School Story:
I graduated with the class of 1964 from Hawthorne. Miss Murphy was my 8th Grade Homeroom teacher. She was also my Mom's homeroom teacher, my Uncle's and then after me, my brother Tom's.
Our house was on Alpine, right across the street from Hawthorne and my Mom and Dad loved having so many kids over to the house before school, at lunch, and after school. They had the soda pop truck that cruised through Beverly Hills delivering case loads of Coca Cola, and assorted other bottles of whatever anyone wanted on a weekly basis (non-alcoholic of course.)
Unfortunately, after Hawthorne, I was deployed to Black-Foxe Military Institute on Melrose and Wilcox in Hollywood for two years. I truly missed my Hawthorne pals when I left and hoped my parents would relent and let me eventually attend Beverly High. Vietnam was raging and the old line LA military schools fell out of favor at the same time, so I was allowed to return to Beverly High for my Junior Year.
During high school, Halloween at our home was always a riot, literally, as David Hoffman, John Einecke Harrison, Greg Freeman, David Reich, and many others will well remember. Our backyard became command central for the largest volume of water balloons and eggs to be thrown at cars from all over greater Beverly Hills descending on our home. One year, our backyard was filled with BHPD officers grabing every kid they could haul off, just to throw them in their cars and haul them off blocks away to get them away from the area. I remember watching Peter Black yelling from a balcony that everyone was getting arrested except him.
My Dad owned the Villa Nova Restaurant on the Sunset Strip (now the Rainbow), which was the first restaurant on the Strip when he built it in 1933, but when he was nearly killed by two guys who he had thrown out of the place one night, he decided to move the restaurant to Newport Beach, along with the family.
Peter Black's family asked me to stay with them for my senior year. I thought that might be nice idea, especially since they owned the home my grandparents had owned on Beverly Drive when I was a little boy. But, my parents thought better of that idea, so I finished out my high school life at Newport Harbor High. Three high schools was a bummer, but I will always remember my Junior Year at Beverly High as the best.