Thoughts After Attending the Uni High School Class of 1974 Reunion

On Saturday, May 18, 2024, I went to what would have been my 50th high school reunion which took place at the Sheraton in Agoura Hills, California.  

I had a wonderful time!

Susie Marcus Noble, Susan Hand, Lisa Duffy McKean, and Jo Ann Schneider Farris - all former Blue Birds and Camp Fire Girls

Miss Seib from Emerson and Jo Ann

Susie Marcus Noble, Miss Seib, and Jo Ann

The people I know their names in this photo are Valerie Geller, Forrest Andrews, and Susie Marcus Noble

Valerie Geller and Susie Marcus Noble

Forrest Andrews and Jo Ann

Jo Ann and Doug Kaplan

Jo Ann and her husband Dan

Janet Tanaka and I were about the same size

It was so good to reunite with the “kids” I grew up with even though I didn’t go to University High School.   (I went to Bellagio Road Elementary School and then Emerson Junior High, but in 10th Grade, I began Hollywood Professional School and graduated from there.)

And…since the reunion, I’ve done a lot of thinking about my childhood growing up in Belair.  I am going to write out some of my thoughts in this blog post.

In the middle of third grade, when I was eight years old, I was ripped out of a very happy existence of living in Canoga Park, California when my father hastily decided he would move our family to Belair because his job at UCLA Medical Center and the VA hospital was closer to Belair than the San Fernando Valley.  

My dad thought the schools in Belair would be good schools and safe because we lived in a classy neighborhood;  that was true regarding Bellagio Road School.

The problem was that Bellagio Road School was in the Los Angeles School District which at the time had too many children in its schools and not enough funds.

What I remember about my elementary school years were crowded classrooms and bungalow buildings to accommodate all the children born in the baby boom era, optional busing for a handful of African American children from the Los Angeles ghettos to come to Bellagio, and lack of funds at the school so there wasn’t even grass on the school’s campus.

The Brentwood area didn’t have enough room at their elementary schools to accommodate all the children so many of the students attending Bellagio Road Elementary School lived in Brentwood, not Belair.

Also, Belair had no sidewalks, so children could not walk to school, so buses drove through both west and east Belair picking up students and taking them home.

I vaguely remember my teachers at Bellagio:  I don’t remember the third grade teacher’s name, but in fourth grade I had Mr. Shea (who all the little girls had a crush on) and in fifth I had Miss McCormack.  Miss Thomas taught us the first part of sixth grade until she got married.   

During all of my elementary school years I wanted so much to get into “the smart class.”  Even though I almost always got “Straight A’s” I was always in the middle group.  I never understood why, but I learned later that the IQ tests we took in third grade defined how we were placed throughout our education.  We all knew which class was the “dumb class” and the “smart class.”  (My brother Billy was in the “smart class.”)

Each year at the beginning of the school year, we’d return to the classroom we’d been in the year before on the first day of school and I’d anxiously await to hear who my teacher would be.  Every year I was disappointed to not be placed with the smart group.

There was another thing the Los Angeles School District did to accommodate all the children attending school in the 1960s:  some children would begin Kindergarten in September, but others, based on their birthdays, would begin Kindergarten in February.  This meant there were June graduations and late January graduations.

My mother wanted me to continue doing the activities I’d had in Canoga Park and found a Blue Bird group (like Brownies) of girls that were not in my class and one semester ahead of me.  I’m guessing they may have been in the second half of third grade and I was in the first have of third grade when I joined.

The kids in that Blue Bird group had been together from first or second grade.  What I recall was that I wasn’t really ever accepted completely in the group, but I did make friends with Sara Morgan who was close to a girl in the group named Happy Rotenberg.  

I recall Blue Birds met every Tuesday after school at the home of someone named Carolyn in Westwood.   Village. 

Some of the in the Blue Bird group were Lisa Duffy, Susan Hand, Eve Athey, Susie Marcus and Jamie Kronick.  Jamie was “different” I recall.  She may have been what today is sometimes called mentally disabled.  

I heard some of the girls says one day, “Jo Ann is weird, but not a weird at Jamie.”  (I was devastated to hear that and knew I never would fit in with whatever was expected to be normal.)

Blue Bird Memories 

Remembering Camp Fire Girl Camp - I’m on the end

Blue Birds Reunite the day after the reunion!  Lisa Duffy, Susan Hand, Denny Dexter, I’m in the center  and on my left is Eve Athey

Blue Bird Memories from Lisa Duffy

Me with Howard Fine the day after the reunion…his photo of how he looked at Emerson below

The Blue Bird Group eventually “flew up” and became Camp Fire Girls.  I don’t know if I stayed with the group in sixth grade or not, but I do remember pleading with my parents to not make me continue since I imagine knowing that some of the girls in the group thought I was weird was enough for me not to want to continue.

Emerson Junior High School Class of 1971 photo

Friends were so important to me I recall.  The good friends I had at Bellagio were Brentwood kids so in sixth grade I decided to find some friends who were going to Emerson.  Unfortunately Fredi Diamond who lived across the street from me (who had been my good friend at Bellagio in 6th grade) wanted new friends at Emerson, so I had to find new friends there.  

I recall that even being seen alone at lunch time at Emerson could cause ridicule, so I panicked when the friends I hung out with were sick and not at school.  During seventh grade I recall eating lunch with Erin Madison and Kim Kitano.

Some of my semi-in crowd friends at Emerson:  Julie Leve, Greg Poe, ?, Doug Kaplan, Bernadette McEwan

Me and my mom on Emerson graduation day

Mr. Fleishman with a student - (Mr. Fleishman was a math teacher that caught me cheating)

JO ANN’s 9th grade class photo

On the quad at Emerson

Kathie French is in the top photo next to me (can’t see my face) and my good friend Bernadette McEwan is in the bottom photo

In 8th grade, two girls who were in the semi-in crowd at Emerson: Ellen Garris and Sheri Lipsky, began ice a skating lessons at the Santa Monica ice rink.  Ellen and Sheri saw me do a one foot scratch spin at the rink and were so impressed that they instantly welcomed me as their friend, but that also gave me a ticket into the “semi-in crowd!”  Thus, in 8th grade, I had a group of friends I’d see at school every day and I was so happy.  I made friends that year with Bernadette McEwan and even though the semi-in crowd sort of fell apart in 9th grade, Bernadette and I remained friends until we graduated from Emerson. (I have a vague memory that I didn’t quite fit in with the “in crowd” anymore since I was afraid to smoke hash.)

Kids in those days wrote letters, so Bernadette and I kept in touch for awhile, but lost tough somewhere in 10th grade.  I always wondered what happened to her and I am delighted to say that due to Facebook we were reunited in around 2010!

Anyway, back to my thoughts about this wonderful reunion:

50 plus years have passed and it was delightful to see everyone who remembered me from my childhood and even see those who may have bullied me or made fun of me when I was a kid.  It was wonderful to see that everyone had lived full lives and remember those days too!  A special thank you to those who made this reunion happen!