Alma Mater Dei

The Anaheim couple, high school sweethearts, walk the school’s halls as though they still belong there, softly brushing arms with teenagers bustling to class, holding old books by their sides and scanning faded lockers in wonderment at all the time that’s passed.

And in a way, the two do belong. Not one student at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana seems to notice them there. From a distance, the two resemble schoolkids looking for their homeroom instead of a couple who graduated a half-century ago.

But suddenly the two are in their 60s again--a couple with 26 grandchildren--when a young man asks, “Did you ever play sports here?” and Dan Padilla, 66, offers a telltale answer. “I threw the very first pitch ever thrown in a game here,” he says. “A long, long time ago.”

Virginia Padilla, 64, says, “It really isn’t that much of a shock until you think about how it was 1954 when I graduated. Then it sends you back.”

The couple, who never left the Los Angeles Basin after they graduated from Mater Dei, visited the school as part of its 50th anniversary celebration. It culminates this weekend in a reunion of students from as long ago as 1953--the year of the first graduating class--at the school’s homecoming game.

The school, built in 1950 as part of the Southern California postwar boom in Catholic education, is now the largest Catholic high school in the western United States. It has been celebrating all year, but homecoming weekend is the symbolic high point, a way for students to consider the school’s legacy, for alumni to take a last look before the school’s grounds are revamped and for officials to raise more money for improvements.

The school, tired after decades of use, is amid a $28-million “redevelopment plan” to update the campus with new buildings and classrooms with multimedia equipment and laptop computers. It also is modernizing its teaching techniques “to stay competitive with . . . public schools,” said Patrick Murphy, Mater Dei’s principal of almost 11 years.

This weekend, thousands of alumni from across the country--including at least 42 people from the first two graduating classes when tuition was about $60 a year--are expected to attend the homecoming game against St. John Bosco’s Braves. That turnout would be typical for a school where sports has long been one of the biggest facets of its identity.

“We’re going to have players from the 1950s, cheerleaders from the 1950s, for a game that really involves the whole Orange County community,” said Erica Sullivan, associate director of development.

But the anniversary is also more than the game or a trip back in time to when schoolgirls wore saddle shoes, the cheerleaders wore calf-length skirts and only the boys could play interscholastic sports.

The Padillas are taking a few last looks before the school is transformed. One of the few elements that will remain the same is the statue of the Virgin Mary that has stood on campus since the school was built.

“Everything is going to change here,” said Dan Padilla, who used to walk down the street after school to catch crawdads in a nearby creek, then hauled his friends in his 1948 Mercury past bean fields to the beach.

The daytime home of 2,100 students, one third of whom attend classes in portable classrooms, Mater Dei deliberately planned to kick off its redevelopment plan around the anniversary. It was a way to raise money from alumni, who historically have been generous. It costs about $6,000 a year to attend the school, significantly less than the cost of most private high schools.

Bringing Campus Up to Date

In recent years, the school found itself drifting slowly out of date. Buildings were aging, and the student body was bursting out the seams of the 18-acre campus, which seems more like a small college than a high school. The school, which started with about 80 students, was built to accommodate 1,200.

But beginning last year, things started to change.

Last month, all teachers received laptop computers. Within the next two years, officials said, all students might have one. In September 1999, the school built a 400-space parking lot so students didn’t have to park in surrounding neighborhoods. The school also is building a new chapel that seats 200.

“We have to keep up . . . in a digital age. We draw students from all over Orange County,” said Father Steve Sallot, school rector. “We have a fine tradition of athletics, but we’re proud that we’re taking care of religion and academics first. We’re taking care of athletics second.”

In the works: a counseling and guidance center, 22 classrooms, a learning center, a new library, a new multimedia lab and a science wing equipped with laptop computers on which to conduct experiments. Also coming is the new gym.

But before all that, the weekend will offer one last look. As it stands, the older generation--folks who used pencils instead of laptops--already were arriving midweek, slowly trickling into school and quietly peeking into rooms equipped for multimedia presentations. Even some former teachers are expected to arrive.

Dan Padilla is waiting for his high school best buddy, a man named Jim Hart, to arrive from New Orleans.

The two have kept in touch over the decades and will spend this weekend strolling the school’s halls, remembering the time they crashed in that 1948 Mercury and survived without a scratch, or the game in which Padilla walked 17 batters.

And maybe, if they have time, the two will take a walk down the street to look, one last time, for a few more crawdads.