"There's almost a gap in the history of Willow Glen," says Swarthout, a nationally known advertising photographer.

Swarthout spent numerous hours looking at historical tape reels stored in the basement of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library at San José State University. He managed to find a bit of local 1950s history and a few newspaper articles about the construction of the high school, which opened in the fall of 1950.

It was class members, contacted by the reunion committee, who gave his research a boost when they loaned Swarthout their old photos from the era. They also wrote bios of their lives for the 100-page book, which Swarthout titled A Golden Reunion—Willow Glen High School Class of 1954.

Out of a class of nearly 250 graduates, 72 alumni from 1954 attended the Oct. 16 reunion at the Hyatt Sainte Claire in San Jose. Each of them received a copy of the book, and about 50 alumni met the following morning for breakfast to continue their reminiscing.

The 12 members of the reunion committee, however, had already spent lots of time recalling their youth during the past year.

"We connected up again because we're at an age where we have the time, will and desire to be friends again with our old buddies from school," says Marlene Sullivan Baisa, who has served on all eight 1954 reunion committees. "About 37 are no longer with us. We're not going to let this go."

When Baisa and her classmates were teenagers, life in Willow Glen lacked much of what recent generations have known all their lives.

Alumna Lois Perkins Avery remembers television during her high school years was still a work in progress. Black-and-white programs were shown on three national stations for only three hours a day.

"We used to watch the test patterns on the screen because television was such a phenomenon to all of us," Avery says. "The test pattern was a circle with numbers around it. We'd turn the television on and there wouldn't be anything on yet, so you'd watch the test patterns, because who could believe this was in your home!"

Among other unknowns around 1954 were fast-food restaurants, microwave ovens, cell phones, credit cards, computers and malls. Music for teenagers was what their parents liked—Nat King Cole, Patti Paige, Eddie Fisher—since "doo-wop" music and rock & roll were a couple years in the future.

Girls couldn't wear jeans or slacks to school in those days, but boys were allowed to wear jeans. Team sports were readily available for high school boys, but sports for girls were limited.

Careers for women were also limited. Although numerous girls went to college after high school, the average female college student was encouraged by society to find a husband, not a high-powered career, in the halls of ivy.

"You could be a schoolteacher, a nurse, a secretary," Baisa says. "And most of us wanted to be mothers, settled down in our homes."

Women could also be flight attendants—called "stewardesses" 50 years ago—but not if they were short or married. Back then issues related to job discrimination were barely a blip on the employment radar screen.

Out of Baisa's circle of about 14 Willow Glen girl friends, most were married by the time they were 21, Baisa included.

"One held out until she was 30, and we thought that was so weird," Baisa says.

In that group of friends, Avery was another exception to the stay-at-home norm. Although she married shortly after high school and had children right away, she enrolled in college for a teaching degree while her children were in elementary school.

"When I started teaching and I had kids at home, I always had to apologize for being out of the house, a working mom, particularly since I didn't have to work," says Avery, who taught kindergarten through second grade for 36 years. "Even close friends made comments about how could I leave my kids and be a working mom."

Stay-at-home mothers like Baisa often made extra money for the family through part-time work. Baisa designed and baked wedding and birthday cakes in her home for about 20 years and, during much of that time, she also had a catering business she ran from home with one friend. The work remained part time because taking care of the family and home came first.

Had she graduated a couple decades later, when there were more options for women, Baisa says she would probably have gone to college for, ironically, a teaching career.

"I love kids," she says. "But staying home, I got to be with my children, and I have no regrets."

For young men in the class, the military draft was an expected interruption to college or their early careers.

Swarthout served in the U.S. Army's Signal Corps Reserve unit in New Jersey after attending a photography school in New York City. Photography was such a great passion for him that he dropped out of college five times to pursue his dream, eventually leaving San José State University for good with only a few units left to complete for a degree.

"I was always interested in art," Swarthout says. "My way of looking at life is to see things in pictures."

He pursued the world of fashion first and apprenticed for six years with world-renowned photographers in New York City, Stockholm, London and San Francisco.

"One of my favorite things to do is to photograph women," Swarthout says.

A turning point in his life came when he met Margaret, his wife of 38 years. She was a ballerina on a three-month U.S. tour with the prestigious London Royal Ballet when the couple met in New York City. A few weeks later, they were planning their future together. Today Margaret is the longtime artistic director of the Marin Dance Theatre in San Rafael, for which her husband has taken numerous photos.

For 25 years, Swarthout was a top advertising photographer for national ad agencies and corporate clients that included Fortune 500 companies. His work appeared on billboards and in magazines, brochures and annual reports, and he had one of the largest studios in San Francisco.

At an age when people tend to want to be retired, Swarthout now freelances in the new world of digital photography.

"It's important to do what you love," Swarthout says.

Like Swarthout, fellow graduate Tom Ross chose a career to which he was drawn. Ross received an electronic engineering degree and was then drafted into the Army, where he worked on missile-guidance systems for two years. Just before his Army service, Ross worked on a three-month job where he found he had a flair for correctly estimating and keeping track of construction-project costs. When he returned to civilian life, he chose to do estimating work, even though it was unrelated to his engineering degree.

By 1964, just six years out of college, Ross was the lead project estimator on the two-year construction of the Oakland Coliseum. Due to his efforts, the project was completed without any cost overruns. He then spent nearly two decades working as a chief estimator.

"In the early 1980s, I had a reputation in the construction-estimating field," he says. "IBM kept coming to me, trying to convince me to use their huge computers."

Ross kept turning them down until he saw the power of PCs. His computer expertise now includes working knowledge of 21st-century hardware and software that few people would have dreamed of back in 1954.

At the reunion, the alumni also used the special class milestone to honor two of their teachers, Bob Doerr and Larry Arnich, both now 90 years old. While teaching social studies, Doerr was mayor of San Jose from 1956­58. Arnich was a longtime coach and director of the athletic department.

Dick Bondelie, a popular new teacher and coach in 1954, was also recognized by the alumni. Later in life he married Roberta Folden Bondelie, a 1954 graduate and a principal at Willow Glen Elementary.

Each alumnus received a CD of an updated version of the "Willow Glen High School Hymn." The original was written by the school's choir director Tom Stevens and his wife, Dorothy. At the request of the Stevens' son Gordon, Jim Sealy of Seal Rock Music created a more musically elaborate rendition and included unexpected 1950s' doo-wop music and lyrics just for the alumni.

And these former students are still connecting with their alma mater. All the net proceeds from the reunion will benefit the Willow Glen High School Foundation.

Willow Glen High School and the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Willow Glen libraries will soon receive copies of "A Golden Reunion."

The original Willow Glen High School Hymn can be heard on the reunion's website at www.reunion50.com.

To view some of Walter Swarthout's photography, visit www.swarthout.net.