Dave in High School

Stories and photos from my high school experience

By Dave

Jul 8, 2021

Here is my family party for my 16th birthday, in 1968. Gotta love that harvest gold shirt.

Here I am playing the guitar in 1969. Actually this photo is completely fake; why would I be playing it outside? I think they just wanted me to have good lighting.

This is a scene from the youth group melodrama in my sophomore or junior year. In this song I had a one-line solo and it was at that moment that this photo was snapped. Meredith is in the lower right corner of this photo but I’m pretty sure I did not know her then.

Ken Holst and I did our Smothers Brothers routine (lip-synch) between the acts of the melodrama. Ken played Tommy and I played Dickie.

I played the role of J.B. Biggley (see the name behind me on the wall) in the musical “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” The upper photo shows my big solo in the show, Biggley’s school song, called “Grand Old Ivy.” The lower photo shows J.B. leading a board meeting of the corporation.

This is my birthday at Grandma and Walter’s place in 1969. Looks like my theme might have been “the college decision.” Johnny (our exchange student from Panama) is on the far left. Meredith is between me and Aunt. Grandma almost succeeded in escaping the photo completely.

This was my high school graduation pose, in front of our house on Philadelphia St.

I started high school in September, 1966, about a month and a half before my 14th birthday. I finally added some height, as you can see in the above photo, so no longer suffered from “short guy” syndrome. I’ve never been tall, but at least I was average.

At that time we still lived on Davista Dr. in East Whittier, so for the first time in my life I got to ride the bus to school. The nearest high school was California High, and it was deemed to be too far to walk for people living north of Whittier Blvd. I liked riding the bus.

I started high school like most kids I guess, with no idea of what I wanted to do. I knew from junior high that I liked math, and I assumed that I was going to college. That put me into a “college prep” curriculum plan. At that time you had to have two years of high school language classes in order to qualify for the California State College system.

I didn’t know what language to take. I’d had some Spanish in junior high and didn’t really like it. My dad said that he’d heard somewhere that German would be a good language to learn for people who like math (I have no idea where he got this). So I decided to take German. It turned out to be one of those arbitrary little decisions that have a huge impact on your life.

My freshman German teacher at Cal High was Mr. Ruud, or Herr Ruud as we were instructed to call him. He was German by heritage. On the first day of class he taught us that our English speaking was too easy; we had to use a lot of effort to speak German properly. “The Germans have a lot of energy,” he said. “They started two world wars.”

Herr Ruud did not permit the use of English in class. “Auf Deutsch, bitte,” (in German, please) he would say if we spoke in English. It was a real challenge, but I got a good start on learning the language.

I took math, of course, and did quite well. I was encouraged to enter the district math contest and finished fourth in the freshman class for our high school district. I joined the boys’ chorus (freshmen were not eligible for the main school choir), and in the spring I tried out for freshman baseball – a humiliating experience.

I bought the same lunch every day from the “fast food” stand at the school. It cost me 50¢. That got me a hamburger (25¢), milk (5¢), potato chips (5¢), and Hostess cupcakes (15¢). Sometimes I’d go hog-wild and get a berry pie instead of the cupcakes, for the same price.

I don’t remember having any friends at Cal High. Our family moved to Philadelphia St. in the spring, which was in the area for Whittier High, and I remember being glad for the chance to “start over” socially. Not that it made much difference; maybe a little. For the last few weeks of the year, after we moved, my parents drove me to school at Cal High. I started at Whittier High as a sophomore in September 1967. And I had to walk to school.

On registration day (the first day of my experience at Whittier High) I decided to find out where all of the buildings are. The hardest to find was the music building. I asked how to find the choir room and was directed to the “music hall elevator,” which turned out to be kind of like a snipe hunt for new students.

I walked up the stairs in the music building, found the choir room, and walked in. There was a tall young man in there, playing the piano. “Who are you?” he asked, and I told him. He introduced himself as Mr. Gothold, the choir director. I told him that I was going to be in the choir, and he said, “Who told you that you could be in my choir?” I explained that I’d been in boys’ chorus at Cal High as a freshman the previous year, had tried out for choir for my sophomore year, and was accepted into Cal High’s choir. So when I transferred to Whittier High, and registered for choir, the office took my word for it. He said, “They can’t do that. I’m the only one who gets to say who is going to join my choir. Are you ready to audition?”

Fortunately I made it into the choir, and it was really the best experience of my high school career. Steve Gothold was wonderful director, both musically and personally, and we had a superb choir. Our repertoire was advanced far beyond anything I’d ever heard, and it was a great introduction to classical choral music.

One day in my sophomore year I was sitting in the bass section in choir, next to a guy with really long hair (who I didn’t really like) and he said to me, “How come you still have a crew cut?” I looked around the room – there were probably 30 or 40 other guys there – and realized that I had the only crew cut in the room. I had no answer for him – I just hadn’t thought about it. And my dad had a crew cut. But now it appeared that I needed to let it grow out a bit. So I did.

As a sophomore in choir I found out that there was another step to climb on the Whittier High musical ladder: you could try out for the Cardinal Ensemble. Everyone knew the Ensemble – they sang pop music at school assemblies, and they wore their outfits to school on the days that they were to be excused from afternoon classes for a gig in town.

I tried out for Ensemble near the end of my sophomore year, and was accepted for my junior year; it was one of my greatest successes in high school. It was a lot of fun to sing with the group, and while I didn’t make any close friends in it, I was treated well and felt like I belonged. I still enjoy those songs! You can hear some of them on this page.

Another class I signed up for as a sophomore at Whittier High was German 2. Herr Wittig was older (and friendlier) than Herr Ruud, and did not require an audition for his class. Early in the year he announced that he’d be taking students on a field trip to Germany and 3 other countries the next summer, and invited us to sign up if we wanted to go.

Well, I wanted to go, and I did go. That story is told on this page.

My social life at Whittier High was a slight improvement over Cal High. I did make one fairly close friend – Jerry Robinson, another quiet boy. He went to the Brethren church in town. We usually ate lunch together, and were often joined by Chris Boyd, who was so painfully shy he could hardly speak, even to us. I knew Chris, because his mother was our church secretary and a great talker. I used to go in to the church office, which was between Whittier High and our house on Philadelphia St., and talk to her on my way home from school. Jerry and I tried to treat Chris well, and it must have been okay, because he stuck with us. But he was pretty tough to make friends with.

Midway through my junior year I was in an evening production at the school auditorium (we had a glorious auditorium that dated from the WPA years). I think it must have been a music department concert, and of course the Ensemble sang. The band played too. After the concert one of the flute players from the band walked over to talk to me. I recognized her from church youth group; she was a senior, and her name was Meredith. I don’t think I’d ever had a conversation with her; actually I never talked with girls much. Not that I wasn’t interested – just didn’t have the courage.

Meredith invited me over to her house for dessert! That evening, basically on the spot. Her dad would drive us, she said, and then take me home. I said okay, somehow got permission from my parents, and went to her house and had dessert with Meredith and her parents. That was fine – she was a nice girl and I discovered that I liked her, and we started dating. I got into my first car accident on one of our dates – in my dad’s car, with Meredith in the car – and the net result of that was a strengthening of my relationship with her and her family. We dated steadily until the end of my senior year. At that point I broke up with her, and actually broke her heart. I didn’t treat her very well, and I’ve always regretted it; not the breaking up, of course, but the way I handled it. She loved everyone in our family, and really hated losing those relationships. We met once again, over twenty years later, and she forgave me.

Meredith and I both sang with our church choir – she was a soprano with a pretty voice – and during my senior year our church choir director invited us to sing with a secular pops group that he was leading. We sang a few gigs with a bunch of older folks, which was interesting. The main thing that I got out of it was a harvest-gold blazer that Karen (justifiably) consigned to the trash shortly after we were married.

In my senior year I decided to try out for the musical theater production that the drama department was putting on. The show was “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” It had been on Broadway and had been a movie as well. To my surprise I got a fairly big part. I played a corporate executive. I think my physical shape and my loud voice got me the role. Being in that show was a lot of fun; I’m glad I did it.

I was a member of our church’s youth group during those years, of course, and the church’s high school choir. Those organizations were not very enjoyable. As I’ve shared elsewhere, my spiritual experience was very different from that of others in our church, and I didn’t really fit in. But we had an annual event, a fund-raiser, that was great fun: an old-fashioned melodrama. This was directed by my old children’s choir director, Lucy Davidson, with old-timey piano accompaniment by her husband George, who was our church organist. He was fantastic.

These were musical melodramas, and Lucy was a genius at getting us kids organized to put on a great show. We had wonderful attendance, and performed it for several nights to accommodate the crowds. In between the acts of the melodrama we had what were called “olio acts,” kind of like vaudeville. George organized us boys into a barbership quartet and taught us how to sing in that style. That was fun, but I found something else that I wanted to do as well.

In those days I was a huge fan of the Smothers Brothers, and had several of their records. Somehow I got the idea that I could do a lip-sync of one of their routines. I recruited a guy from the youth group, Ken Holst, to play Tommy Smothers; I was Dickie. Ken was a junior and I was a sophomore. He was a guitarist already; I had to borrow a string bass and pretend to play it. My red blazer from the Cardinal Ensemble outfit matched what Tommy and Dickie were wearing at that time, and we borrowed another one for Ken to wear. (Come to think of it, that red blazer also ended up in the trash. Huh.) Ken and I both had some acting background, and the Smothers Brothers were great parts to play with their arguments and all.

Ken would come over to my house, to my room next to the garage, and we would practice, over and over again and again, with that Smothers Brothers album. We did “I Talk to the Trees”, which was and still is hilarious, and we got it down perfect. We were the hit of the show.

The next year we were back, by popular demand, and did another Smothers Brothers bit: “Cabbage.” What a lot of fun that was! At some point during those years, Ken helped me buy a guitar, and I took guitar lessons from him. I was never very good at playing it, but I learned basic music theory and how chords are structured, and that was quite valuable.

Academically, I continued my college prep program. I took four years of math, and English, and history, as required. My two years of science were Chemistry and Physics. (I successfully avoided ever taking Biology.) We had lots of standard tests, for aptitude, IQ, and such, and I always excelled at them. I had great test-taking skills, and was always thought to be smarter than I actually was. Unfortunately I believed the test results.

My high school counselor was Mr. Leonard, a very nice man. He believed the test results too, and told me once that I could be “anything I wanted to be.” That set my expectations pretty high. I didn’t have any idea what career I wanted; I just knew I liked math. Where do you go to college if you like math? “Cal-Tech,” I was told, “and if that doesn’t work out, go to Harvey-Mudd.” Both were schools with well-respected engineering programs.

Applications to both schools were sent off in the fall semester of my senior year. But then disaster struck, in the form of a B+ grade received for the fall semester math class, and a less-than-wonderful score on the math section of my SAT test. In the baby boomer era, there was too much competition for the limited number of openings in those schools, and I was not accepted by either one. I am now convinced that God was directing my path, and I am oh-so-thankful for it. At the time, however, I was devastated. I didn’t know what to do.

My grandma wanted me to go to a Quaker college, as she had, and she was willing to help make that happen. I rejected Earlham College, her alma mater, on the basis of our visit there in 1966 – I did not like the college or the state that it was in. But we agreed that I would check out George Fox College in Oregon. That’s a story for another chapter.

I remember the day that Mr. Leonard walked into our choir class and interrupted our rehearsal to announce (to the whole class) that I’d been awarded an “Honors on Entrance” scholarship, representing 50% of tuition, to George Fox. I was pleased to get the scholarship, of course, but was actually kind of embarrassed to have it announced. Nobody in Whittier had ever heard of George Fox, so I had to explain to various people why I would want to go to a place like that.

Pretty soon I graduated, and high school was over. Some good things had happened, but my overall reaction was that I was glad to be done with it. I was looking forward to getting away from Whittier.

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