REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK:Robins Hall will be missed

EDITOR’S NOTE: Heidi Schultheis graduated from Newport Harbor High School in 2005.

I fumbled with the flint, struggling to light a Bunsen burner. Annoyed, I turned the gas all the way up just as the flint sparked. A fireball shot across the desk, singeing all the hair off my right arm.

Chemistry never was one of my strong subjects.

But somewhere between lighting things on fire and memorizing the escape route so my class could efficiently evacuate our chemistry classroom every time it filled with smoke, I came to know and love Robins Hall, the bell tower and Loats Theater as only a Newport Harbor High School graduate can.

That’s why I couldn’t help myself Thursday morning as I watched the excavator claw its way into my former classroom like a child tearing at a gingerbread house.

“That was my chemistry classroom!” I blurted out, to no one in particular. People near me nodded in solemn acknowledgement. After four long years of anticipation, it finally hit me: Robins Hall was coming down.

I had only two classes in the behemoth building: biology and chemistry. Even so, I’ve always known the main building, which encompassed Robins Hall, the bell tower and Loats Theater, was built in 1930, and it featured monstrously thick concrete walls and foundations. The structure had survived at least five major earthquakes, including the devastating Long Beach quake of 1933.

So, when I learned at the end of my sophomore year the three buildings would be demolished, I was in disbelief. The trio, I thought, could not possibly be vulnerable to earthquakes, as the structural engineers claimed.

Joe Robinson, who has taught everything from Latin to world history at Harbor High since 1969 and who was my own Advanced Placement European history teacher five years ago, believes the buildings are stronger than they get credit for.

“My first reaction was, if there’s ever an earthquake on campus, that’s where I’ll go, because it’s gonna stand,” Robinson said, reflecting on the day he learned of the buildings’ fate. “That building really is Harbor High.”

He’s right — the main building was the first edifice to appear on campus when construction began, and its three structures have always remained at the core of the school.

It also boasted a beautiful inner courtyard decorated with Spanish tile murals, a stained-glass window on the second floor and small hallway niches decorated in flower patterns.

But as a busy teenage student, I never noticed the buildings’ attractive features. Nor did I ever figure out a way into the bell tower — a taboo treat a handful of lucky former students hold close to their hearts. Instead, my fondness for it stems from my own experiences there, and the many stories and memories of those who came before me.

Chief among my more amusing memories of Robins are all the non-human things that roamed its halls. John Brazelton, my chemistry teacher who has taught science at Harbor High for the past 12 years, fondly recalled the prankster ways of the science department when it came to anything creepy or crawly.

“On more than one occasion our snake, Rosie, got away and camped out on top of one of the secretary’s computers,” Brazelton said, laughing. “She reached down to get something, and there was this huge snake curled up on her computer. I remember hearing her scream.”

Scott Dukes, a colleague of Brazelton who has taught math and science at the high school since 1973, still gets a kick out of a specimen that, had I known about it, undoubtedly would have prevented me from entering the building.

Always one to joke about scary-looking dead things, Dukes reminisced, “One time we had a new janitor, and he went in one of the little back closets, and he opened up this bag that we had put there, and in it was a partially digested harbor seal with maggots.” Giggling, he said he’ll miss “fun stuff like that.”

Dukes was never able to convince me science was as “fun” as he thought it was.

Of course, Robins, and the bell tower and theater will be remembered for much more than the strange creatures that dwelled within them. More important than snakes or pranks, Harbor saw its students learn, mature and work together in the building that stood at its core for 77 years.

For 20-year Harbor High theatre teacher Gail Brower-Nedler, it’s especially heart-wrenching to see the three buildings come down; she and her students labored together to restore a room in Robins and regularly performed theater productions in Loats, a 700-seat theater.

Brower-Nedler recalled, “We had just done a $14,000 remodel of the ceiling. The kids really all came together … it was such a huge effort, and we were so happy and so proud with the result. And the theater is so beautiful.” Her voice straining, she added, “Then we found out the buildings were coming down in 2002. I cried and cried.”

The concepts of growth and maturation have, perhaps, been most fully realized by former student Sara Robinson (Joe Robinson’s daughter), a member of the class of 1997.

“When I was a little baby in the day care at Harbor, someone would walk me over to my dad’s classroom in the main building at the end of the day, and I would draw on the blackboard and we would walk home together at the end of the day,” said Sara, a member of the graduating class of 1997 who went on to teach writing at UC Irvine. “I’m so sad to see it go.”

Yes, the massive main building was infested with rats and cockroaches — and the occasional snake. And yes, it was kind of outdated and grungy. But it was our infested, outdated, grungy building. Debates about the pros and cons of the new structure aside, we’d better get to work wearing it in once it’s completed, so we can come to love it just as much.