On the Town: Burbank-Burroughs Alumni Assn. holds reception
While you would need the most powerful microscope known to man to see even the slightest trace of collegiality between the FOX fan supporters of Trump or Cruz and the MSNBC devotees who are backing Clinton or Sanders, there is one place in which the red and the blue harmoniously mingle and is proudly on display for all to see: the Burbank-Burroughs Alumni Assn.
Mixing a healthy dose of Burbank Bulldog blue with a generous portion of John Burroughs Indian red, organization members who tout the fact they are “proudly purple” raise funds for annual scholarships that benefit two seniors from each high school.
“The alumni association was created to bring together both schools and the community as one,” said alumni committee member Joanne Lento Miller during a wine-and-cheese reception held last week. “We represent both schools and the many ‘mixed families’ of Burbank in which some family members went to Burroughs and others went to Burbank.”
The gathering, held at Lento Miller’s Magnolia Park scrapbook supply business, Once Upon A Page, honored a trio of retired Burbank educators: Mary Rago, Carolyn Grogan and Ken Tada.
Tada, who attended Burroughs as a student in the 1960s, went on to serve as both a teacher and coach at JBHS from 1972 to 2002. Following his retirement, Tada took on a leadership role in the Joni and Friends International Disability Center ministry that was founded by his wife, Joni Eareckson Tada, who suffered traumatic injuries in a 1967 diving accident that left her a quadriplegic.
Grogan, a former Burbank High student, began her teaching career in 1968 at Luther Burbank Junior High and then went on to teach at her alma mater.
Rago, who beginning in 1974, taught at Muir Junior High School before moving to JBHS, where she established the school’s vocal music program, that, now under the direction of her successor, Brendan Jennings, has grown to seven choirs that have garnered national and even international acclaim for excellence.
The evening — made possible by the Burbank-Burroughs Alumni Assn.’s committee, composed of Lento Miller, Connie Barron Trimble, Kathy Engh Lawrence, Roberta Reynolds, Emilio Urioste, Kathie Brown, Joyce Rudolph and Gil Tobon — saw the committee laud the honorees and then open the floor for attendees to do the same, which they did with fond memories and unbridled emotion for the impact the trio has had on their lives.
Among the special guests in attendance were school board member Charlene Tabet, former Burbank educators and school board members Dave Kemp and Ted Bunch, and Vice Mayor Jess Talamantes, who, as a youth, was coached by Tada and was also one of Grogan’s students.
For more information on the work of the association, to become a member, or to offer support, visit their website at bhsjbhsalumni@gmail.com.
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DAVID LAURELL may be reached by email at dlaurell@aol.com or (818) 563-1007.
