In the Spring of ’41
Memories return in pieces. We see faces, hear sounds and then recall aromas from the past that linger in pockets of our mind.
Sometimes they merge, like strands of mist in a valley, and form into complete but blurry pictures, offering backward glances to a different time.
Julian Wolf was seeking just such pictures as he walked through the campus of Manual Arts High the other day, admitting with quick laughter that 50 years was long ago.
Recalling the smile of a girl named Betty Mae Brown, for instance, isn’t easy when the smile is filtered through the smoke of events that can obscure even the kindest light from a half-century ago.
And yet it is necessary for Wolf, now 67, to remember those things as he prepares to confront lost faces Saturday on the 50th anniversary of his commencement.
The Class of Spring, 1941, is about to get together again.
I read of the reunion in a classified ad that sought other graduates, and wondered what changes five decades have made both in the makeup of the people and in the nature of the school they attended.
Manual Arts, the third high school built in Los Angeles, exists today in a troubled milieu of gangs and narcotics on the south side of town.
Security is heavy in the hallways of the peach-toned buildings, and graffiti mars the landscape that surrounds its fenced-in perimeter.
It wasn’t that way 50 years ago.
Remember first that 1941 was a milestone year.
When he graduated from Manual Arts, Wolf and his buddies were saying goodby to a world that still sat on front porches and left its doors unlocked.
World War II began for us in 1941, followed by wars in Korea and Vietnam. New nations emerged, old nations vanished, and the map of the globe was altered with startling speed.
Walks in space and men on the moon were in the offing beyond 1941, but what we were thinking about then was a place called Pearl Harbor.
Wolf went to war just like everyone else. He went to college too, as did most of the kids in his class, and got married and divorced twice.
“That’s not the norm,” he was saying the other day as we walked the campus. “We’ve got people who’ve been married all those 50 years.”
Wolf is a tall, slim man with thinning red hair who looks 10 years younger than he is. He went into the insurance business after college, became interested in rowing and was manager of the U.S. men’s rowing team during the 1984 Olympics.
Now semi-retired, what’s occupying his mind these days is setting up Saturday’s reunion at the Airport Marriott. About 115 former classmates will be there out of 630.
But first they’re going to visit Manual Arts just to see what it’s like now. A sign out front, anticipating that visit, says “Welcome Class of 1941.” It also says, “Community mtg on drugs 4/24. What we can do to intervene.”
“We didn’t have gangs or drugs back then,” Wolf says, walking past the girl’s gym where dances were held in pre-rock days. A school band used to play tunes like “Deep Purple” and “September in the Rain.” The kids danced cheek to cheek.
Like the music, the demographics of the school have changed too. Today, it’s 70% Latino and 30% black. Wolf recalls a student body that was maybe 30% black and Latino and the rest Anglo.
“We were family,” he says.
“Drugs?” He laughs. “The ‘bad’ kids in those days were the ones who smoked cigarettes during the lunch hour.”
Almost everyone finished school 50 years ago. Today, Principal Marvin Starer says, of a class that begins with 1,300 students in its freshmen year, 300 graduate. Others drop out or move away or just disappear.
There was school loyalty back then, Wolf remembers. “My family moved to the Westside a year and a half before I was to graduate, but I hitchhiked back and forth every day to finish up here. It took me an hour each way, but I never wanted to go anywhere else.”
Neither did people like Gen. Jimmy Doolitle, who led the first air raid on Japan, or former Gov. Goodwin Knight or film director Frank Capra. They too were graduates of Manual Arts.
Betty Mae Brown? She was just someone Wolf was crazy about a long time ago. A tall girl with brunette hair and an easy laugh who ended up marrying a doctor. Both died some years ago.
Much has changed about Manual Arts but much remains the same. The halls are still a pale green and the linoleum a funny speckled pattern. The bungalows are gone and there are tennis courts now.
“The kids are different too,” Wolf says. “There’s not as much respect for the law or for each other.”
“All of society has changed,” Marvin Starer says. “Nothing is the same anymore.”
Wolf nods but says nothing. He continues down the pale green hall, remembering. For an instant, he stares off and smiles. I can’t help but wonder if Betty Mae Brown is still on his mind.