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Dennis Hitchens dances with Laurie Kaduk. Hitchens has made it to the last six reunions, only missing the first one.
Photograph by Chad Pilster
Time of their Lives
Old friends are reunited and new friends are made at Campbell High School's 35-year reunion
By Genevieve Roja
So--this is what I have to look forward to in 30 years.Instead of doing the "Doorknob"--which is now the craze on the dance floor at Campbell High School's Class of '64 reunion--I'll be doing moves like the "Cabbage Patch," the "Reebok" or the "Running Man." It's not going to be pretty, but rest assured it's all in good fun, just like it is tonight. I can see myself winning the Most Likely to Stay Home on a Weekend award, or Most Boring Adult Trapped in a Teenager's Body. No doubt I'll still be reminiscing about parties I never went to, boys I had insatiable crushes on, and the untouchable in-crowd I never belonged to but yearned to join.
Needless to say, attending my 10-year high school reunion ranks right up there with a visit to the dentist. I'll go kicking and screaming before it happens anytime soon.
Jackie (Cobb) Costanza swears her five-year high school reunion was pretty painful.
"It wasn't very fun at all," she recalls. "People just aren't comfortable with themselves yet. [Five years] is just too close to high school."
Tonight, 35 years after her graduation, Costanza is having a blast at the San Jose Radisson Hotel. Dressed in a black T-shirt and a denim jumper, Costanza is clearly comfortable and confident, joining the "Mashed Potato" crowd and singing Righteous Brothers tunes. She has just finished a near-aerobic dance set when she makes a pit stop at the bar to talk to me. I find that our location is a boisterous, club-type atmosphere that requires shouting at ear-splitting levels. Luckily, I make out with some vitals: she's teaching, she lives on Alice Avenue in Campbell, and she's here to see old friends and dance the night away.
"It's an excuse for a party, and it's fun to see people," says Costanza, who has helped organize other reunions. "We were a close-knit class; we had so much spirit. Those were special days."
Photograph by Chad Pilster
Memory Serves: Terry Preston (right) and Johnnie Gibson talk about how the Class of '64 won the first and only speech and debate championship ever for a Northern California school.
It's so special that one of her history teachers, Dave Cripe, and their high school principal, Robert Culp, have joined the Campbell crew. There were about 500 in their senior class back then, with a total enrollment estimated at about 2,300 students. Sadly, there are many who are not here tonight, among them those who died in Vietnam and even Costanza's old high school boyfriend.
"He had cancer," she says softly. "He died after the last reunion [five years ago]."
She muses that some of the most popular faces at Campbell High are not in attendance either.
"It's very strange they're not here--the football players, the cheerleaders," Costanza says. "Some of them still live in Campbell and they're not here. Why do you think that is?"
Johnnie Melvin cuts in to relieve Costanza. "We were the most special class in Campbell," says Melvin, who adds that he shot a 96 at the Bayonet golf course in Monterey the morning of the reunion with a group of other classmates. "I've never missed a reunion."
After graduation, Melvin and a handful of classmates ended up touring Europe for three months before settling into the college grind at San Jose State. He earned his master's at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo and later worked toward his teaching credential.
"A lot of us had football and baseball scholarships after high school," Melvin says. "These guys won all the way through."
He points to some of his classmates who are chattering bar-side, name- and job-dropping with words like "sells insurance," "teaches" and "coaches." He informs me that teaching is probably the No. 1 profession represented tonight.
"Our parents loved education," says Melvin, who taught at Cal High School in Manteca and resides with his wife and two sons in Modesto. "We never had TV until I was in seventh or eighth grade. All the parents put their energy into the education of their kids."
And high school--well, it was nothing but good times, innocence, young love and developing character.
"It was the apex of life and we loved it," Melvin says of his class. "We loved sports. Our school was very supportive of one another; it was the true high school American dream."
I ask who his crush was in high school and he reveals that it was Donna Chambers, the merry blonde dressed in a green dress and the class reunion coordinator this go-round. Alas, they never went out; apparently he had a girlfriend who attended Del Mar High School. When I inquire what's changed most since high school, he jokingly replies, "My health."
"I was always attentive and active," he says. "I played basketball, baseball, and wrestling all four years."
Photograph by Chad Pilster
High School Dazed: A group of reunion attendees takes a break from dancing to have dessert and share some memories.
It's nice to know that not all things change over the decades. I am introduced to Sherrie (Patton) Nooteboon, a petite woman who looks as youthful and as fresh as she did nearly 35 years ago. She tells the story of a boy she took to the Sadie Hawkins dance in the fall of '61, which back then was called, strangely enough, the "twerp" dance. (Origin of the nickname unknown, she says.) Anyway, they lost touch soon after, although she does recall smoking cigarettes with him in the Student Union at San Jose City College.
Flash forward to the early '90s, when Nooteboon served as a member of the Santa Clara County grand jury. It turns out one of her fellow jurors knew Nooteboon's "twerp" date. On a whim, the two, while vacationing in Carmel later, racked up enough courage to call him. Their attempt worked.
"When we called, he told us it was the third quarter of Monday night football," laughs Nooteboon, who was divorced with two children. But they kept talking, eventually made a date, and after months of dating, he proposed. Fred Nooteboon and Sherrie Patton were married on June 26 of this year at St. Andrew's Chapel in Saratoga in a small ceremony with her two children and his two children.
The class of '64 can also boast that it has a living legend in Bob Burton, who is the head basketball coach at West Valley College in Saratoga. A star basketball player at Campbell High, Burton took his talent to West Valley, Brigham Young University and Fresno State. He taught at Westmont, Leigh and Willow Glen high schools, while coaching the boys' varsity basketball team. Burton has been at West Valley since 1980, with the exception of one year spent coaching the Utah men's basketball team from 1986 to 1987. I ask if he'll ever leave the area again and he says he doesn't think so.
"I love living here," says Burton, as "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" plays in the background. "A lot has changed since going to high school in the valley. But it's been fun watching this class. We did a lot of things; we watched the Vietnam War, Joplin, Hendrix. It was an amazing time to grow up in."
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Campbell, California
