Have you ever looked east from the campus to appreciate the snow on the Cuyamaca Mountains, so beautiful and seemingly so close? Ever looked up from the campus to spot the cross on Mount Helix? Ever noticed how dramatic Cowles Mountain seems, when viewed from the football field during afternoon practice?  Ever realized how good the breeze feels in the afternoon as it finally makes its way up through Mission Valley, past the La Mesa foothills to the Grossmont Summit?  Have you ever walked home from school picking fruit to eat off the bountiful trees in the area?  If you have, so have many other Grossmont High students past and present. 

We all share much the same experience the founders of this area enjoyed when they decided to make this rich soil--this spot of incredible panoramas and wonderful climate--a community.  It was in this exuberant spirit in 1920 that Colonel Edward Fletcher, one of the fathers of East San Diego County development, donated 14 acres of land for a school that would ultimately impact the lives of many citizens of the Grossmont-Mount Helix, La Mesa, El Cajon, Bostonia, Fletcher Hills, Santee, Lakeside, Spring Valley, Lemon Grove, Alpine, Barrett and other areas.  Through this school’s doors, men and women have lived, shaped and made history, developing memories that far outweigh the fleeting span of four years.

How many students have hiked up this knoll from 1922 to the modern day?  Although John D. Spreckels had built a train station for the San Diego & Cuyamaca Railway Company that was near the school, somewhat reliable buses would, early on, need to provide more regular transportation for students on their way to school--some from as far away as Alpine.  Of course, as with any rural community of the day, many students rode to school on horseback or walked.  As a student in the late 1940s, La Mesa’s Richard Plum liked to ride his horse to Grossmont, tying it right out front there.  In 1960, legendary Principal “Mr. Grossmont,” Walter Barnett, hired Plum to regain some of the glory that the 1930s and 1940s Grossmont speech and debate teams had garnered.  Plum succeeding in 1967 with a state championship and a third place finish in the nation.  Many remember Mr. Plum as vice principal in the ‘70s and ‘80s.  He also hosted many “get-involved” orientation speeches to incoming freshman in the Old Gym.

That flag pole out front was once the sight of great contests over the honor to fly the class colors: grey and gold for freshmen, old rose and silver for sophomores, and green and white for juniors.  In one of the most truly unique Grossmont traditions--and there have been many--the pole was greased as representatives from each class tried to make it to the top.  Grossmont’s senior class changed its colors in the second graduating year from royal blue and white to royal blue and gold, which, of course, led to today’s more well-known, traditional school colors.  

Through these large, beautifully crafted medieval front doors we enter, as so many have, the main hallway.  This original school building housed classrooms until most of it was taken over by the District’s needs and a growing East County, swelling with post-World War II growth and the addition of six high schools to the area between 1951 and 1961.  (Many students over the years heard that the building was off-limits to classes for safety reasons.)  Grossmont High could not keep up with growth, although she always did her best, including the implementation of double sessions to accommodate a student body numbering 3000 by 1955.  As each new school was added to the District, Grossmont mourned the loss of students, faculty, and administrators, sacrificing much in academic reputation, athletic prestige, and quality professionals for the good of the County and District.

Were it September 1922, we would immediately notice the smell of paint and lacquer, as well as hear the sound of workers finishing construction on “final touches” and the Auditorium portion of the new school building.  Despite these distractions, we would be in one of the most modern buildings of our era, costing $135,000 and complete with steam boilers, when many schools still burned open wood or coal fires.

Down the hall to our right, we would find a large English classroom, now the Purchasing Department. Brushing past in 1960 is Senior Helen Schumann taking a student assistant class, working for both the District Service and IBM departments (using the District’s first punch-card computers).  Helen would be hired permanently and spend nearly the next three decades in the District, on the way to becoming Head Buyer for Purchasing and the head of CSEA. (You may remember her as the last woman in the building to wear white gloves to work.)  

Continuing on, walking right through the wall behind the receptionist (also, until the late 1980s, the switchboard operator), we could almost hear the echoes of nearly a century of students and adults resonating off the parquet of what was once an auditorium and theater. Later it was replaced by two stories of classrooms and then walled-off from the district offices. (The construction of a much larger auditorium, the Old Gym in 1936-37, and a growing need for classroom space, made the facility redundant.)  Were we able to listen, voices would carry lectures on Mr. Isaac’s capture of Germans in the Great War, Mrs. Maude Fagin’s travels in Egypt, senior and junior plays, musicals, dances, sounds of the freshman class being initiated by sophomores, and many other social activities. 

Eventually, the building replacing the Auditorium would house numerous classrooms and the English Department.  Here too, in this hall, voices of teachers named M. Miller, MacLoad, Quicksall, D. Smith, Vinson, Goss, Lea, Barton, Gordinier, Fenn/Patterson, D. Miller, Baer, Adams, Galvin, Geba, Anderson, Gray, Luby, Auten, and many others, echo forever in the halls of memory. 

We now exit, out to the rear of what was the original school.  The two-story building before us, built on the rim of the canyon, replaced a 1928-29 building housing a cafeteria, where Rose ‘Mom’ Barnett, served nourishing meals to an appreciative student body for many years.  In tribute to the service longevity of both Ms. Barnett and the Cafeteria, when the building finally received the wrecker’s ball, excited students, having painted portions of its edifice with Hilltop High colors, hoping to see their next opponent triumphantly and symbolically smashed, were disappointed when the first few strikes bounced off the venerable granite structure. 

Ultimately, this modern building, constructed in 1960, replaced the old Cafeteria and still serves as the Library Building. It has provided classrooms for just about every curriculum taught at Grossmont.  You might recall a portion of the Library being dedicated and memorialized to 1960 class president Thomas P. Adams. (Many of our library books were donated by the Adams family and bear an identifying stamp.) This building should also be dedicated to the tireless work of many Grossmont librarians, including Ms. Tisdale and Ms. Kelly, who worked in the old Library located in a stone wing of the “Old Main”; legendary Lewis Kohrs; and ’67 graduate Linda Pierce.

That old wooden building around the corner of the Library, looking as if it is going to fall into the canyon, was built in the 1930s to be temporary. It still stands in use today, more than half a century after its construction, as a District technology repair office and temporary home of the Associated Student Body.

As we make our way west, through the upper quadrangle, we immediately recognize this location’s most dominant feature, the Old Gym.  The Great Depression of the 1930s may have nearly destroyed this country, but it certainly was good to the facility of Grossmont High.  President Roosevelt’s New Deal jobs programs built much in San Diego: parts of the Zoo, the Del Mar racetrack, San Diego State College, and Mount Helix; bridges and dams; the County Administration Building; and, most importantly, much of our campus.

Affirming Roosevelt’s celebrated legacy, the Old Gym has a utility rivaling any building in the county.  Built by the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression years 1936-37, our Gym has literally seen millions of individuals from the school and community pass through its doors to watch and participate in plays and musicals, the community’s Christmas Pageant, sporting events, assemblies, committee and district meetings, conventions, speeches, and practices and rehearsals of every conceivable kind.  The Gym was even noticed in the April 13, 1959 issue of Life Magazine, highlighting the school’s nominating convention.  Now, the building only hints at its 1930s Art Deco origins, due to a millennial refurbishment that removed all the windows and added stucco to the style’s tell-tale columns and rounded edges. 

Along with a gym, between 1935 and 1937, WPA project number 653 planted palm trees and grass; remodeled the old Auditorium with classrooms; pored concrete for tennis courts; constructed a mechanical arts building that housed wood, metal, and auto shops (the shop building now houses the Boys’ Locker Room, the Weight Room, and other facilities); realigned and seeded the football field parallel with old Murray Drive; lined the bank on the home-side of the same field with stone and cement; built the “temporary” wooden building on the canyon; added a cement and rock terrace to the canyon (now gone); and built a bridge over the railroad tracks in front of the school (since replaced by the current bridge).

The WPA’s architect at Grossmont was Frank L. Hope, who went on to design many well-known buildings in San Diego, including the Cabrillo Monument in 1966 and San Diego Stadium in 1967.  Along with contractor B. O. Larsen (builder of the Gym), Hope would be a part of  making Balboa Park ready for the 1935-36 California Pacific Exposition. (Larson built the Expo’s Ford building, today’s Aerospace Museum).

Across the lawn from the Gym, standing on what originally alternated between physical education areas and parking lots, are the Science and Art buildings.  These classrooms were added in 1948-49.  The buildings house some of the best symbols of dedicated teaching and professionalism to this day.  When you think about artistic and scientific institutions at Grossmont, you think of names like Moriarty, Hatcher, Helm, Widener, Eklund, and Mandell.

In silhouette at the doorway of the Art Building is Kenny Church, talking to a girl and posed for eternity in 1958s El Requerdo.  Kenny went to Vietnam with a lot of other Grossmont grads--in his case to serve his country in the Central Highlands, in every case returning changed forever.  Grossmont has given more than her share of soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines to the defense of our country.  In the Second World War and Korea Conflict alone, 38 graduates died, scores more were injured, and still more served.  During the Korea War, Class of 1947 honor graduate Norman Freeman would lose his life at the controls of America’s first operational jet, the F-80 “Shooting Star,” because of an engine flameout.  It is to his dedication and service that our most prestigious award is given at graduation. 

More recently, three locations have been dedicated to veterans who have either died in combat, or have passed away, after returning from duty to give substantial service to Grossmont:  in 2003, the football field was dedicated to a soldier lost in the buildup to Operation Iraqi Freedom—Lt. Thomas Adams (class of ’93), the nephew of Thomas P. Adams; the baseball field is dedicated to Joe Gizoni; the Old Gym’s basketball court is dedicated to Edward “Little Eddy” DeCoito.

In unique service are heroes of another kind--astronauts.  Of the first three men to reach the moon, one attended Grossmont.  William Anders, a student in the 1950s, was part of the hurried, historic Apollo 8 flight in December 1968, which was prompted by satellite photos revealing that a Russian attempt to reach the moon was imminent.  A 1978 graduate, Marine Rick Sturckow, went on to be a Top Gun and test pilot, fly dozens of missions in Operation Desert Storm, and pilot two space shuttle missions.   Additionally, optics specialist Dr. Ellen Ochoa, graduate of 1975, is the NASA Deputy Director of Flight Crew Operations and has logged an incredible 978 hours in space.  She has completed four shuttle missions to date.

Continuing west of the Upper Quad., we cross what was once Murray Drive to reach the current Administration building, built in the late 1950s upon the foundation of concrete tennis courts.  For a time, the road through campus was open before and after school, with buses dropping students off right on campus.  Many may remember popular old Al Ellen as the attendant in front of school, waving drivers from Murray Drive into the parking lot from his small checkpoint building. 

If it is the late 1950s, there is Mike Eddy and Mickey Bruce, in the office and in trouble again (or assumed to be), dressed in rolled-up Levis, white t-shirts, and white buck shoes, waiting for then-Vice Principal Walter Barnett to dole out punishment.  Ironically, Mr. Eddy would find himself again in front of Principal Barnett’s desk in 1969, but for another purpose. By that time, Eddy had served in the Marine Corps, using his G.I. Bill to get his teaching credential at SDSU, and he was looking for a job.  He would be hired, after assuring Mr. Barnett that he had indeed changed.  You may have taken Geography from Mr. Eddy in the early 1970s, seen him on the administrative staff at Chaparral Continuation School or as Vice Principal at Grossmont in the mid to late 1970s, or using his law degree as a District administrator.

On the interior walls around the Administration building, before many walls were removed, Grossmont used to honor past graduates by displaying their pictures.  You might remember seeing pilot Ben Cloud, class of ’49, sitting in his navy fighter.  He went on to fly missions over North Vietnam, marry fellow classmate Dianne Ridgway (formerly Daggs), and be a stepfather to Grossmont math teacher Rob Ridgway and grandfather to two current Grossmont students--Rob’s children.

Those buildings between the staff parking lot and the Administration building house Special Education.  In 1962-63, the Grossmont Union High School District became one of the first districts in the nation to offer a specific special education program, then supervised by Principal Mallek, and functioning as a school-within-a-school.  Today, Grossmont High still provides for special needs students who at one time were completely left out of the educational system.  Teachers named Blazovic, Lybrand, Ronstadt, Amerling, and others have seen much of the battle that continues over the relationship between “special” and “mainstream” education.

As we walk along what used to be Murray Drive, running right through the middle of the campus, we pass the “modern” Cafeteria, built in 1950-51.  Were we here on the afternoon of November 22, 1963, it would be picture day for the Promenade, and Carol Suggs (later principal’s secretary Carol Ambrosia) would be eating her lunch, listening to the student radio station, once located in what is now a back storage area.  She and other students would be hearing news of the assassination of President Kennedy.  Perhaps other sorrowful moments Grossmont students have shared were equally as shocking: the morning of September 11, 2001; the Challenger explosion; the PSA crash in September 1978; the death of President Franklin Roosevelt; losses in war; and the accidental and needless deaths of classmates and staff members—but the murder of JFK seems to have had the greatest impact.  In fact, the only death ever to receive an El Recuerdo page of commemoration to an individual who was not a student or staff member is in his honor.

Beyond the Cafeteria, there is the new state-of-the-art artificial turf football and soccer field.  If Jack Mashin, “the Fox of the Foothills,” could only see it now. . . .  Back when Grossmonters played on dirt, Coach Mashin used to have physical education students pick up rocks off the fields on game day.  He will always be remembered down there on his field, with his hat and whistle, symbolizing a lifetime of dedication.  The football stadiums at Grossmont High and Grossmont College honor that commitment by bearing his name.

Marlin Baer is down there too, forever fondly remembered as one of the great coaches in the county.  Students from other schools would come to him to get advice on track and field sports and weight lifting.  Competing at a very high level, Coaches Baer and Hatcher invited the best schools from as far away as L.A. to compete at Grossmont.  Once, in the 1960s, Centennial High from Compton showed up for a meet, hungry from their journey.   Choosing not to stop and try to find a meal in unknown and potentially dangerous quarters, the hungry athletes were ultimately fed by historically accepting, non-segregated Grossmont High.  Marlin’s legacy to Grossmont currently includes the esteemed careers of his daughters, Grossmont graduate and English teacher Connie Baer, and math teacher Yvonne Vellone.

The time and energy of so many spent on Grossmont’s courts and fields must surpass anything in the county.  The performances of great names--dedicated players and coaches--include the names of Fitzmorris, Maynard, Head, Smith, Hancock, Carroll, Roberts, Bullock, Karnopp, King, Redditt, Martin, Sutton, Holbert, Foggiano, Hupf, and more.

Passing the old Shop Building, now the Boys’ Locker Room, we next reach the Girls’ Locker Room.  The “girls across the road” (Murray Dr.) have had their showers there since 1950.  From the first, boys have given this location a reverence of rare exception--a common problem in 1950 were boys looking through the building’s windows. 

When it comes to girls’ sports at Grossmont, often forgotten is the fact that it wasn’t title IX of the 1972 Educational Amendments that started broad female participation in athletics.  In the 1920s, Grossmont had girls’ baseball and basketball teams, as well as other sports and activities, even if bloomers (pre-shorts) were a requirement.  Yet, somewhere toward the middle of the last century, the roles of men and women became more rigid, when it seemed that times were changing rapidly.  Not only was less money available for sports (girls’ sports suffering first), but also millions of American G.I.s were coming home to start families.  The resulting baby boom required both men and women to meet certain societal expectations that would, it was hoped, prevent the onset of another Great Depression and see the U.S. through the Cold War.

To the north of the Girls’ Locker Room is the Pool, built in 1978-79.  The pool is now the site of numerous spring sports and activities for Grossmont, District, and local teams, as well as the community.  Before the pool was built, the La Mesa Municipal Pool had to served Coach Morrissey’s Foothillers.  It is thanks to the skillful work of Principal William Davis and Deputy Superintendant Barrons, added money from La Mesa and El Cajon, and the desire to have a community pool near the planned location of future Harry Griffen Park, that Grossmont built a pool.

Beyond the Pool is another well-used Grossmont and community facility—the New Gym and Band Room, built in 1969-70.  From here, Jim Nichols made Grossmont’s Marching Band nationally-known, participating in parades and NFL halftime events, winning many competitive trophies, and perfecting the trademark “Rotating ‘G.’” Also here, enigmatic and controversial coach Frank Foggiano (class of 1968) has spent innumerable hours committed to all levels of Grossmont basketball, both girls’ and boys’.    

Across Murray Drive from the Girls’ Locker Room is a building built in the 1940s, originally housing boys’ P.E. showers on its first floor and the Music Department on its second.  The building is now considered home of the Drama room with classrooms upstairs and the Choir room downstairs. 

It’s 1950 and there is chorale student Juanita Heflin sneaking out the building’s east side second floor exit again (today Coach Foggiano’s math classroom), after being told by her friends that her constant admirer, orchestral student Harold “Jud” Flower, is waiting for her on the other side.  Harold’s persistence would pay off, as they would eventually marry, after she finally realized she loved him.  They recently returned, as many alumni do, to visit and remember Juanita’s role as 1950’s Virgin Mary in that year’s Christmas Pageant.  

Here too, the Red Robe Choir’s Merle Donohue truly made Grossmont an integral part of the community, participating in Mount Helix’s Easter Sunrise Services, the Christmas Pageant, and other events.  Today, under the direction of Dr. Ed Basilio, the Choir continues to sing not only around the county, but also world-wide.  Not to be forgotten are the dramatic and musical contributions of Messrs. Lutz, Hubler, Ortiz, and Hollingsworth.

For their contributions to the institution of Grossmont High, please also remember an incomplete list that includes the following names:  Prosser, Harkleroad, “Mom” and “Pop” Sherman, McSpadden, Gilham, Piazzoni, MacRustie, L. Smith, Taylor, Barkell, Gross, Van Den Akker, Van Note, Martin, Lasley, Graessle, Kintzele, Velman, Beck, Warburton, Jones, Clause, Reed, La Plante, Bazik, Gangwisch, Doerr, Peairs, Martin, Giorgi, Richeson, Couri, Henselmeier, Davidson, Roberts, Morrissey, Bullock, Lehr, Manderson, Wakefield, Mosley, Bell, Hausmann, Torretto, Camara, Brown/Manns, Fowler, Foster, S. Head, Stav/Lipski, Aguirre, Havens, Roach, Hall, Rodrigues/Bates, Fromer, Seese, Husson, Head, Havens, and many others. 

At our last stop, we sit in my classroom at the back of the school in Room 825--the Social Science and Language Building since the 1950s.  It is here I often reflect on the past.  Many traditions are no longer continued at Grossmont (the Christmas Pageant); some new ones have been added (the “Every 15-Minutes” program); and many remain (Circle G, Daisy Chain, sports programs, the Red Robe Choir, music and drama, Girls’ League, Boys’ Federation).  A society without traditions is not truly a society, but merely a group of people forced by immediate circumstances to be in close proximity to one another for a given period of time.  In sharp contradiction, we are together forever, inexorably bound by a unique experience that brought us to a place of dedication--both physical and mental--for students, faculty, and community.  

As I write this and the tour concludes, Grossmont is being remodeled again, thanks to another bond measure.  This is fitting, as one of the greatest traditions of all at Grossmont has been change.  Many of the structures we have known will either be remodeled or be removed.  But we “Grossmonters” and “Foothillers” are like our school--changing on the outside, while traditions of commitment and invested ownership born inside us will always remain. 

You can use and misuse a building, neglect or vandalize it, and finally tear it down, but you cannot erase its memories.

Donald J. Ginn, Teacher, Class of ‘87
Written, Summer 2006