Graduate Won’t Let Memories Fade Away : Moorpark: Florence Dawson, 75, is organizing a reunion to mark the 100th anniversary of the school district, which has virtually ignored it.

The spit and polish of Moorpark’s new schools makes it easy to forget that the local school district turns 100 this year.

Of the district’s nine schools, only two are more than 10 years old.

There is not much left in the city to remind residents that in 1895 Moorpark opened the doors on the local district’s first school, a one-room Victorian-style schoolhouse on Peach Hill.

All that remains is the vacant two acres of weed-clogged land on which the old school once stood, and the district is hoping to sell that property to bring in much-needed cash.

The 100-year anniversary hasn’t garnered much interest from school officials, who are focusing on budget cuts and difficult contract negotiations with teachers.

When Florence Dawson, 75, wrote letters to the district, the local historical society and the school board, reminding them that this year marks Moorpark school’s centennial, nobody wrote her back.

But the former Moorpark Memorial High School student was undaunted.

A graduate of the class of 1938, she decided to mark the centennial on her own with the help of former high school classmates.

For Dawson, the anniversary is personal.

Four of her older siblings and her twin sister attended Moorpark schools since the early part of the century. Her aunt, Mary Willard Cornett, was one of the earliest schoolteachers in the city and rode in a horse-drawn buggy to teach each day at the Peach Hill school.

Dawson decided if the school district didn’t want to mark the anniversary, then she would. She decided to celebrate the occasion with a reunion of former high school graduates--most of whom attended grammar school in the city.

Trying to keep the numbers manageable, Dawson and the other organizers are inviting graduates from the period between the school’s first graduating class in 1922 to the end of World War II.

The celebration is billed as the “Last Reunion of the Century.”

“In every class there are people who do things,” she said. “Maybe some people don’t give a darn, so the responsibility to do something falls on us. If (the school district) took charge of this, they could really do a whale of a job though, and put on a good celebration.”

School board member Tom Baldwin, who recently reminded his fellow board members that 1995 would be the centennial for the school district, said he was disappointed that no one is helping Dawson.

“I’m really sorry to hear that,” he said. “That’s just the sort of thing we should be doing--getting old teachers, graduates and administrators together for some kind of shindig. It’s very sad. But when those people go, so too does that history.”

The school district is trying to sell the old high school property, as well as the two acres of land on Peach Hill where the first school stood. Baldwin said it would be nice to put down on paper the memories of the old graduates before they, too, are gone.

In the last three months, Dawson said several former graduates have died. She said she feels like she is racing against time to get the alumni together for the celebration.

“I’ve contacted a lot of people who say they’ll come if they’re still alive,” Dawson said.

She has sent out about 160 invitations and has received about 60 responses for the party planned in May at the Thousand Oaks Inn.

One of the oldest high school graduates--Jean McLachlin, 89--said she plans to be there.

A former school nurse in Moorpark and Simi Valley, McLachlin went to grammar school in the city’s first schoolhouse after it was moved from Peach Hill to the city’s downtown.

McLachlin still keeps in touch with her best friend from grammar school and high school, Margaret Alberta Lumbard. The two friends and Charles Sutcliffe are the last remaining survivors from the class of 1924. There were 11 in that third graduating class, eight in the class before them, and just one graduate in the first class in 1922.

“They’re all gone now,” said McLachlin, looking through her weathered yearbook.

She pointed out her senior picture, with a caption, “A quiet dignity doth she possess.”

“It was such a small school in those days that we were all like family,” she said.

When the high school was dedicated in October, 1920, McLachlin remembers that most of the town turned out for the celebration. It was named Moorpark Memorial High School in memory of the soldiers who died in World War I.

The school was a magnet of sorts for the community, looming over the town on a hill off Casey Road. People turned out for annual reviews and plays in the auditorium, and students from as far as Thousand Oaks and the Santa Rosa Valley came to Moorpark for high school.

Herbert Wangeman, 86, remembered his father--the school’s janitor and bus driver--picking up students in those outlying areas, which were at that time much smaller than Moorpark.

Wangeman, a retired Air Force colonel and former POW who was shot down during World War II after a bombing run over Germany, also remembers how tough it was playing football back then.

Equipped with leather helmets and very light pads, the team played on a dirt field that was plowed before games to make it a little softer. The school only had enough players to field one team so players stayed on the field for both offense and defense.

The experience helped toughen him for the 15 months he spent in a German POW camp, Wangeman said.

The high school building that Wangeman remembers was condemned in the 1930s because of earthquake damage from the Long Beach quake, and it was torn down in 1937. Students in those later years ended up attending classes in tents and in an old school bus, recalled Ed Wilson, class of 1939. Wilson’s father was the school’s principal, whom everyone affectionately called “Prof.”

His father and the principal of the Simi Valley High School had a running bet on which school would have the most students each year. Every once and awhile Wilson said his father would entertain the students with a magic show.

“He really loved magic tricks,” Wilson said wistfully. “He would saw ladies in half, have the disappearing trick and the three rings. He would do the works. People really loved him.”

Along with magic, the Prof was also interested in providing good vocational training for his students, still deep in the depression. He knew that a lot of the students would never make it to college so he and a local tradesman built a shop classroom behind the school.

“And you know by the time they were through building it, Moorpark had the largest machine shop in the state of California,” Wilson said.

The school also benefited from its proximity to Los Angeles, attracting high quality teachers just out of school and waiting for a good job in the city, said John Murphy, 74.

“I think we had an excellent education,” he said. “I remember school very fondly. Seemed like it was an ideal place back then.”

Murphy, who joined the Navy after school and was at Pearl Harbor when it was attacked, has the gold football pin he won as part of the championship team of 1937.

“I think that was the first and only year until very recently that Moorpark had a championship team,” he said proudly.

Murphy is being asked to bring along his football pin and any other memorabilia from his time in high school.

Dawson is also trying to get alumni to donate old yearbooks that will be kept by the historical society. And finally, she is hoping that somehow their recollections can be taken down for an historical account of the school district’s history.

“When I was little, I always liked to listen to the stories of my elders,” she said. “History was always important to me.”