George Washington High School - Continental Yearbook (Los Angeles, CA)

Page 13 text:

9 Om Mrs. . remember that Mr. Richmond taught half day and acted as registrar the other half, so some students managed always to be out of class. Miss Lulu Draper: One of my most vivid recollections is of the time when the grounds were being graded just outside the windows of room l2I. The steam shovel would very often approach the windows as if contemplating coming in to join the Spanish class. Miss Elthea Kohler: I first arrived, August I, 1927. Room IO8 was established as headquarters With the help of just one clerk, thousands of textbooks were stamped, numbered, and sorted! teacher assignments were checked: equipment and supplies re- ceived, checked, and distributed: incoming grades filed, etc., and all this with practically no equipment. l sat on a keg of nails covered with a piece of old carpeting, my desk was a packing box, and I typed on a portable typewriter, brought from home. Mr. A. I. Smith: Picture the auditorium of ten years ago-no seats, no orchestra pit, no curtains, a bare stage, and no linoleum aisles. The first week we secured some typewriter boxes to use for band and orchestra seats. A Mrs. Genevieve Ahrens: Ten years ago I got off a street car on Ver- mont lthere was no Normandie bus thenl, and started walking toward the school and my first job. l glanced up lO8th Street and saw large red brick buildings rising out of green fields. Sud- denly I was aware that this was Washington high school. Miss Kate L. Gridleyz It seems impossible that ten years have passed since Washington high school first opened its doors, so swiftly has year followed year. Those of us who were here when the school opened still dwell with a certain affection on those early days. Beginnings are always interesting, and pioneering in a school draws its members together. What we are today is all a part of what we were then. May the next ten years bring as steady a progress as the last ten have witnessed. Dessie Myers' I Ellfzsf Elaculfxl

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W? washington High -- IQ27 Miss Mignonette Miquelz As I think back to i927 I recall fifty teachers, many so young one took them for students, mostly strangers to one another, with a very hazy idea of what was expected of them. Mrs. Olive Mulholland: On the way over from Vermont Avenue that first morning we cut from lO8th Place across the open field to the Cafeteria Building at Washington. After parking the car against the cafeteria, we went inside and slipped over piles of lumber and dodged workmen as we attempted to serve lunch to hungry students. Mr. A. E. Bishop: At my first meeting with Mr. Hughes I offered to wrestle him when he suggested that I did not seem strong enough for the woodshop position. I had charge of the stage at first, and the first flood lights were five gallon cans. The woodshop was then also given the job of building bleachers. Otherwise, none could have been obtained for at least four years. Mr. I. E. Burgess: I remember that the agricultural plot was merely a location without buildings or even a fence. The covered walk on the south end of the quadrangle was cut through red adobe standing four feet above the level of the walk. There was no lawn, shrubbery, or trees. Miss Muriel McKinlay: If a modern could glance into a typical English room of that day, he would see the teacher in a smock worn to protect clothes from a very dusty front yard, teaching before no desk but a typewriting table big enough for a book and a seating chart and interrupted by the electrician installing light globes. Mr. L. E. Edwards thinks back: There were children in those days, little B7's, A7's, eighth and ninth grades. Some upper grades, but fewer. Now what's all this throbbing throng of gay young thousands? Who are these darling damsels and these brawny youths? These are the city-seasoned sophisticates. These are the citizenry. What hath Time wrought I I I

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Mrs. Olga Sutherland digs up some old-time slants: Mr. Whedon teaching science, and prepping for the V.P.'s office . . . 1. l. Hol- lingsworth just out of New York with a hair cut like Beatrice Lillie's and a skirt line like Texas Guinan's . . . Faculty meetings to deliberate on the wisdom of building a nursery for the B7's . . . Mr. Edwards growing more and more restless about the traffic situation . . . Peter Kuhlburger working those days, because some day he might get to be a Head . . . lvlr. Peter B. Kuhlburger: We even experienced dirt floors made 'bl possi e through the persistence of many of our students in going mud skating in the fields after rains. We had cement floors, but the mud coating had to be dried and inhaled before the cement became visible. Mr. T. B. Kelly: The science department was small, with only five teachers. There was no physiology laboratory, only one biology, one chemistry, and one physics laboratory. During the first semes- ter there was one chemistry class and one physiology class. There were several biology and general science classes. Miss joycie Hollingsworth: I always remember this incident: As well as being counselor then, I taught an English class. One day l was called into Mr. Hughes's office. There a very irate mother accused me of calling her son a scurvy elephant. l racked my memory and finally recalled that what l had said to him was that he was a disturbing element. Mr. L. A. Baker recalls: Dinwiddie's Daily, the Continental, and all the student clubs, the writing of school songs and yells, and choice of colors, the first edition of the Surveyor and the first athletic teams. All were l'k h i e t e buds that feebly grow from the protecting leaf and burst into full bloom. Qltdaftdlflgle - an gdfllll DGVS O