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The Anaheim High School Class of 1945...

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The Anaheim High School Class of 1945 was special, Vincent Mazza believes, since its entire high school education took place during war time.

“All of us were not only getting an education,” said Mazza, who now lives in Fullerton, “but we were also spending time after school doing such things as helping the war effort by planting and harvesting crops because most of the men were away fighting.”

The women, he noted, were also there, and a lot of them, including classmate Madelyn (Vincent) Conliffe of Anaheim, were riveters in war plants.

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Even sports were different. “I played baseball, basketball and football, and the whole team only had 18 players,” said Mazza, who was the school’s student commissioner of boys’ athletics.

It’s those memories class members will no doubt discuss when they gather at Anaheim’s Grand Hotel on Oct. 12, and it might be a pretty good crowd.

“Only 12 of the just under 200 in our class have died, a fourth of the class still lives in Anaheim, and there’s only about 25 missing,” said Mazza, who’s taking reservations ((714) 680-5373).

“You know,” he reflected, “I still have some of the gasoline ration stamps from that time. We had to conserve on everything during the war.”

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