Category: Remember When

by Rick Blane

The “Summer of Love” had ended, and the opening of school was delayed a week so we could help with the prune harvest. Did you go out and pick? Maybe the kids who lived on farms did, but I sure didn’t, and I didn’t go to San Francisco or wear flowers in my hair either. But we all enjoyed the late start to classes.

What was the year like for you? For me, it was lots of fun. I went to all the football games. My girl friend was a cheerleader, so I always yelled as loud as I could. I still see her now and then. She married a lawyer. We beat Monty that year in the Big Game as the rivalry between the two schools became pretty intense. Remember the heavy fog that game? You could hardly see a thing. I remember lots of us going to Shakey’s near Coddingtown for pizza after the games. Johnny and Red’s on Summerfield was Viking turf, so we didn’t go there.

Mr. Vine said school spirit was disappearing, but the rallies always had a good turnout. The Big Game rally and the Car Caravan filled the front of the school. And there was a big turnout to vote for Homecoming Queen. Who won? I don’t remember.

But I remember the Competition Rally before the basketball game with Montgomery. Remember that skit about pirates and Norsemen? One of the pirates was asked about his “buccan-ears.” His answer caused him to be suspended for a few days. The administration didn’t like his choice of words, good pun that it was. Not good for students to hear they thought, but we’d heard worse and maybe said worse.

Do you remember who sang “Dock of the Bay” at the beginning of the rallies? He was really good, as good as Otis Redding, I thought. Wasn’t he voted most talented or something?

The campus was closed, but we could walk off at noon to eat, couldn’t we? We had lots of choices. On Mendocino, you could get a burger and fries at Sandy’s or Roger’s. For 15 cents you could buy a Poor Boy sandwich at the Poor House across from SRJC. Out in Montgomery Village, there was the High Q and the Pick-Up (open until 2 in the morning on weekends). Sambo’s and Foster’s Freeze and Eat ‘n Run were popular, and lots of the girls who shopped downtown on Saturday liked to go to Mac’s Deli.

We did a lot of driving, especially on Friday and Saturday nights. Did we call it “cruising” or was it “tooling?” Of course, gasoline was cheap then, about 30 cents a gallon. Remember scraping together a dollar or so in coins from everyone in the car? That dollar bought enough gas to drive up and down Fourth Street and around the courthouse until it was time to go home.

In 1968 you could buy a ’67 Pontiac GTO with a floor shift for $3000 from Ralph Vesper Used Cars. For the same $3000 you could buy a ’62 Corvette from Veale Volkswagen’s used lot. If you had $2000, a ’61 Porsche could be yours from Bishop-Hansel Ford. Who could afford those prices then? Think what those cars are worth today. In 1968, we’d probably settle for the ’60 Rambler American two-door for $395 at Zumwalt’s–and made payments.

We dressed well. Guys wore sweaters, cardigans or v-neck pullovers and sometimes neckties. We bought our clothes at Brothers Four or Rosenberg’s or Archie Kash. Levi’s we always found at Paolini’s on Wilson Street.

The girls shopped for clothes at the Fashion downtown or at the Village Shop or Lewis in the Village. Of course, Coddingtown had big names stores like Roos-Atkins, the Emporium and Joseph Magnin.

Lots of girls, including my steady, made most of their clothes, even prom dresses. They found the material at places like Doyel’s or the Fabritique or the Yardage Shop.

We did have a dress code. The girls said Mrs. Parker walked around with a ruler and if she suspected the dress was too short she made use of that marker. Some girls were sent home to change.  That happened to my girl. She wore this paisley dress that she made. Boy, was she humiliated. Funny how you can remember some things. The Santa Rosan asked about dress length, “Where is the point of distraction? Four inches below the knee?” The administration never answered that question.

Guys could wear t-shirts, but they had to have a pocket! Did you sew one on your shirt?

And hair styles! Girls liked to pile it up in what they called “ratting.” And they wore wiglets or the pastiche when they had their hair done at places like House of Charles or Clara’s House of Beauty for the big dances.

Great dances that year had great attendance. It started with the Welcome Dance. That must have been city-wide because I remember Ursuline and Cardinal Newman were there. Ursuline was a really old school, but Newman was not.

Do you remember the Christmas Dance? The “Third Foundation” played, all guitars and keyboard. We rocked! That dance was sponsored by the Girls’ League. I never knew what they did, but they put on a good party. The Turnabout was fun too. We guys appreciated being treated by our girls. Did you go out to dinner? We did. To the Hilltopper.

Did you go to the concerts at the Fairgrounds or the Vets? I went to hear the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. The place was packed! Moby Grape played there too.

by Rick Blane

It was 9:56 PM on October 1, 1969. If you were starting your senior year, you might have been watching “Waiting for Bronson” on television. Santa Rosa would be rocked by a 5.6 earthquake, the strongest in Santa Rosa since 1906. There was a second tremor, 5.5 at 11:20. Remember where you were and what you did?

Downtown, the brick wall on the Miramar collapsed. The old Fremont School and the Roxy Theater would later be torn down. That was the way our senior year started. The next day, the Press Democrat reported that Mr. Frederick F. Duey would retire at th end of the school year. Some people joked that it was his decision to retire that actually caused the earthquake. 1970 may not seem so long ago, but it has been thirty years since we graduated.

1970 was a year of continued change. Looking back, it’s difficult to remember everything that took place. The folk music of the 1960s was gone. We listened to the Beatles, the Fifth Dimension and the Supremes. The Fifth Dimension won a Grammy that year. But 1970 was when Diana Ross last appeared with the Supremes. And who would believe that Paul McCartney would leave the Beatles? But he did.

There were major stories in 1970. Charles Manson and his followers were arrested for multiple murders. Vietnamese women and children died in a village called My Lai. Four students died at Kent State. Apollo 13 almost ended in disaster. Alcatraz was occupied. Chet Huntley retired.

There was a changing of the guard in school administration and faculty. After twenty-two years, Mr. Duey announced his retirement as principal and would be succeeded by Jack O’Sullivan and Harry Arbious the new Dean of Boys. Mr. Donald Crockett died suddenly. We dedicated the Echo to him. Mr. George Vine had a serious heart attack. Popular teachers left: it was the last year for Mr. Arnold Solkov (16 years, English) and Mr. Anthony Bonaccorso (17 years, speech and drama). 1970 was not your typical school year.

We had a dress code, but we wanted it changed. Why could girls wear pants? Why couldn’t boys wear shorts school year round instead of just four months a year? And why not “more hair such a sideburns and beards?” I guess we thought some of us could actually do that. But in spite of the dress code, we were very stylish: the girls wore short skirts and long hair. Some boys did wear sideburns and some wore plaid bellbottoms ($15 at Roos-Atkins). Groovy.

John Wayne won his only Oscar for his performance in “True Grit” and “Midnight Cowboy” took the honors for Best Picture. Katherine Ross co-starred in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Someone said she attended SRJC in the early 1960s. Not only did we go to the movies, but we could see Liberace and Glenn Yarbrough in live performance at the Redwood Empire Ice Arena. On TV, we watched “Have Gun, Will Travel,” “Adam 12” and “The Andy Williams Show.

It was election year and there were new faces. A forestry official named Don Striepke wanted to be Sonoma County Sheriff and Ronald Reagan was running for Governor of California. Not to be outdone, we held an election convention, complete with delegations and delegates in order to elect the next year’s Student Body President and Vice-President. Was that the first year we held conventions?

We beat both Piner High and Montgomery High in football. As a matter of fact, we beat everybody. SRHS had its first undefeated football team since 1946! Montgomery was dead last. The SRHS-Montgomery rivalry intensified. Monty students stole the Panther Bell and painted it red and gray. After some school buildings were spray-painted, we got the bell back and repainted it orange and black. We rang it 37 times to celebrate the 37-6 win over the Vikings. The wrestling team came in first, and the varsity track team beat Vallejo and won the league championship.

Attendance at football and basketball games declined and some said school spirit was down. But did we have less school spirit or did we have more diversified interests? We changed as society changed. There was talk about the “establishment” and the “straights” and the “hips,” about different classes of people. It was okay to feel “groovy,” but we avoided those who were “hung up,” “uptight,” those who gave off “bad vibrations” or who were on a “bad trip.” Senior boys thought about the draft and the war in Vietnam. We talked differently because everybody talked differently. Our world was different.

School participation changed. The VICA Club (Vocational Industrial Clubs of America) won first place in the car caravan. New clubs included the American Indian Club, the Health Careers Club, the Mexican-American Youth Organization and the Outdoors Club. Some of us took Ethnic Studies as an alternative to second semester government. We participated in the second annual “Walk for Mankind,” a 22 mile marathon walk. We talked about Earth Day but still left litter on the floor by our lockers.

There was talk about abolishing the “daylight rule.” Anybody remember what that was all about?

The Independent Study Program allowed ninety students to conduct independent research in areas such as anthropology, ethnic studies or ecology. The Teachers’ Assistant Program was also established with forty-one students participating. We had activity periods where you could listen to an impromptu band or maybe a conscientious objector. Remember that?

Even our prom was different. It wasn’t held at the Veterans’ Memorial. It was at the Villa Chanticleer in Healdsburg. Was that the first time SRHS had its prom outside of Santa Rosa? Maybe so, I don’t know.

Does this mean we didn’t have a “good” year? Hardly. You see, this is the way it was in 1970. We, as students, changed. Other students throughout California changed. Other students experienced similar changes. But for us, it was our senior year at SRHS. And for me, it made a difference then. It makes a difference now.

by Rick Blane

We graduated the year SRHS was 100 years old, so you could say that does make 1976 a special class. High school education began in Santa Rosa in 1875 when 10 students entered the John C. Fremont School on Fourth Street and took up study on the second floor. All 10 students graduated three years later from the only high school in town.

In 1976, 490 of us marched into Bailey Field for commencement, and so did the graduating seniors at the tow other high schools. Public education in the U.S. was 300 years old when we began our last year, and the largest senior class would graduate that spring, about 3.1 million of us.

The nation’s bicentennial anniversary was big new that year. American flags and other patriotic art seemed to pop up everywhere—on buildings, on billboards, on water towers, on the sides of buildings, and even on automobiles. I remember Mr. Von der Porten talked it up quite a bit, and I guess a 200th birthday was a remarkable event.

A first-class stamp cost 13 cents in 1976. Solar energy was called the “wave of the future.” President Ford made an appearance up at the Geysers in support of alternative energy sources. The shortage of gasoline two years earlier was still a strong memory, so the auto manufacturers came out with high mileage cars like Mustang II, Maverick and Chevy Chevette. Although gas was 61 cents a gallon, the lines to fill up were note like they were. You could buy a used ‘74 Pinto Runabout for $2995 at Niles Buick. Or a sexier ‘75 Plymouth Duster for $4338 at Bishop-Hansel Ford. But few of us had that kind of money then. What did you pay for your last car?

More of us were encouraged to go to college, and although many of us made plans to do so we could get training at SRHS for jobs that didn’t require college. SRHS had lots of shop programs. Mr. Norris taught auto shop, Mr. Philipsen was in Metal shop, Mr. Diez was in wood shop (remember his boomerang project?) and the ag students learned welding and other skills. Girls could take clothing and learn other homemaking skills from Ms. Pannizzera or Ms. Carpenter. Does SRHS still offer those programs?

You could also enroll in work experience. That was a program in which you could earn graduation credits for working after school. You just turned in a time card. Talk about easy!

The Car Caravan happened in October just before the Big Game. Many clubs decorated trucks and entered them in the competition. I think teachers did the judging. We crammed those trucks full of students and drove them down Ridgway to Armory Drive to Steele Lane and back to campus. I bet you couldn’t load a flatbed that way today and drive around.

We beat Montgomery that weekend, and the football team placed second in the NBL. Do you remember how the Block S boys kept a 24-hour watch on the bell so that the Monty boys couldn’t try to steal it?

Was it the Montgomery game when Pandy stumbled and fell and lost his head? Pandy’s identity was always a secret, but everybody knew who he was that night.

Old teams left the NBL and new teams came in. The Napa and Vallejo schools went to new leagues, and we played Cardinal Newman and Rancho Cotate for the first time.

Title IX was changing sports that year. The girls could compete with the boys on “non-contact” teams. Mr. Shea, the football coach, also coached swimming that year. If you were on the swim team, you probably remember he didn’t seem to want the girls around. One girl earned a varsity letter in swimming. She was the first at SRHS to do so. What was her name? I’ve forgotten. Maybe she’ll write to the Foundation to tell me.

While some of the P.E. teachers and coaches didn’t want girls competing with the boys, other teachers were encouraging. I remember Mr. Brown and Mr. DeSoto talking to the girls about the opportunities in athletics.

Mr. DeSoto. “Mean Gene, the Grammar Machine,” we called him. But inside he was such a softie. If you got through his class, taking college English was a breeze. Same for science if you had Mr. Stone. We were fortunate, I think, to have so many good teachers who really cared for us.

Did Mr. Vine every call you “Goody-Two Shoes?” He did me. While his humor was biting, he loved being with us and was good for us. He was the senior class advisor. We students often taught his class. Ms. Waco was also a big help. She called the girls “women libbers” when she praised them and when she encouraged them to do away with double standards. If ever there was a “libber” at SRHS, it was she.

We could enroll next door at SRJC and take some classes there instead of at SRHS. If you did and if you cut classes on both campuses, you weren’t alone. The local newspaper said unexcused absences could costs the schools money, but the administration admitted cutting classes was “traditional.”

Did you ever miss class and “sprint to Bo’s” for breakfast? Lots of us did. The campus was open, so we could make choices about where to eat. You could walk across the street to Perry’s Deli or Farmers’ Market. You could walk down Mendocino to Roger’s Hamburgers or Taco Bell. If you had a car, you could make it to Eat & Run and get back in time for class. After football games, you could go to Denny’s and stay until late. Denny’s was open all night, wasn’t it?

Today a McDonald’s is across Mendocino where the railroad tracks used to be. In 1976 you could buy a McDonald’s burger for 20 cents. Where was the closest McDonald’s, anybody know? Probably in San Francisco, I think.

We went to the movies, usually the Star-Vue Drive-in, because if you knew the secret you could get in for free. That wasn’t easy at the Village Drive-in. We saw “Revenge of the Pink Panther,” “Jaws,” and “The Happy Hooker.” Did “The Exorcist” frighten you?

We went ice-skating at the Redwood Empire Ice Arena, and we played poker until really late. We tooled Fourth Street and parked up on Parker Hill or Grace Heights where the paved roads had just been built. On warm days we went to the river, to Healdsburg or to Hacienda. Did you ever go the beach at Palomar above Healdsburg, where the inflatable dam was? That was such fun!

On television we laughed at “Get Smart” and “All in the Family.” Some of us wondered about “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.” What was her problem?

We wore ski clothes to school. Why did we do that? “Mix and match” was a big style for the girls and so were pantsuits and coordinates. Girls could buy “pant coats” for $12.88 at the White House on 3rd Street. The dress code was changing, becoming less strict. Girls could wear pants and boys could wear t-shirts and their hair could grow long. Boys also wore bell-bottom Levi’s and tried to grow sideburns. Do you remember that massive beard Mr. Upson grew? His appearance frightened some younger students.

Do you remember Senior Character Day? Do you remember the “Brillo Soap Pad” that won a prize? That was fun too! I hear Senior Character Day doesn’t happen anymore and that the convention to elect student body officers doesn’t either. That’s too bad because I know we learned much about the electoral process and politics because of the convention.

The prom was fun. Did you go to the Villa for dinner? Did you ditch your date? I know two girls who did. They ran into their dates later. I wish I had seen that.

The Senior Picnic was at Morton’s Hot Springs near Kenwood. We rode buses to Disneyland for Grad Night. Those buses were sure quiet on the way back. We were all asleep. Charles Schulz of “Peanuts” gave us a graduation party. That was special.

It was a good year. I think we turned out well. Maybe we really were a “good” class.

by Rick Blane

The following article appeared in Summer, 2004 Foundation News, Vol. 16, No. 3

Next year the senior class of 1985 will celebrate its 20-year reunion. My parents graduated in the mid-60s, but what a difference between their senior years and mine. We were a new generation.

In the 60s, there were only two high schools in town: SRHS and Montgomery. In 1985, there were four high schools. We competed against Montgomery, Piner and Cardinal Newman. The biggest change between my parents’ class and my class was the continued emergence of girls’ athletics. High school sports truly became co-ed: SRHS fielded girls’ teams in soccer, tennis, basketball, softball, cross country and track. The 1985 teams were good: the Girls’ Varsity Softball team took second place in the North Bay League. The Varsity Girls’ Track Team won the All-City meet, beating all the other high schools. And, even better, the Girls’ Soccer team won the NBL/SCL championship! In the Echo, the pictures of the varsity soccer team and the varsity track team were comprised of both the boys’ team and the girls’ team, something my parents couldn’t have imagined in the 1960s.

We were diverse. Our last names now included Tran, Voravongsa, Chu, Guantong, Laiwa, Lum, Nguyen and Yukimasa. We called ourselves preppies, nerds, drama-ites, rockers, new wavers, mods, aggies and webrews. Our studies were diverse. We had everything from advanced placement classes to Work Experience Education programs. Some of us co-enrolled at SRJC. Social science offered behavioral science, current affairs, world affairs and 20th century. Independent studies in American government and US history were offered.

The computer age had arrived. We took keyboarding (a new term for typing), word processing, electronics and computer programming. Vocational goals were addressed. Agriculture offered agricultural occupations, forestry and animal science. Automotive maintenance and small gas engine classes were available. SRHS recognized the needs of others with out impaired hearing program, special education students and English as a second language. SRHS in the 60s was never like this!

Our principal was Dan Thomas. He wore sweaters, sometimes wrote poetry and was just a real neat guy. We were fortunate—it was his last year at SRHS. The school population increased to 1800 students. Bill Cody, Mike Daniels, Dan Earl and Helen Griesemer were some of our favorite teachers. Our drama and music departments were absolutely outstanding. Does anyone remember Ed Von der Porten’s first period history class when he dressed up as a Nazi soldier and played German music in order to emphasize that time in history? He and Mr. DeSoto were legends in their own time. We had a great faculty, and we somehow rewarded them by printing their pictures upside down in the Echo.

We were active. There were 15 different clubs on campus. The traditional ones included Key Club, Drama Club, Future Farmers of America, California Scholarship Federation (since 1925) and all that. But we also had the Backpacking Club, the International Club, Students for Social Responsibility, Molo Di and an esoteric and unofficial group of lads who called themselves Webrews.

Devoting themselves to the principles of Adolph Coors, the Webrews wore coast and ties, shorts and sandals and drank beer when appropriate. They all had very clever nicknames, but no one today can remember his own name or what it meant in the first place. This studious group only lasted one year on campus. Perhaps it was the so-called “initiation” of fledging sophomores, running naked at night across the Bennett Valley golf course that provided its downfall. This is a little known secret. But what can you say about high school fraternities?

1985 was the year Mary Lou Renton vaulted to fame in the Summer Olympics and Miss America, Vanessa Williams, fell from glory. 1985 was the year a seventy-one year old record was broken at SRHS: junior Tom Macken ran the mile in 4:18.4, shattering the record that had been set in 1914 by Panther Larry Chapman.

Ronald Reagan was re-elected for his second term—or did Mondale and Ferraro simply lose? At Stanford, the San Francisco 49ers beat the Miami Dolphins 38-16 in the Super Bowl. We played Trivial Pursuit. Some of us used tanning beds. We ended sentences by saying “not.” We were very cool at that. The music of the Beatles, the Moody Blues and the Doors was history. The music of 1985 featured Madonna, Arrowsmith, Elton John and Huey Lewis and the News—and that music is till with us today.

We had fun, we had tremendous spirit. “Ghostbusters” was a fabulous movie featuring a little white ghost, slashed diagonally with a wide, red bar. So we became “Vikingbusters” at the Santa Rosa-Montgomery rally that year. We even had “Vikingbuster” t-shirts. The faculty later said it was one of the biggest and most successful ever. Not only was it big and spirited, but we papered telephone poles, cars and most of downtown Santa Rosa with flyers proclaiming our dominance over the dreaded Montgomery.

At SRHS, we took part ina Coca-Cola commercial. Do you remember that horrible stuff called “New Coke?” It was so bad they brought back the original flavor and re-named it “Classic Coke.” And do you also remember Clara Peller bellowing, “Where’s the beef?”

Speaking of beef, in 1985 Roger’s Burgers on Mendocino closed its door. Mr. Daniels went into a nostalgic funk because he worked there while a SRHS student, you know. But the Santa Rosa Grill on Mendocino with its 1940s decor was new and so we went there. Leatherby’s Family Creamery (behind Acapulco) featuring old-fashioned ice cream became the place to go. The year drew to a close with the publication of 240-page Echo and a certain derogatory remark about some of the seniors. Now I can’t even remember what was said.

The Senior Picnic was at the Windsor Waterworks. Senior Grad Night started at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, dinner at the Velvet Turtle in San Rafael and culminated in an all-night cruise on San Francisco Bay.

Our senior prom was at the Villa Chanticleer in Healdsburg, but our graduation really took the prize. A new law required all Santa Rosa high schools to hold graduation ceremonies on the same day. Somehow Montgomery was allowed to use Bailey Field (not us) and we ended up at the fairgrounds. It was bad; some parents were still driving around as we received our diplomas. It was the first—and last—time that a SRHS graduation took place at the fairgrounds. That was almost twenty years ago.

Two faculty members later told us that the Class of 1985 was one of their all time favorites, that we would go on to fame and fortune and become “masters of the universe.”

So what made us different? Looking back, we weren’t “heavy,” if anything we were “light.” Our senior year was good to us. We were diverse in every sense of the word. We had good times, we had spirit and we had fun. We looked out for one another. It was simple as that. My senior class was different than my parents’ class. But we were different. We were a new Santa Rosa High School generation—and proud of it.

by Jenny Treadway and Hillary Wootton, Class of 1985

“These are the best years of your lives,”
Say the parents of 1985.
That’s what they tell us high school should be,
But was it really that way for you and for me?
Parents think it’s all football and cheerleading,
Instead of writing essays and lots of book reading.
We read Shakespeare and Salinger and Orwell too,
And had hard mathematics courses—not just 2+2

As sophomores we cowered under the dominating seniors,
And now that we’re there, we deserve our tenures.
As juniors we survived the inevitable term papers,
And listened to tales of Democrew capers.

There was some fun in the midst of it all,
The many activities through spring, winter and fall.
There were rallies, dress-up days, and dances to attend,
And through it all, we reached Nirvana in the end.

Today we are seniors, the last day we’ll be,
For most it’s not the last school campus we’ll see.
After this we’ll go to Berkeley or Stanford or UCJC,
“To prepare for the future,” whatever it may be.

High school’s role in the “college experience”
Is to coach the student in lecture endurance,
Through hours of psychology, chemistry and physics,
We can’t list them all—those periods one through six.

Finally we graduate and we’re glad it’s hap’ning,
But, like the koan of one hand clapping,
We’re also sad it’s time to go, we hate to leave,
But, of course, no one will grieve.

The juniors will be seniors,
And the sophomores—juniors.
It’s an endless cycle, this changing of classes,
As long as the teachers continue to pass us.

So unto life we go as prepared as can be,
To do our best and be all that we can be.
Most of us will work for the rest of our lives,
Some will become husbands, some will become wives.

Soon come the children who whine, cry and drool,
Then in five long years, we send them to school.
Through years of orthodondists, dermatologists and much, much more
They enter high school as a lowly sophomore.

Soon we’ll say, “These are the best years of your lives, enjoy it as it is.”
“You have it easy,” we’ll remind, and give them all that biz.
We’ll say, “We had to walk ten miles barefoot each day—
It was terrible, walking up hill, both ways.”

Then we’ll remember the fun that we had,
And all the things that we did in those years before grad.
We’ll remember the times that we shared with our friends,
And all the things we wished we could do again.

So, maybe in spite of all the hard work we’ve done,
These three years of high school have been fun.
So, in twenty years we’ll think back and sigh,
Maybe they were the best years of our lives.