The sun never made it past the...

The sun never made it past the gray clouds Friday and there was a constant wind that chilled, but many at Juan de Anza Elementary School in Hawthorne considered the day perfect.

It was Grandparents’ Day at the Wiseburn district school, which has barely 300 students, and more than 200 beaming grandparents showed up.

“I laughed, I cried, and I remember what the best part of being old is,” said Hawthorne resident Dolores Preston, 74: “It’s watching your grandkids.”

Actually, Preston wasn’t watching her grandchildren, who live in San Diego, but second-grader Nicole Hooks, 7, whom Preston baby-sits.

“Each of the six years I’ve come here, I came on behalf of the kids I’ve baby-sat,” she said. “I figure why not, since I love them as much my own grandchildren.”

Attending Grandparents’ Day six years in a row is impressive, but so is the first-time appearance of Sun Hong Yuen Lam. Lam is from Hong Kong and arranged her visit to Los Angeles around this day. Separately, Michael DeBrunner’s grandparents from Nuremberg, West Germany, planned their trip around the day too.

The festivities began with performances by the children in the playground behind the school. Later, the grandparents visited classrooms--many groaning as they stooped into the little chairs--and then recessed for a school lunch.

Watching the children reminded Jean Drapeau, 70, of the “innocence of being young.” He came to see his grandson, David Sexton. “It is such a free-spirited age. Just watching them makes me feel young again,” said Drapeau.