Class of ’45 : Leaders Trace Ties to Point Loma High School Days

It was the year that World War II ended and the Atomic Age began. A $3.5-million runway--the longest in the West--was dedicated at Lindbergh Field. San Diego voters approved a $2-million bond issue to transform the marshlands of False Bay into a tourist draw called Mission Bay. And a new sewage system was completed for a swelling city of 362,000.

At Point Loma High, five teen-age boys concentrated on other matters during their senior year. There were the double dates, the grit of a double-wing formation on the football field, studies and the challenge of scraping up enough money for admission to hear the blaring be-bop of the likes of Stan Kenton and Glenn Miller.

“Butch” Burnham. “Twinkle Toes” Wiesler. Danny Larsen. “The Mayor” Cleator. Jay Timmons. They were leaders in the Class of ’45.

Today they are 58-year-old political, business and civic honchos, calling the shots on whether to build a waterfront convention center in a city of a million people or how to run the state’s largest bank, with assets of $118 billion. But while their lives are undoubtedly more complicated, they are still products of a profoundly simpler age that shaped their values and forged friendships that have survived more than four decades.

“The group’s very tight,” said Timmons, who made his fortune in the office furniture business in Los Angeles. “We all see each other and we all recognize the longevity of knowing each other for this period of time.

“I think there is one helluva mutual respect. It’s not usual that you’ve had a friend for 40 years and that you’ve been in touch with each other in that time.”

The names of the Point Loma gang sound like a page from a local Who’s Who.

Malin Burnham. Once a serious, shy boy who won the world’s amateur sailing championship the summer after high school. Burnham is chairman of John Burnham & Co., a San Diego insurance and real estate brokerage firm; chairman of the First National Bank of San Diego; an influential local Republican, and at the forefront of a national drive to recapture the America’s Cup yachting prize from the Australians.

James B. Wiesler. An outgoing student who one of his cohorts said “used, maybe, one-eighth of his ability. He could get an A in 30 seconds that would take me three weeks to get.” Wiesler has since excelled with the Bank of America, the only employer he has ever had. He is the third-ranking officer at Bank of America headquarters in San Francisco, with responsibility for more than 35,000 employees. Recently, Wiesler negotiated a $4.75-million settlement with the federal government over charges that the bank violated cash transactions laws.

W. Daniel Larsen. The fullback who sat out most of his senior season because of injured knees. He was the only one in the Point Loma group who had a car--a 1934 Ford his father bought for $350. As a contractor, Larsen has left his mark in San Diego by helping to build San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium and managing the construction job for the main post office on Midway Drive. He has served on the city’s downtown redevelopment agency and last year was appointed to the San Diego Unified Port District board.

Bill Cleator. The man who pushed for Larsen’s appointment to the Port District board. Son of San Diego’s first marshal, Cleator earned the dubious nickname of “the mayor” from his high school chums because he was “so impressed” that his family knew former San Diego Mayor Percy J. Benbaugh, said one friend. Cleator liked to argue with teachers. After a successful career as a corporate executive in Los Angeles, Cleator is now the reigning conservative on the City Council and is running for mayor.

Jay Timmons. Tall, lanky, a joke-teller. Basketball and track star, thespian, head cheerleader, Timmons went on to make “several millions” in the office furniture business in Los Angeles, nursing Hiebert Inc. from a firm of 12 employees to a company of 1,200 when the American work force was becoming increasingly white-collar. Timmons sold his company in 1981 and is now “out of the kitchen.”

Many in the Point Loma gang hung out together as far back as kindergarten. But the group solidified into a clique at Point Loma High when Cleator transferred from Hoover High in his junior year.

“If you classified them today as they do at school, they are the ‘soches’--they are all involved in a group of people that go out and party together. They had their own small group,” said Edward Hobson, a member of the Class of ’45 who is a Point Loma High art teacher.

Even now, many of the group members can’t quite explain what drew them together so tightly. Most of their attempts are descriptions of innocent adventures, a coming of age when Hitler was the epitome of evil and San Diego was entering a gangly adolescence.

World War II weaned the city from its timid past. People flocked to San Diego from all over the country because of the Navy and military industries like Convair, which pumped out 33,000 warplanes.

Communities virtually sprang up from nowhere. Leap-frog development skipped bucolic Mission Valley and landed in Linda Vista, where construction workers built 2,000 permanent and 1,000 temporary dwellings in just 159 days. The 14,000 people who moved into the new community constituted the northern fringe of San Diego.

More people meant a need for more water, and city officials assembled a plan to tap the Colorado River. Lindbergh Field was expanded for heavy warplanes, but there was the idea of luring significant air traffic during peacetime. With victory in sight, civic leaders advocated the development of False Bay to attract tourists and offer an economic substitute for war industries.

Sailors and military workers were getting married and settling in San Diego, creating an expanding consumer market. Word of mouth about the climate--a mention or two in some national publications didn’t hurt--was sure to bring others.

San Diego was becoming a city of opportunity. On the threshold of the technological age, the leaders of the 201 students in Point Loma’s Class of ’45 would be poised for success.

Burnham and his friends brought to the future a belief that life should be a straight line.

“At that time, the popular thing to do was go to college, get married, raise a family of three or four children and get into a business life, a commercial life,” Burnham said. “It was fairly set, a narrow routine, compared to the choices that our youth have today. It was easier to focus on fewer things.”

Some had a head start. Burnham’s grandfather started the family insurance, mortgage and commercial real estate business. Larsen’s father, a Danish immigrant and contractor who built the county administration building, began to prosper with the war boom. Both Burnham and Larsen accepted their first post-college jobs from their fathers.

But all of the Point Loma gang say they had values geared for success that were forged by close families and the Depression. The war was underscored by blackouts along the coast in Point Loma and watching the Navy string a net across the bay as a defense against Japanese submarines.

Their accounts of growing up in San Diego are sprinkled liberally with anecdotes about hard work and seriousness. Wiesler peddled the Saturday Evening Post and Larsen sold Liberty magazine door-to-door or on street corners. Wiesler and Burnham mowed their neighbors’ lawns for pay.

“I think we were just all brought up with the work ethic, and to be successful was one of the more important things in life,” Larsen said. “I just never thought about living any other way. I guess that was the reason we were all attracted together. We all felt the same way.”

Their more animated memories, however, are about five guys who seem to be right out of a script for “Father Knows Best.” Life was to be tackled with naive confidence.

Such was the case of Timmons. His mother and father died before he graduated in 1945. His house burned down, and a sister needed treatment for severe emotional distress. His response was to work two--sometimes three--part-time jobs during his senior year to support his family. This, in addition to starring in school plays, participating in track meets and playing basketball.

With no television to speak of, the gang would gather at the beach or go to Topsy’s, a drive-in hamburger spot near Midway and Rosecrans Street. When they partied, they didn’t drink alcohol and only indulged in mild games of “post office.” The worst trouble they got into was a scolding from the principal for daring to leave campus for an ice cream cone during lunch.

For a special time, there were double, sometimes triple, dates to the Pacific Square Ballroom at Ash Street and Pacific Highway, where the gang danced to the Big Band luminaries like Spike Jones who would make the circuit to San Diego. Admission, Cleator remembers, was $3 a person.

Those were the days when face masks were not required for the leather football helmets, and the mighty Point Loma Pointers featured Burnham at guard, Wiesler at end, Larsen (if he wasn’t injured) at fullback and Cleator, a second-stringer, on the bench. Timmons was the head cheerleader, a star in basketball and a record-setting pole vaulter.

“We prided ourselves in playing the most number of minutes out of a possible 100%,” Wiesler said. “Many times, we would play the whole game without going out for a substitution.”

Imagine the future director of “global operations” for the Bank of America galloping around the gridiron in football cleats that curled up at the toes. The shoes were made of kangaroo skin, Wiesler explained, and they unexpectedly stretched out during a high school football career. Hence the nickname “Twinkle Toes.”

Imagine Bill Cleator, with a head of hair and saddle shoes, arguing that Herbert Hoover was a good guy. The future city councilman was the organizer, the kid who “loved to put things on.” He was the stage manager for the drama club; the sponsor of the traditional “ditch day,” when he and classmates skipped school to play on the beach.

Imagine Burnham, called “Butch” because of his haircut, so shy that he had difficulty giving an oral report in class. Yet he was popular enough that he was elected the senior class president. Wiesler arranged a date for Burnham for the school’s Starlight Delight dance on May 5, 1944, with a girl called “Chatter,” who eventually became Burnham’s first wife.

Imagine the worst form of rebellion--dirty corduroys.

“That and saddle shoes were the uniform of the day,” Larsen said. “I used to have a fight with my mother all the time. She wouldn’t let me out of the house wearing them, but she would give in after a while, like most mothers do.”

Imagine this surprise on the last day of high school--Burnham and Wiesler, the odds-on favorites to win the coveted “citizenship” award for boys, shocked during a school assembly when the principal announced the name of . . .

Bill Cleator.

“They almost booed,” cackled Cleator. “Some of them didn’t speak to me until two or three days later. They thought they deserved it.” Common suspicion persists that Cleator won the award because he was the pet of Miss Jones, an office secretary and a citizenship award judge.

But that was about as mad as good friends got. The circle stayed so close after high school that Larsen and Timmons rendezvoused with Cleator in Las Vegas 29 years ago to watch San Diego native Gene Littler win golf’s Tournament of Champions. Cleator was on his honeymoon at the time.

Since then, there have been dinners and skiing excursions among the Point Loma gang.

“We just had a heck of a good time,” Larsen said, reflecting on the Class of ’45 and his high school days. “I count my blessings every day when I think back.”

“We just had a natural bond,” Cleator said. “I don’t know what it is. The chemistry of that group, I’ve never seen anything like it.”