ANAHEIM : School Counselor Closing Long Career

After 25 years as a guidance counselor in Orange County and more than half a century as an educator, Stella Swakowski’s last day at school is today. Swakowski, 72, is retiring as head guidance counselor at Orangeview Junior High in Anaheim and plans to travel around the world with her older sister.

“Great challenges, but equal amounts of rewards,” Swakowski said of her long career in education, which began in 1941 with a teaching job in Montana. She served as principal of schools in Montana and Iowa, then trained as a guidance counselor through a U.S. Department of Education grant and came to California in 1969.

Swakowski spent 10 years at Los Alamitos High School and 10 at Magnolia High School in Anaheim, and has been at Orangeview since 1988. She coached academic pentathlon and decathlon teams, refereed student-faculty basketball games and earned a reputation for her polka dancing and frequent trips to Las Vegas.

“We chaperoned dances, we went to the ballgames, always interacting and having fun,” said Cynthia Grennan, who worked with Swakowski at Los Alamitos High and now is her boss as superintendent of Anaheim Union High School District.

At her retirement party Wednesday, scores of friends and colleagues from throughout the decades--some former students, many having preceded her in retirement--sang Swakowski’s praises. Literally.

“Stella Swakowski, you’re really a doll. Just what to do without you makes us all want to bawl,” a chorus of colleagues sang in a spoof on the song “Officer Krumpke” from the musical “West Side Story.” “Gee, Stella Swakowski, we’re down on our knees. Cause no one wants to see you go, so stay with us, please!”

Molly McGee, who had Swakowski as a counselor while a sophomore in high school and now sits on the district’s board of trustees, thanked Swakowski for two decades of support and friendship.

“A lot of people can’t handle change,” McGee said. Swakowski “has embraced the diversity of cultures; she’s very fair. When you see someone who holds up your spirit, that works for children everywhere.”

Swakowski said she just tries to help children “be the best they can possibly be.”

“When kids come in, I always ask, ‘Are you trying to be the best you can be?’ They look at me with big eyes and say, ‘Well, no, Miss Swakowski.’ I say, ‘What can we do to make that happen?’ ” she said. “I think, innately, everyone wants to be the best they can be. But sometimes there are little stumbling blocks.”