Corona del Mar High class of 1966 rekindles some old memories
Five ladies from the Corona del Mar High School class of 1966 walked through their alma mater’s front doors Friday afternoon.
A flier with event info for their class reunion was taped to a glass window.
“This must be it!” one of them proclaimed.
Walking past the front desk in the administration office, they headed toward the door leading out to the quad.
“Is this the principal’s office now?” one of them asked, pointing to a nearby room.
“How would I know? I never got in trouble!” another said.
The women giggled and kept walking.
The group of five then joined a group of about 60 other former CdM students, a majority from the class of 1966, in what became a collective trip down memory lane at their old stomping grounds.
The class of 1966 was the first to graduate from CdM having attended all four years at the school. Friday’s festivities featured a tour of the modern-day campus led by some of the high school’s current student government leaders.
Other scheduled reunion activities included lunch Saturday at Zubie’s Dry Dock in Huntington Beach, followed by dinner and dancing at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Newport Beach. Members of other CdM graduating classes attended.
“Being a part of that class [of 1966] meant a lot to us,” said alumna Christine Kramer. “It was the first time we felt as if we accomplished something.”
Kramer remembered walking from class to class seeing the baby palm trees planted in the quad. Now those trees are more than 10 feet tall. She called them beautiful.
Alumnus Bruce Murray recalled his days on the wrestling team and how it always felt like there was one thing missing.
“There were no chicks showing up” to watch the matches, Murray said with a laugh. “It was a lonely sport.”
For Murray, attending CdM in the ‘60s was a time where he and his buddies could grab their diving gear and jump in the water on a nice day. Other times they’d take their spear guns and go fishing off the rocks.
On Friday he took notice of the small details that remain on the campus, like the narrow windows by the classroom doors that always gave him a view of the sunshine and helped him stay alert during class.
Before walking through the campus, the class was split into several different tour groups.
Class of 1966 alumna Paulette Aki McKenzie began walking with her pack toward the English building, but she stopped after finding her old locker.
“Do you still remember the code?” one of her classmates asked. McKenzie laughed.
As the group made its way into the building where language classes are now held, Randie English recalled a specific memory from Nov. 22, 1963. She was in French class when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.
Jerry Hornbeak remembered how the announcement of the president’s death echoed through the campus loudspeakers around lunchtime that day. He helped the audio-visual department cart televisions into classrooms so everyone could watch the news.
“There was dead silence everywhere,” Hornbeak said.
Some groups visited the library, tennis courts, pool, the middle school enclave — which wasn’t there in CdM’s early days — and different academic buildings.
During her tour, alumna Virginia Barr Curtis walked past a calculus classroom where she once learned and polished her skills typing on typewriters.
Mike Zimmer and his group of about 15 visited the Big Gym.
“We remember when this wall was bare,” he said, looking at the rows of banners CdM has since hung up that recognize the Sea Kings as CIF champions for sports like swimming, water polo, cross country and soccer.
Pam Mattson-East remembered the quad, which is at the heart of the school, as a place for pep rallies, lunches and her class graduation.
“There used to be a wall right here,” she noted, pointing to the middle of quad’s central platform. “This is where we walked up, grabbed our diploma and sat down. It’s different now, but it all looks great.”
