A LONG TIME COMING

June Casagrande

They really were the best of times. Though a war was on, though

everyone seemed to know everyone else’s business, though Newport was

still a sleepy little town, classmates looking back on their youths

at their 60th high school reunion say there was no better time or

place to grow up.

“You know how they say it takes a village to raise a child? Well,

it really was a village,” recalled Betty Patch, one of the graduates

of the Newport Union High School’s class of 1943 who gathered at the

American Legion on Thursday.

Of the 100 members of the school’s graduating class, about 60 are

still alive and more than 40 of them made it to the reunion.

“One of the reasons for getting together is to congratulate each

other for staying alive this long,” joked Allan Beek, a member of the

graduating class who helped organize the reunion. “A lot of us go

back further than high school. A lot of the people here go back to

the third grade.”

Back in those days, everyone in the area went to Newport Beach

Grammar School before entering the high school. A book of class

photos dating back to 1933 gave the classmates a chance to look back

at themselves and their friends when they were just children. Beek

and Jackie Hill-Smiley, who were known as the smart ones back in

their school days, pored over the class photos pointing out the faces

of children who would grow up to earn a place in their memories.

“There’s Don Elder, he was on the City Council,” Beek said.

“Oh, and there’s Ruthelyn Plummer,” Smiley said, pointed to a

pretty brown-haired girl who would grow up to be mayor of Newport

Beach. “And there’s me,” she said, pointing to a blonde-haired girl

who had changed surprisingly little in the 70 years since.

Because they graduated at the height of World War II recruiting,

the boys went off to war. No one present at Thursday’s reunion could

remember a single exception.

“Everyone wanted to go,” said Dick Durkee, who had brought the

elementary school class photos from the 1930s. “It was the war.”

The girls were part of the war effort, too. Patch went to work in

San Diego in an aircraft-manufacturing plant, installing electrical

wiring in the planes.

“It’s true that we really did get to grow up in the best of

times,” Patch said.

* JUNE CASAGRANDE covers Newport Beach. She may be reached at

(949) 574-4232 or by e-mail at [email protected].