Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Golden Embrace: Eloise Bailey Telfer greets a former classmate at the Willow Glen High School Class of 1951's 50th reunion Oct. 26 at the Hyatt Sainte Claire Hotel in San Jose.
Alums from 1951 celebrate WG High School's 50 years
The first graduating class returns to its old stomping grounds
By Moryt Milo
The Willow Glen High School Class of 1951 is an anomaly. Its members entered the high school as seniors in the fall of 1950, the first year the school opened, and graduated the following spring.
As a class, they were only together one year, but their Oct. 26 reunion at the Hyatt Sainte Claire Hotel in downtown San Jose was still an extra-special event.
Although their time at Willow Glen High School was brief, the students of the class of 1951 left their legacy. The class of 1951 helped pick the school colors--taking the red from San Jose High School's red and gray and the gold from Lincoln High School's blue and gold. The class of 1951 came up with the school song, helped choose the school's mascot--the ram--and held a contest to name the school newspaper, called the Ram Pages.
When the school at 2001 Cottle Ave. opened its doors in the fall of 1950, the students that comprised the class of 1951 were predominantly from Lincoln High School in the Rose Garden and San Jose High School near downtown San Jose.
Russ Vento, who transferred from San Jose High School to Willow Glen High School for his senior year, already had his San Jose High School class ring. He said, "It was a struggle at first. But then we adjusted and gelled together," he said.
Some of the friendships that emerged from that one unique year lasted a lifetime, as alumni remaining in Willow Glen or neighboring areas stayed in touch with their classmates, like friends and former classmates Vento and Don Thompson.
Others moved out of the area and lost touch with friends, like Roger Lowe and Charles Boysol. But Willow Glen High School's 50th reunion was a milestone.
For Louise Van Pool (formerly Gerow), the thrill of the reunion came early. She had lost touch with her high school best friend, Jacqueline Anderson-Harris (formerly Anderson) and although Van Pool made it back to all the reunions except the 10th, Anderson-Harris had been to none.
As Van Pool was assembling nametags, gluing old senior photos to the front of each graduate's name card, she saw Anderson-Harris' picture.
"I went crazy," Van Pool said. "I hadn't seen her in 50 years."
Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Joining Generations: Willow Glen High School students from the classes of 2002 and '03 join former students from the school's first graduating class of 1951.
Van Pool had no intention of waiting until Oct. 26 to speak to Harris.
"I immediately called Russ [Vento] and asked for her phone number," Van Pool said.
Anderson-Harris, like other classmates from the class of 1951, ended up on a list of lost classmates and had only recently been found.
In 1955 she and her husband moved from Sunnyvale to Lubbock, Texas, and lost touch with her classmates, and she had never attended any high school class reunions.
When Anderson-Harris received a call from her friend Van Pool, she "couldn't believe it. We talked for an hour and half," she said.
Gene Carrell, like Harris, also fell victim to the lost list, due to a misspelling of his name. But unlike Harris, he only lived a mile from the high school.
Carrell got a jump start on seeing old friends by taking a tour of the school, organized by the class of 1951 for the morning of their 50th reunion.
As Carrell shook hands with classmates Thompson, Ed Irwin and Don "George" Kidder he said, "Well, we all added a few pounds, wrinkles and glasses."
Vento says the 50th reunion had the best turnout of any of its reunions.
In 1966 Willow Glen High School's class of 1951 reunion committee decided to combine its 15th reunion with the 15th reunion of the 1951 graduating class of Lincoln High School. Vento said it made sense because the graduates at Willow Glen High School had many friends who stayed at Lincoln High School and graduated the same year.
Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Open Mouthed: Don Thompson, a member of Willow Glen High School's class of 1951, points out some former classmates who showed up for a tour of the school to a surprised Ed Della Maggiore.
Although talked about for decades, a high school in Willow Glen was not realized until the fall of 1950, when Willow Glen High School and Willow Glen Middle School (known as Edwin Markham Junior High School until the late 1980s) opened their doors to the community.
In 1927, when Willow Glen became a city, it had one public school, Willow Glen Elementary School, built in 1897, which is still in use today on the southwest corner of Lincoln and Minnesota avenues. In 1930, a second elementary school, Lincoln Glen, was built near Lincoln and Curtner avenues. Both schools went through the eighth grade, but after graduating, children living in Willow Glen had to attend schools outside the Willow Glen community.
They could choose to go to any neighboring high school--San Jose High School, Campbell High School, which closed in 1981, and Los Gatos High School. Later in the 1940's, students from the Willow Glen neighborhoods were bused to Lincoln High School in San Jose, which opened in 1942.
In the early 1930s, students going to San Jose and Los Gatos high schools took streetcars down Lincoln or Coe avenues turning on Willow Street or Meridian Avenue to reach their destinations.
Also in the 1930s, academicians like Dr. Robert Kennedy, superintendent of the Willow Glen Schools from 1934 to 1937, saw the lack of a Willow Glen high school as a community loss, according to "A Brief History of Willow Glen and the High School that Bears its Name" by Robert Beck.
Kennedy also saw it as a financial disadvantage to the community, with residents paying a "tuition tax that was helping to pay for the high schools in San Jose and Los Gatos," Kennedy said in Willow Glen archival records.
The community began discussing the possibility of a neighborhood high school in 1933, but when Willow Glen voted to become part of San Jose in 1937, all the schools in Willow Glen were absorbed into the San Jose school system, and dreams of a community high school faded until 1950.
In January 1950, Willow Glen opened its new junior high, Edwin Markham, followed in the fall with the opening of Willow Glen High School next door.
The first seniors to graduate from Willow Glen High School spent their sophomore and junior years at Lincoln High or San Jose High. Spending their senior year at a completely different school affected students in different ways.
Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Long-Lost Buddies: Louise Gerow Van Pool (left) and Jacqueline Anderson-Harris are friends from Willow Glen High School's class of 1951 who hadn't seen each other in 50 years.
Kidder, a football player at Lincoln who transferred to Willow Glen for his senior year, said the new high school greatly impacted the football teams at San Jose and Lincoln high schools.
"Most of the football team came from Lincoln," Kidder said. "But they took San Jose High's star player and Bob Berry, San Jose High's football coach, and transferred them to Willow Glen."
Van Pool said she was most affected by the newness of her surroundings. The high school was still under construction when students entered in the fall. The only grass was on the football field, and the pool was still unfinished.
"I remember having dirt fights out here," Carrell said.
The memories of that one year are still strong, Vento said, as he and 20 others walked into the high school gym during the school tour.
"We had a lot of dances in here," Vento said, glancing around. "Being back here today is great."
Dick Leyva also came back to tour the high school and still lives nearby. His 102-year-old mother also still lives in Willow Glen. Leyva was the first editor of the high school's newspaper, which was called the Willow Glen News until it was renamed the Ram Pages.
On the evening of the reunion, Roger Lowe flew down from Kirkland, Wash., to attend for his first time. His career after graduation led into the field of geo-technical engineering. He said he came back because he was "curious," and wanted to visit with a high school friend who had gone into environmental planning.
"We only recently reconnected and discovered we had both gone into fields that dealt with the environment," Lowe said.
Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Picture Perfect: Jack Shay, Gene Carrell, Jacqueline Anderson-Harris and Ed Della Maggiore (clockwise from bottom left) find themselves and old classmates in a class picture taken in 1951 and hanging in Willow Glen High School.
As graduates shared their life experiences, many talked about unexpected surprises. For Boysol, who was also at his first reunion, it was serving in the U.S. Army and becoming part of a rescue mission when the luxury steamliner Andrea Doria collided with another steamliner, the Stockholm, in July 1956 and sunk off the foggy Nantucket, Mass., coastline.
Fern Smith (formerly Meyerson), went back to school and graduated from Stanford Law School the same spring her oldest daughter graduated from high school and her youngest daughter graduated from junior high school. Today she heads the Federal Judicial Center in Washington, D.C., appointed as a federal judge by former President Ronald Reagan.
Anita Pacheco (formerly Fancher), become a petroleum broker and owned a part of a refinery. Ed Irwin become a lobbyist in Washington, D.C. Ed Della Maggiore become a dentist and teacher at UCLA's School of Dentistry.
Then there are others like Maria Hantz (formerly Niehs) who lived in Lompoc, Calif., for 40 years but remained in touch with seven Willow Glen girlfriends who faithfully got together for the last 50 years on birthdays and holidays.
"We all hung together because we were taller and bigger all round," Jane Fish, one of Hantz's friends, said. "In those days being five [feet] seven [inches] was considered tall."
Vento said when it was picking a venue for the 50th reunion, the reunion committee polled the alumni and asked them where they wanted the event to be held.
"Everyone wanted to come back to San Jose," Vento said, "to visit the neighborhoods and the community where they grew up."
"I really enjoyed walking down Lincoln Avenue and seeing the pictures in the coffee shop [Willow Glen Coffee Roasting Company]," said Martha Shaver (formerly McBride). Shaver graduated in 1952 but was at the reunion with her husband, Bill Shaver, of the class of 1951.
"It was so exciting to see the history of Willow Glen being kept alive," said Shaver, who lives in Southern California. "Even now, after all these years, there is still a wonderful feeling of preserving the community."
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
