By Bonnie Graveline Worley (Editor’s Note: Bonnie Graveline Worley graduated from Palisades High School in the summer of 1964. Raised in Pacific Palisade, she attended Palisades Elementary and Paul Revere before entering Palisades High School as a 10th grader in 1961. Her class was the first graduating class to go all the way through Palisades High. Their 40th Reunion will be held at The Beach Club in Santa Monica on October 9. After high school, Bonnie married Carl Worley and was a stay-at-home mom while raising their two daughters. She and her husband live in San Juan Capistrano and are enjoying their four grandchildren.) Our graduating class of S’64 from Palisades High School started elementary school in the fall of 1951. Our classmates attended either Palisades, Marquez, Canyon, Kenter Canyon, Brentwood, or UCLA (UES) elementary schools. During the 6th grade many of us remember reading in the ‘Weekly Reader’ (a newspaper our schools received each week), that the Russians had launched Sputnik’the first satellite ever! We were all very afraid of the Russians and people were building bomb shelters. These shelters cost a few thousand dollars and were dug into the ground and packed with food and supplies so if necessary, you could survive for months. The top of the bomb shelters looked like manhole covers. There was a bomb shelter around the corner from my house on Chapala; I wonder if it’s still there after 45 years? ”” ”Back then, La Cruz between Swarthmore and Sunset was still a dirt road. The street ran past the side of Bay Pharmacy, past Ebsen Dance Studio (owned by Buddy Ebsen and his sister Velma), and no one could figure out why it was NEVER paved. You could drive to the back of Woodbury’s 5 & 10 Cent Store on Sunset and Dilly’s had the best ice cream ever. The Hot Dog Show on Sunset had a miniature train track up near the ceiling running around the room, and the Bay Theater (our one and only movie theater) was another hang-out for us kids. We had celebrities in our neighborhood: Groucho Marx’s daughter, James Arness’ kids, Betty Hutton’s daughter, Grace Kelly was renting a home on Alma Real, and Vivian Vance (Ethel on ‘I Love Lucy’) lived on Ocampo. Not to mention the future U.S. President (Ronald Reagan) was living on Amalfi. Also on Amalfi was Jerry Lewis. ”When we entered Paul Revere we met many new classmates from all the local elementary schools I mentioned earlier. We became a very close class in Paul Revere and remained close all the way through Pali High’520 students graduated from Revere in June 1961 and were basically the same students who made up the 487 seniors who graduated from Pali in June 1964. When we were in the 8th grade one of the most memorable mornings at Paul Revere was when John Glenn was launched into space. ”As 9th graders we knew our ‘brand new’ high school was nearing completion and we all voted on the school name, the school colors and the school mascot. We chose Palisades High for the name, royal blue, columbia blue and white for the colors and Dolphins for the mascot. Everyone was thrilled to be going to a school right in our hometown. If the new high school had not been built we would have gone to University, about a 20-minute drive from the Palisades. Palisades High School was built on the site originally called ‘All Hallows Farm,’ the first home of Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. Reunion committee member Wendy Price Anderson recalls: ‘Before the high school was built, Temescal Canyon Road didn’t go through to PCH. At the end of the canyon there was a pier with a restaurant where people ordered clam chowder in china bowls and when they were finished eating they just threw the bowls out into the ocean. A man I met on a hike one day told me that people go diving for them today.’ ”On September 11, 1961, Pali opened with only 10th and 11th graders. The boys gym was complete, but not the girls gym. For one semester the girls all had P.E. in the multipurpose room (now Mercer Hall) where the P.E. teachers turned up the hi-fi and we all learned the ‘new’ dances, like the twist! ”We all loved the beautiful new school, it was modern, fresh and clean’and earthquake proof. We had more school spirit than anyone could imagine. We lost every football game the first year (we had no senior football players), but our ‘spirit’ was the envy of all the schools we played. We sophomores were not old enough to drive, so we all went on buses to the away football games. When our buses showed up at the other schools our rivals could hear us coming from a mile away. We were singing and cheering so loud! When Bob Sawyer finally scored our first touchdown (in the fifth game of the season at home against Fairfax) we cheered for at least 10 minutes! What a thrill!!! ”Our principal was Dr. Herbert Aigner, who was very fair and respected by most everyone. We had many excellent teachers who have stayed in contact with some of our classmates over the years. Our 40th reunion is coming up and thanks to the efforts of classmate Janie Redmond Mueller, nine of the original faculty members will be attending: Richard Farnham, Rose Gilbert, Ralph Hedges, Annette Herbst, Fred Johnson, Paul Jordan, Ray Normandin, Arthur Thomas and Thomas Weese. ”We had some very tragic times too. Our class lived through the Brentwood and Malibu fires, where many of our friends lost their homes. Many students had their homes burn to the ground, leaving them with nothing but the clothes on their back. The most tragic, but most memorable day was in the 11th grade when an announcement came over the P.A. system during 1st period that ‘President Kennedy has been shot.’ Later that day the sad news came over the P.A. system that our beloved President John F. Kennedy was dead. Teachers cried, students cried and the school was closed for three or four days. ”Our class produced many doctors, lawyers, and professionals. Among them is Dr. Barry Sears, the creator and author of ‘The Zone Diet,’ psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison, author of ‘An Unquiet Mind,’ and Joseph Gold, a world-famous violinist who has performed with the great Jascha Heifetz. We also had the late Rusty Hamer who played ‘Rusty’ on ‘The Danny Thomas Show.’ Sadly, we have lost 26 classmates out of a class of 487. The Vietnam War began and we sadly lost young men from our school, including two classmates, Todd Swanson and Pete Drusdeau. ”The favorite music groups of our high school days were Dick Dale and The Deltones, Johnny Mathis, Ricky Nelson, Elvis, the Beach Boys and the Beatles. We had a dress code that girls today would not believe. Girls always had to wear dresses or skirts to school and socks or nylons at all times…never slacks, jeans, or bermuda shorts. Your skirt had to be knee length and we all took pride in ourselves. The way students dress today is quite different. Y-Teen Club jackets were forbidden at PaliHi. Therefore, the two girls’ Y-Teen Clubs in our class, The Polynesians and The Shardanees, could only wear their club jackets off campus. Girls had beehive hairdos and used lots of hairspray. Girls would wear large plastic rollers to bed, to get that perfect bubble hairdo the next day. We did not have curling irons and blow dryers unless we went to a beauty salon. ”People felt we were the ‘Cream of the Crop’ and envied our school. The parking lot was full of new shiny cars and he would say ‘those kids’ cars are better than ours!’ It was true’this was a wealthy school. Our classmates’ parents were doctors, dentists, psychiatrists, business owners, and film industry people. The school was almost entirely Caucasian, we had one black student and two Asian students. There was no such thing as busing in those days. ”When we were in the 11th grade, we voted on our graduating classes’ name (the Spartans) and colors (brown and beige). We had our senior prom in the school’s multipurpose room and our Spartan Class Grad Night was held at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Ironically, that was the same hotel President Kennedy’s brother Robert, would be assassinated in exactly four years later in June 1968. ”Attending school from 1951-1964 and living in Pacific Palisades all those years was definitely living the ‘Happy Days.’ ”For reunion information, go to www.pali64.com or contact reunion committee members: Wendy Price Anderson, 459-8334, e-mail: Pricelesseaview@netzero.net; Janie Harris Hansen, 818-990-1630, e-mail: JanieHansen@juno.com; Bonnie Graveline Worley, 949-661-7661, e-mail: BWorley@cox.net; Ileen Cohen Eatherton, 714-960-4105, e-mail: Oileen@socal.rr.com.
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