resort or large-scale, sand-blasted glass windows for the Latter Days Saints Church Office building.

“He always showed great patience with me when I showed interest in learning about whatever he was doing, whether retouching photos or refinishing furniture,” says Maureen. “And when I was old enough, he took time to show me how to draw straight lines, cut with an X-acto, sand wood with the grain—never rushing me. He had lots of skills; knowing how to share his expertise was one of them.”

From their mother, Madelyn, who passed away in 2005, the sisters learned the importance of taking an active role in your community. They remember her being, as Nancy puts it, “a force of nature.” In Salt Lake City, Madelyn served on numerous PTA boards, the Millcreek Community Council and the Salt Lake Planning Commission. When she retired from the Planning Commission in 1991, then-Chairman Philip W. Hallstrom was quoted in the The Salt Lake Tribune as saying, “She was strong. She got in and fought for what she believed was the correct principle … This diminutive woman would stand up against anybody, it didn’t matter who.”

The sisters are particularly proud of their mother’s role in the passing of a Utah state law that required infants and children under the age of 2 to be placed in a child car seat. “My mom and her cohorts in the Utah State PTA, they drafted that law, and it passed,” says Nancy. “And then they went to Washington D.C. and lobbied for the cause there. And today you cannot take an infant home from the hospital without a car seat.”

Their mother also collaborated artistically with her father, and the sisters have fond memories of projects created around the holidays.

“My mom and dad made fabulous Christmas cards every year,” says Sally. And all the sisters vividly remember the post-Thanksgiving dinner family tradition of heading to the Valley Fair Mall in Salt Lake City to help set up the mall’s Christmas decorations—a freelance job of her father’s that turned into an all-hands-on-deck family affair.

“The themes changed from year to year, but I remember these huge snowflakes that would hang from the ceiling,” says Maureen of the mall’s decorations. “There were also animated scenes, which may have originally been from New York, and my dad would help set those up and fix the animatronics. And there were all these tiny decorating details, like putting out Mrs. Claus’ cookies, which we got paid probably $1 an hour to work on. That was great fun.” 

In their father’s obituary, the sisters wrote, “He is survived by his children and four granddaughters … [t]hey are the grateful beneficiaries of such a fine, quiet, and consistent life—historically common for his generation, but uniquely sweet.” 

By establishing the endowed scholarship in their parents' memory, a new generation of student veterans can be added to that list of grateful beneficiaries. 

“I remember my parents talking a lot about the opportunities they had because my father had the opportunity—thanks to the G.I. Bill—to go to school,” says Marguerite. “Education was very important to them.”