Teenage boys take over at City Hall

May 1, 1950: For a full day, city officials stepped aside, allowing teenage boys to take their titles as part of Boys Week. Mayor Fletcher Bowron swore in Ronald Klingelhofer, 17, student body president of John Marshall High School, as the city’s chief executive. Ronny O’Reilly, 17, of Manual Arts High School became the city’s youngest chief of police, while USC President Fred Dow Fagg Jr. turned over his job to Fremont High School student Marvin Heaps, 17. Other students “served as city councilmen and judges and filled most of the major federal, state, city and county offices in the Civic Center,” The Times reported. The tradition started locally in 1924, when Mayor George Cryer proclaimed April 27 through May 3 “Boys Week,” saying, “America’s boys are the nation’s greatest asset.”