SMHS Memories

My senior year of high school started at my beloved Classen High School in Oklahoma City. I was totally involved with Honor Society, Pep Club and other extracurricular activities and had the honor of being elected as an officer of Student Council/ASB for the senior year. I was selected for an advanced art program that would have resulted in an art scholarship. My arduous academic work had also set me up as a scholastic scholarship recipient. It seemed as though almost everything I’d worked for throughout my school life might result in the opportunity to grab the gold…or at least the brass ring. Life was good. I’d been on vacations and business trips to NYC and LA with my parents and assumed one day I’d end up in one or the other….some day in the distant future. That  “someday” came in October of my senior year when I learned that I was moving to a place named San Marino. The life I knew was gone in an instant. Gone. I was invisible, with no background, living in a strange place.

I remember:

Going with my father to register at SMHS that day in October when everyone else was already ensconced in their senior year.

The aroma of the air made up of a concoction of eucalyptus and smog. It hurt to breathe.

Being required to “talk” in front of one of my classes more than most any “new kid” would want. Apparently, my accent was great fodder for entertainment and amusement.

My first date with Roger Pfaff on the first Friday I was at SMHS. We double dated and drove to Fontana to the drag races. I thought I had been kidnapped or at least driven half way back to Oklahoma!

Coach Bob Mahoney for his wry humor that made fun of my humiliation at having to take Driver’s Ed and First Aid as the only senior in a sophomore class in order to meet California state graduation requirements. He made me laugh. Thank you, Coach Mahoney.

John Christensen, the art instructor, who took me to audit art classes at Art Center and encouraged me to set it as my destination. I thank him for the commission he secured for me to paint a mural in a San Marino home during my senior year. He also had me paint the faux, huge portrait of Jefferson Davis to hang over the bandstand at Grad Night . . . .  probably so I’d feel included. Thank you, John Christensen.

Spring Break was great fun spending time with some of you in Balboa and Newport . . . . .and starting to really laugh again.

Rehearsal for graduation in the bleachers on the field on an overcast day with threatening clouds. Roger Pfaff and his Band of Merry Men did a mock rain dance to tease me, the resident Okie. I looked skyward and willed it to rain. It did rain, although very briefly, and I gave a silent thank you to my Cherokee Nation

Life Since Grad Night

School and working four years for SoCal Gas in downtown LA, while going to school at night. Met fascinating people from 360 degrees of SoCal.

I married a guy I’d dated in college when he returned from a stint in OCS and a tour of duty in Vietnam. In 1969, my beautiful daughter Kimberly was born

In 1973, I returned to the work force in consultative sales for the paper manufacturing, packaging and graphics industries. For thirty-five years I worked with designers, ad agencies and corporate in-house design groups on extremely diverse, custom manufactured products from aircraft barrier wrap to graphics, packaging and exhibits for cosmetics, spirits and even movie studios. It involved travel to 27 states and even a little to Canada. It was a smorgasbord of interesting people and places and projects. I had divorced in 1982 and had become sole support of my daughter, so I had to keep my nose to the proverbial grindstone.

In 2003, my daughter quit a great job with ABC Prime Time Entertainment Advertising and moved to Atlanta (Oh No!), with a position as marketing director for a company, so she could be near my soon-to-be, terrific son in law. They were married in 2006. In 2011, they moved to Laguna Niguel. (Oh Happy Day!) Sometimes I get to babysit my darling four year old granddaughter, while looking at a view of the ocean one way and a view of the mountains the other. It’s not a bad gig.

There have been so many crossroads that have not intersected with my dotted line plans. I want to be back in the work force or at least involved in projects of value, so it’s time to gird my loins and any other parts I can gird and get involved for the next fifty years.