San Pedro High School Class of Winter 1964 : January 2014

I remember my first day at Dana my grandmother lived on Parker Street which dead end into the girls gym I went to her house for breakfast and then my friend Ron Haller met up with me and we walked onto campus. It had rained that day and as we were walking between the main building and the bungalows passing under a tree and some guy ran up grab the branch pulled it down and let it go then all the water that was in the tree pour down on Ron and I and the guy said, “welcome to Dana scrubs.” We were told that there was a swimming pool on the third floor of the main building and that you could take the elevator to get up to it. We made our way to our homeroom which was in the bungalows and Mr. Katz was our homeroom teacher. It was kind of exciting meeting all the new friends from all the different elementary schools. Now we were the B-7 class and we would be classmates for the next six years. We were then told where our lockers were and giving the combination and send off to go find them and make sure they worked.

I was assigned all remedial classes because of my learning disability which at that time they didn’t know anything about dyslexia. So school was no fun for me academically wise. I did enjoy wood shop, metal shop and print shop. But best of all was PE I was a fairly good athlete so all the sporting things we did in PE I excelled at. There was always after school sporting activities. Each homeroom had a football team and I remember our homeroom always won the trophy at the end of the season.

The Fishbowl was another highlight of Dana for me I was always on our football team. Remember that A-9 would play the B-9’s and the year that we were the A-9‘s the whole student body marched to the high school and the game was played on the high school field. We lost to the B-9’s but I had a great game and after the game was over the varsity coach Bill Seixas came up to me and said make sure I come out for the varsity next year. That was pretty exciting for me.

The most embarrassing moment at Dana was when the A-9’s were playing the B-9‘s in a softball game in front of the student body. When we were at bat we had our own pitcher pitching to us so he was trying to make sure to give us a nice slow pitch underhand so that we would hit the ball. When I came up to bat there were two men on base and I wanted to show off how good of a baseball player I was by trying to hit a home run. Here came the first pitch nice and slow right in the hitting zone I swung as hard as I could to hit that ball over everybody’s head but I missed the ball, strike one. Laughter broke out in the bleachers I felt so embarrassed missing the ball with my own pitcher pitching to me. Now here came the second pitch again right over the plate I was more determined this time to hit even farther than I wanted to on the last pitch, again I swung as hard as I could I missed, strike two. Again the laughter broke out in the bleachers my face turned red as a cherry. On next pitch I was just going to try to hit the ball somewhere just to make sure I didn’t strike out. The pitcher again gave me a nice slow one right over the plate but instead of just trying to hit the ball somewhere my eyes lit up I had to hit the ball over somebody head, I had to make up for all those people laughing, I have to show everybody I was a good baseball player but I swung and missed again, strike three you’re out. The whole student body broke out laughing even the players on my team were laughing there was no where to go hide it was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. A couple years later in high school I was practicing with the varsity one day after school and the top pitcher on the varsity and was also the top pitcher in LA City school Terry Richards. I was hitting the ball all over the field he couldn’t get his fastball or his curveball passed me. Then I heard two guys standing behind the backstop one of the guys said to the other, “ isn’t that the guy who struck out back at Dana with his own pitcher pitching to him?”

We had a Dance Hop I think once a week or maybe it was once a month at the gym multipurpose room during lunchtime. We also had the weekend dance it seems like once a month from what I can remember. I always went but I never danced. During junior high and high school I had a bad case of acme. Though I had a crush on almost every girl in our class because they were really pretty. I never had the nerve to ask any of them for a dance so I played handball just outside the gym most of the time.

One time I think it was in that 8th grade, the class I was in were waiting to go to an assembly. The teacher gave us some busy work to do while he graded papers. Some of the guys started shooting rubber bands around and one happened to hit the teacher. He was mad he wanted to know who did it but no one confessed. He had every guy stand up and empty his pocket one by one. Finally it was my turn to empty my pockets and as I reached in I could feel I had a few rubber bands in my pocket as I pulled them out the teacher said, “ I got you.” He sent me to the vice principals office and the there were about 10 gang bangers waiting to see the vice principals for the bad deeds they did in their classrooms. When it was finally my turn to see the Vice Principal he read the note form the teacher and asked,” what’s this all about.” I told him what happened that I did not shoot any of the rubber bands but I happen to have some in my pocket and when I empty my pocket the teacher assumed it was me that shot him with a rubber band. To my surprise he believing me, and we became good friends for the rest the time I was at Dana.

And another time in another class I think it was the first day in the ninth-grade I had Mr. Carter. He was giving all the rules about his class and what he expected from us and if we did something wrong especially the guys they would get a swat and when you got a swat from Mr. Carter it’s stung for two or three days. Well one of the guys who was a gang banger was sitting at his desk and mouth off something to Mr. Carter. Mr. Carter walked over pick him up in his desk and threw him across the room desk and all. He didn’t have a lick of problem from the class the rest of the semester.

Another class I had was in the seventh grade it was boys glee. Here was all these boys who’s voices were changing trying to sing song, it was terrible. There was a school play and me had to be part of it and we had to sing a song that made the whole student body laugh, it was quite embarrassing.

Nutrition was always a favorite part of the day. I always got this really nice warm cinnamon roll. And at lunchtime I would either have a hot dog or hamburgers though my mother made me lunch every now and then which was a cheese sandwich. Every once in a while I ate a warm lunch in the cafeteria. On the cafeteria walls were two murals of beautiful paintings of life in San Pedro in the early days.

In the eighth-grade I was doing some after school gymnastics on the parallel bar when I fell and broke my arm. It was the only time I missed school at Dana and High School. On our A-9 picnic we went to Irvine Park. That was a lot of fun the one thing I remember though was riding a bicycle for two with Ron Haller. And then over the loudspeaker they announced, “no swimming in the lake I repeat no swimming in the lake.” Ron and I looked at each other and said that’s got to be Gwen Knowles that they are talking about. And sure enough it was.

Paper drives were always a fun day to see which homeroom would gathered the most papers from the community. One year our homeroom won and we got to go on a field trip to General Motors and watch them built their cars.

The A-9 lawn with a fun place for us to hang out when we finally made it to the top spot at school. By that time we all knew each other since our class only have about 150 people we became a close knit group. I look forward to May 3 of this year to be able to reunite with all those old friends and share lot of these memories with them, see you then. Van Barbre