‘Downwardly Mobile’ Get to Catch Up : Some Surprises, Some Sadness at 20th Reunion of High School Class

There were some unlikely success stories making the rounds at the Beverly Hills High School Class of 1971’s 20th reunion last weekend. About the classmate who worked as a bartender in a Chilean brothel, for example, or the guy who cleaned sewers for awhile in Arizona.

And, predictably, a lot of Westside lawyers and doctors also turned up, but not enough to prevent a former president from confidently--and perhaps proudly--describing the class as downwardly mobile. Less than 5% live in 90210 (Beverly Hills) or in surrounding ZIP codes.

The class of 1971 has also experienced its share of tragedy.

In a stirring moment at the $65-a-plate dinner on Saturday, one member of the class grabbed the microphone and announced that one person who would have loved to have been there could not: Paul Miller, the only person ever elected president of the student body for both a fall and spring term (the second time by write-in), a Stanford graduate and former dentist, had died of complications from acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

But the class of ’71 also lost classmates in the 1978 PSA air crash in San Diego, to drugs and to suicide. After the speaker, Martin Schwartz, had recited the names of those he knew who had died, he asked if the audience knew any others. Three or four more names were forwarded from all parts of the room. Fourteen graduates were mentioned in all, all of them men.

Most of the evening was spent as 20th reunions are spent everywhere: with eyes continually searching the room, looking, just looking--women surprised at how much hair the men have lost, and men surprised at how beautiful women can be at 38 and 39 years of age. “Late blooming,” one man said. “It really occurs.”

In spite of the community’s affluence, members of the class say the school in 1971 bore some resemblance to a normal American high school. By 1971, for example, much of the Hollywood glitz of earlier years was gone from Beverly Hills High. Few teen actors or children of movie stars attended school there.

Now, many returning graduates, especially those from out of town, were surprised at how the boom years of the ‘80s and the surge of immigration had transformed their school and their city. Some were amazed to learn that the No. 2 language at the school these days is Farsi, spoken at home by about 20% of the students.

“It was a nice place to grow up,” Keefe Millard recalled of the Beverly Hills she remembered. As a junior, Millard had organized a special Earth Day edition of the school paper in honor of the original celebration 21 years ago. As a senior, she served as a student body vice president and went on to work on the film “Missing” when it was shot in Mexico 10 years ago.

“We used to have a Newberry’s where you could meet with your grandmother for lunch, and a pet store on the same block where you could look at the birds and fish,” she recalled. “Now what do kids have here, Rodeo Drive?”

The classmates also discovered that many of their teachers are gone now. The budget problems of recent years have precipitated a wave of retirements in the ranks of the veteran teachers.

On Saturday night, former class presidents Jim DeWitt and Steve Tolkien, who has several television credits to his name, read the results from a pre-reunion questionnaire.

They found the Class of ‘71--or at least the 220 respondents to the questionnaire--to be domestically inclined, having entered into 135 marriages and produced 237 children.

“And we are early starters,” Tolkien said. “Our oldest offspring is 19 years old.

“We are familiar with birth control,” DeWitt added. “The average number of children is two, the most number of children is four.”

So far, class members have been happy with their choice in spouses, with only 20 reported divorces.

“But we are boring,” DeWitt said. “We have no famous movie stars, no Supreme Court justices, no Heisman Trophy winners and no mass murderers.”

In retrospect, DeWitt said he thought some additional questions might have been asked, such as “How many times a week do you see your analyst?” and “What was your adjusted gross income for 1990?”

As the Saturday evening and Sunday gathering wore on, people stood in smaller and smaller circles sharing secrets about who had had crushes on whom. Some of the conversations focused on when each participant had lost his or her virginity (in most cases, the event had occurred after graduation--it was a more innocent age).

Some recounted tales of the silly things they did in high school. As sophomores, three of the classmates had, as a lark, dressed up in the robes of Arab sheiks and walked through downtown Beverly Hills. “Looking back now,” one of them said, “I think we were visionary.”

By 4:30 Sunday afternoon, the air had turned chilly and damp, and a light sprinkle, which some in the dwindling crowd referred to as rain, began. The remaining members of the class of ’71 headed for their cars, having strengthened bridges to their pasts, perhaps not to see each other again for 10 or 20 more years.