History Timelines and Stories

Del Mar’s Valdar the Viking history started even before he had a name, creating the mythos of a Nordic traveler landing in Corpus Christi.  Beginning simply as “The Viking,” he was represented in yearbook art in a hyper-realistic gothic style, and the football team began using the Viking name in 1939. But there was no official mascot to represent the school.  In 2010 Rito Silva, then the Vice President for Student Affairs, with the College Relations Office led the charge of introducing an official DMC mascot to the campus and general community. The process involved focus groups with participants exploring…

Del Mar College’s West Campus, also known as the Windward Campus, opened in September 1958 to help meet Corpus Christi’s growing need for vocational and technical training. The expansion came as the East Campus became overcrowded and risked losing accreditation due to its large student population. The decision to build a second campus on Old Brownsville Road allowed Del Mar to move programs such as industrial trades, health sciences, and automotive technology into their own space. When it first opened, the new campus had five buildings and was called the Del Mar Technical Vocational Institute. According to the college archives,…

Originally published in the Corpus Christi Caller-Times Aug. 15, 2019. Reprinted with permission Some stories just get better the more you dig. This one — the story of literary giant Ernest Hemingway’s visit to Corpus Christi — is a doozy.  In March 1959, the Pulitzer- and Nobel-prize winning author arrived from San Valley, Idaho for a brief overnight before heading to Key West and eventually Cuba. He stayed at the Sand and Sea Hotel on Shoreline Boulevard. Hemingway, shockingly, agreed to be interviewed by a reporter (he hated interviews). The reporter was an 18-year-old Del Mar College student on the…