UC Berkeley performing arts pioneer Betty Connors, longtime director of the center that would become Cal Performances, died of natural causes in her Richmond, Calif. home on June 11. She was 92.

Connors led the Committee for Arts and Lectures from 1945 to 1979 and was the center's first full-time employee.

"She had high standards of taste," said Robert Cole, current director of Cal Performances. "If you look at the list of names that she brought here, these were all the greatest artists of that time without question."

Connors grew up in Great Falls, Mont. and was a student at the University of Iowa. She visited her brother, a UC Berkeley undergraduate at the time, in 1939 while attending the San Francisco World's Fair, according to Christina Kellogg, a spokesperson for the center.

"She stayed on to marry Joe Connors, her brother's college roommate, and she completed her undergraduate degree here at Cal," Kellogg said. "In the university orchestra, she played viola, and she started to organize concerts at local venues ... just because she loved it."

After graduating with a degree in music in 1945, Connors began working full-time for the committee–which previously had only part-time faculty employees–and arranged 36 music events in her first year, according to Kellogg.

Connors, who was responsible for "unprecedented growth in the quantity and range of events," was active in performing arts presentation outside of campus as well, according to a press release by the center.

In 1958, Connors joined what would become the Association of Performing Arts Presenters and received the Fan Taylor Distinguished Service Award in 1979 for her "outstanding career and exemplary service in the field of arts administration," according to the release.

Connors worked with Jerry Willis, then the presenting director at the California Institute of Technology, in founding the Western Arts Alliance–which helped artists arrange West Coast tours and now has more than 550 members-in 1967, according to the release.

"(She was) important not just at UC Berkeley but across California, across the West Coast," Kellogg said.

In 1979, Connors retired and received the Berkeley Citation, which is awarded to those who "significantly exceed the standards of excellence in their fields and whose contributions to UC Berkeley are manifestly above and beyond the call of duty," according to the release.

Danny Nilles, master carpenter at the center who met Connors while working as an electrician in Zellerbach Hall in 1976, said she was extremely cordial to all visiting artists and guests at the theatre.

"She pretty much put the program in motion," Nilles said. "(She) laid a real solid foundation for Cal Performances to build upon."

Tags: CAL PERFORMANCES