In my junior year at Whittier High School, having recently returned from a summer in Europe which had been a very positive experience, I was very much in tune with things that were international and cross-cultural. When the opportunity came up to host an international exchange student through American Field Service, I received permission from my parents and applied on behalf of our family.

We were given a lot of forms to fill out, and the AFS folks even came to our house and interviewed us. They promised that if we were chosen to be the host family the exchange student would be specially selected to match our family’s personalities and lifestyle.

Eventually we learned that we had indeed been selected as the official AFS hosts for the 1969-70 school year, which was my senior year, and Giovanni Gonzalez came from Panama to live at our house. He told us to call him “Johnny.”

Johnny was put in my room, which was large enough to handle a second twin bed, and he and I spent the year together. It was soon pretty obvious that we had nothing in common, that no effort had been made to find us a boy that matched in any way. To be fair: I don’t think I would have been easy to match with anyone.

Somehow we got through the year with only a few conflicts, mostly by not paying a lot of attention to each other. Johnny did get into some situations at school where he was in trouble, but I was not really aware of any of the details. I think that my parents were more bothered by his behavior than I was.

The Working Years, by Dick Votaw
(part 15)
(part 14) (part 13) (part 12) (parts 10-11) (part 9) (part 8)(part 7) (part 6) (part 5)(part 4) (part 3) (part 2) (part 1)

This was also Dave’s senior year in high school and we had taken on another big responsibility. We offered to take in an exchange student from Panama for the entire school year on the AFS program. His name was Johnny and as it turned out he came to this country to play; he did not seem the least interested in school and did only enough to get by for the year. Being an exchange student I guess they had to graduate him. He and Dave shared the room in the garage and this did not work out too well. I felt badly that Dave had to put up with so much from him, but we got through the year with no major catastrophes.

Here are the four Votaw kids with Johnny at Christmas 1969 in our living room on Philadelphia St.

Another Christmas-time photo, just inside our front door. The girls have had their hair made up beautifully. The decorations around the door were made by Annie and featured in McCall’s craft magazine, as detailed on this page.

Here we are in the front walkway at the end of the year, ready to graduate from Whittier High.

This was one of the few scenes in that show where we were on the stage together.