A Project of
the San Diego County Commission on the Status of Women and Girls,
the Women's Museum of California,
SDSU Women's Studies Department, and UCSD Women's Center.
Darlene Davies
2017
Historian
Darlene Davies actively chronicles San Diego history, and has been doing so for many years, often while serving on civic Boards and Commissions She served four terms on the City of San Diego Advisory Board on Women, and five years on the San Diego County Commission on the Status of Women, with two of them as Chair. Darlene served for nine years on the Parks & Recreation Board and nine years on the Balboa Park Committee, five as Vice-Chair and four as Chair. In addition, she served for more than eleven years on the Horton Plaza Theatre Foundation, two as Chair. Add to that, two terms on the Commission for Arts & Culture. All required approval by the San Diego Mayor and City Council or the San Diego County Board of Supervisors. After Board of Directors membership for The Old Globe for 12 years, she was appointed the official Historian for The Old Globe and carried out those
duties for six years.
Darlene has won many Press Club awards for her writing, including 14 First Place awards and one Best of Show, and she has published articles in the San Diego Journal of History. She is the author of the book MORTAR BOARD Cap and Gown Chapter at San Diego State University 1932-1918 (Montezuma Publishing). Her 17 part series about the 1915 Panama-California Exposition was placed in a time capsule in Balboa Park, marking the centennial celebration of that exposition, to be opened in 2115. Elements from her San Diego State University Old Globe Theatre
Special Collection were featured in the Folger Library First Folio West Coast exhibit at the San Diego Central Library (2016). She is proud of two shows she curated at the
Women's Museum of California: Bakelite in the age of Plastics (in 2017); and MUSES of the OLD GLOBE Women Who Made a Difference (in 2018). In 2020, she was the recipient of the
Gertrude Gilbert Award for historical preservation efforts by the Balboa Park Committee of One Hundred. Darlene continues her historical work with her ongoing story of the evolution of the
School of Speech, Language, Hearing Sciences on the SDSU College of Health & Human Services website, which chronicles the school from 1925 until the present. She has been writing it since 2009.