Compton Alumni Honor Old Friends

Wini Jackson, force of nature, kisses her way down one side of a long luncheon table and up the other.

There’s a hug and a squeeze for Mr. Redfud, still regal after all these years. There’s a whisper and a laugh and a second hug for Miss Cornwell, still having her way with words.

When Jackson finishes one table, she goes on to the next. By the time she’s done, there’s not a dry cheek in the house. Or many eyes, either.

The occasion is a lunch reuniting teachers and a few students from the early years of Compton’s Centennial High School, which in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s was transformed from a place to stick black kids so other schools didn’t have to deal with them, into what Jackson and others remember as the warmest of nests, a place where people of talent and strength were nurtured and sent out to conquer the world.

Which many of them did. The alumni lists from those decades are filled with judges, lawyers, principals, surgeons and CEOs.

The get-together is filled with giggles and smiles. It was a well-turned-out crowd, one you might in an earlier era have called dapper.

“Ooooh, there’s Miss Hollywood, stepping down off that bus,” said Gloria Williams, watching a still stylish classmate make her entrance in cream gabardine and mink.

“The name I remember,” said John Redfud to an old student. “You don’t look like yourself, however.”

In a coincidence of comings and goings, the lunch was held Saturday at Little Joe’s, the Italian restaurant in the middle of Chinatown. Saturday was Little Joe’s last day of operation. Its owners had earlier determined they couldn’t afford the extensive remodeling the place needed to meet safety and access codes.

With the closing, Los Angeles loses a century-old institution, one of the city’s great hangouts for athletes, politicians and just plain folks who wanted a bowl of pasta. A line formed in the early afternoon as people gathered for the evening’s last rites.

Inside, Jackson and her teachers mourned the passing of something deeper and sadder--the chance their old school afforded them.

It’s hard to imagine what the place was like now, when, as one alumnus said, Compton and Centennial are more noted for producing gangsters and criminals.

It was in large part the distance between Compton then and now that caused Jackson to think how lucky she and her classmates had been, how much her teachers had given her and her friends, how responsible they were for the many successes they achieved.

She called old friends and said, Let’s do something to honor these teachers, many of whom are now in their 70s and 80s, before they disappear. So the Centennial alumni organized a dinner to honor their old teachers and Marian Wagstaff, the white principal who broke the color line by hiring black teachers like John Redfud and Maple Jackson Cornwell.

Saturday’s luncheon was just a warmup for a black-tie dinner for 600 tonight at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.