Jerry Voorhis (Horace Jeremiah Voorhis, 1901-1984) was the headmaster of the Voorhis School for Boys, founded by his father, Nash Motor Company executive Charles Voorhis, in 1928. The Voorhis School was located in San Dimas, California and provided an education and room and board to underprivileged boys. The younger Voorhis had developed an interest in education while a student at Yale University and later went on to earn a master’s degree in education from the Claremont Graduate School.
Voorhis ran for Congress at the urging of his friends and, to his surprise, was elected representative of California’s 12th congressional district in 1936. He was unable to continue as headmaster of the Voorhis School while serving in Congress and in 1938 his father decided to close the school and donate the campus to the California State Polytechnic College (Cal Poly).
The Voorhis Campus became the southern satellite of the main Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo and was known as the Voorhis Unit. A second southern campus, the Kellogg Campus in Pomona, opened in 1956. For a time, the two campuses were known as the "Kellogg-Voorhis Campus." All instruction moved to the Kellogg campus in 1956, while students continued to live on the Voorhis campus. In 1966, the southern campus formally separated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to form Cal Poly Pomona. Cal Poly Pomona eventually sold the Voorhis land to Pacific Coast Bible College in 1977 and the land is now the site of the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation.
Jerry Voorhis served in the House of Representatives until he was defeated by a young Richard Nixon in 1948. Afterwards, he became involved with the Cooperative League of America, serving as its executive director and president. He retired from those positions in 1967. Voorhis also wrote multiple books during his time in Congress and afterward, including Beyond Victory; American Cooperatives: Where They Come From, What They Do, Where They are Going; The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon; and The Life and Times of Aurelius Lyman Voorhis.
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