(Photo courtesy of Bob Goggin)
By Elizabeth Vogel, Staff Writer -- vogel11@up.edu
Everybody who is anybody knows about The Bacon: the parody of The Beacon that appears every year around April 1. What people probably don't know is that the legacy of The Bacon goes back 55 years.
In 1956, two UP students had some beef with The Beacon. Bob Goggin and Les Ebeling decided the best way to deal with the situation on their hands was to poke fun at UP's student newspaper in the form of parody.
Thus the Bacon was born.
Goggin was the ASUP president in 1956. After The Beacon's staff investigated and reported the constitution used by ASUP was invalid, Goggin decided to do some research of his own and discovered The Beacon was wrong.
"After checking into the legal issues we determined that because the council had been elected each year by the student body since then that, ipso facto, the (constitution) was valid," Goggin said.
But proving the facts wasn't enough for Goggin. He wanted to go further by poking some fun at The Beacon and the situation.
He and Ebeling, who had met in the Blue Key Honor Society, wrote and edited the first Bacon in April of 1956. According to Goggin, it was a 2-sided, 8-by-11 inch publication. He and Ebeling distributed the publication on the sly.
"We delivered it all over campus in the middle of the night and no one had a clue of who was behind it," Goggin said.
The first issue of The Bacon directly parodied The Beacon. Goggin, who wrote a weekly column called "Inside ASUP" for The Beacon, wrote a column called "Inside KDUP" for The Bacon. The issue also poked fun at the reporter who had questioned the validity of the constitution.
"It caused quite a stir, and we never revealed who the editors were," Goggin said.
Goggin believes the reception on campus was positive.
"(The students) enjoyed it," he said. "Parodies are funny, you know."
Because the first Bacon was successful and fun to make, Goggin and Ebeling published another in May 1957. Goggin eventually revealed himself as the creator before he graduated, but Ebeling, who was an academic year below Goggin, remained anonymous in order to create two more Bacons the next year.
Although Goggin has long since graduated from UP with degrees in speech and philosophy, The Bacon lives on.
"What's great is that it's carried on as The Bacon on April 1," Goggin said.
Goggin was born in Mason City, Iowa, the town that inspired Meredith Wilson to write "The Music Man." After serving in the Air Force, Goggin utilized the GI bill to further his education.
"I wanted a Catholic college on the west coast where you could ski," he said.
While at UP, Goggin was a member of the Blue Key Honor Society, the president of the ski club, ASUP president, involved with KDUP and performed in some plays.
"He's a man of varied interest, a Renaissance man," Doug Hansen, director of planned giving and friend of Goggin, said.
Goggin and his wife rented an apartment on Harvard Street while he attended UP. After graduating, he got into a master's program in journalism and communications at Stanford University. He worked for nine years in news and radio and then went into public relations and marketing. He also taught journalism at San Diego State University and news writing at California Polytechnic State University.
He currently lives in San Diego, where he is active in the California Lung Association, his church, golf and wine tasting.
"He placed well in wine-tasting competitions," Hansen said. "He is still very engaged in life."
(Photo courtesy of Bob Goggin)
