Telling It True to Her School

The Great War raged in Europe when Ethel Coffman went to Santa Ana High--a time when residents still searched for hitching posts rather than parking spaces. The record of the day--which spun on Victrolas--was “Keep the Home Fires Burning.”

What could this 103-year-old woman--who never married, never drove a car and never left Santa Ana--possibly have in common with today’s plugged-in, stimulation-seeking youth?

A lot, as it turns out.

“She’s just older than us,” said Rosa Diaz, 17, one of about 100 Santa Ana High students who turned out Tuesday to hear Coffman speak. “But everything in her heart is the same. In her soul, she has the same thoughts we do.”

In a living history lesson, Coffman, a 1915 Santa Ana graduate, returned to her alma mater Tuesday to share a century of crystal-clear memories. Accompanying her to the school was a friend of 50 years, 77-year-old Margaret Beyer.

On the stage, the waves in Coffman’s silver hair shone in the lights. She moved slowly, with the deliberate pace of the near-blind and hard of hearing, all evidence of the wear 10 decades takes on a body. But her memory was sharp, moving quickly through reminiscences, names, dates, times: an oral history of the town where she has lived since 1908.

She spoke in a firm, direct tone, quickly warming up the crowd of teenagers with her one-liners.

Did she have any advice for the young people who came to hear her talk?

“Do you have several hours?” she asked, in perfect deadpan.

Michael Moss, the high school’s activity director, said school officials jumped at the chance to bring Coffman back to campus. Practically a community treasure, she has stories to tell that students otherwise could only find in books.

“It’s always better for students to experience history than just read about it,” he said.

Coffman’s high school years seemed like stories from another world to the students who came to listen. One even asked if she had television back then.

At church, she told the students, people jockeyed for hitching posts. Once she watched a pioneering aviator take his plane into the sky from a field not far from the campus.

Paging through Coffman’s senior yearbook--the 1915 Ariel--students saw the faces of her classmates, all now dead, brought to life by Coffman’s recollections.

Her senior picture--a stern-looking girl, dark hair parted in the middle and pulled tight against her head--belied the warm, funny woman who made a life on her own in days when few women did.

After graduation, Coffman went to work for a brief time at what she called the “fancy bakery” in town. In 1917, she started at Rankin’s Dry Goods Co., where she worked until the store closed its doors in 1963.

All that time, she lived with her twin sister, Esther, and a younger sister, Mary. After her sisters passed away, she lived alone for a time before moving to a retirement home.

Although she never married, Coffman told students she was never lonely. She did, however, confide a 80-year-old crush on a redheaded boy in her high school class that never became a romance.

“The right man just didn’t come along,” she said. “And I wasn’t going to settle for anyone else. I was always self-sufficient.”

Students were most impressed by the importance Coffman placed on making and keeping friends for life.

“The memories that she made when she was in school here are still important to her,” said student-body president Miguel Bolanos, 17. “It made me think about how much I need to cherish these days.”

And in the end that was the wisdom she offered.

“Life is moving very fast nowadays,” she told the students. “Much faster than when I was your age. Grab every opportunity to advance your knowledge, not only education but also personal knowledge. I have forgotten many things over the years and I’m sure you will too, but I remember my friendships.”

The students, from freshmen to seniors, rose in a standing ovation.