Going back to the glory days

Mike Sciacca

It no longer exists today, but on Saturday the first, and for many

years only, grammar school in Huntington Beach came to life as 25

graduates of Ocean View Grammar School met at the Charles E. Rodgers

Senior’s Center to reminisce about the days of old.

In what has become an annual reunion held on the first Saturday

following Easter, graduates of the school, built in 1886, gathered to

renew acquaintances and catch up on news of their classmates -- those

present and deceased.

“There’s nobody here I know,” said one woman in attendance.

But everyone present remembered the school and their former

teacher, Jane Crawford who began her teaching career at Ocean View

when she was 21.

“Everyone behave, the teacher’s coming,” shouted one female

graduate who caught a glimpse of Schuth as she approached the

building.

Schuth, who had just finished school at UCLA, taught the

fifth-grade.

Saturday marked the first time that Schuth, a resident of

Fullerton, had attended a reunion.

“It was a nice school and I remember that families in the area

wanted their children to learn ... to have a good education,” said

Schuth, a youthful-looking 86-year-old with crystal-clear light-blue

eyes. “That was my first teaching position and I taught there for

eight years. I remember having 45 children in my first class. That

was an amazing number of students for one class. Years later, I’m

still standing.”

Ocean View Grammar School knew two different homes during its 70

years of existence. The original location was at the corner of what

was then Smeltzer Avenue, now Edinger Avenue, and Beach Boulevard.

A new school site was built in 1912. Classes were held at the

Wintersburg Road and Highway 39 location -- now Warner Avenue at

Beach Boulevard -- until the building was demolished in the 1950s,

said Arline Huff Howard, a reunion committee member who graduated

from the eighth-grade in 1943.

The committee is comprised of Howard, Rosemary McCormick Robinson

-- class of ’41 -- and Lois Shade, a classmate of Howard’s.

“I remember our school having a wonderful music program,” said

Robinson who added that she has attended the reunion for 40 years.

“We had a great orchestra and staged plays. I played the snare drums

in the orchestra.”

Numbers attending the reunion have dwindled through the years but

Howard said staging the annual get-together is “worth the effort.”

Names like Bushard, Graham, Heil and Slater have passed through

the school’s doors.

Past reunion attendees have been children of the original

classmates of the school.

The reunion got its start, Howard said, when Arthur E. Paine, who

was the principal of Huntington Beach Union High School, thought it

would be a good idea to “promote family and community” by staging a

yearly Ocean View Grammar School picnic “for the all graduates.”