Duarte High School Athletes

Who’s here?  From left to right in the back row is Tim Vorlage.  I didn’t know him, but his younger brother Eric Vorlage was in my class. Tim was a very smart, decent guy.Next is Tom Barney; I never knew him.John Dudgion–never knew him.Next is Rick Ward; now, I have heard of him.  Can’t locate him.  Probably heard his name drop somewhere in Duarte sports.Mitch Brake?  Never heard of him. Richard Viar.  That’s Craig Viar’s older brother. Next is Dan Dettman.  He was well-known. Front row, left to right: first, is Bruce MacArthur.  He always seemed like a bad-ass to me.  Next is Marc Greene with whom I ran on Duarte’s Cross Country team in 1971. Next is Allan Ashcraft.  One of the more powerful runners I’ve had the privilege to see.  He was the fastest at Duarte in 1971. Marc Greene, too, was fast.  It’s just that Ashcraft was beating everyone, going to state championships year after year.  His only competition in Duarte was himself and his own previous times. Next is Jose Jimenez.  I recognize his face, but I don’t recall interaction with him. Next is Stuart Greene.  What can I say about Stuart?  I shot pool with him.  He taught me how to shoot pool at the billiards room and bar, or head shop, next to the old AquaLand on the north side of Huntington Drive.  He was a remarkable athlete.  Not only could he run track and cross country, and he did, but he was also a fantastic baseball pitcher and hitter.  We were once up at Valley View Elementary School and he was throwing pitches for me to hit.  We were in our early 20’s, so it was 1977 or 1978.  He threw a curve ball that chased me off of the plate.  I’d never seen a curve ball before.  The pitch was coming right at me at speeds I’d never seen before.  Just as I backed away, it dropped in for a perfect strike.  He explained that that’s the purpose of the curve ball–to back batters up off the plate while recording a strike.  Stuart Greene was a good guy.  For a few years he often used to stop at our house in Duarte.  Having high school friends over the house gave me the feeling of small-town Duarte, a quaint town riddled with motels competing for motorists’ business, a true monument to cross-country travel. Stuart was in construction.  I am not sure how he got into that.  Regardless, he was a tenacious and intense worker.  He invited my brother, Joe, one year to work with him.  Joe did.  Joe got really good training from Stuart.  I don’t know what stories Joe told him about me or about Tom, but Stuart did ask me to work with him on Saturdays.  For some reason, Stuart did not ask Tom; or maybe he did and Tom declined.  But Stuart taught me.  He was an excellent teacher.  The last time that I saw Stuart was back in the early ’80’s when he was living in an apartment on Rosemead Boulevard in Rosemead.  The complex had a small recreation room with pool table.  We both loved pool, and I enjoyed hanging out with him so I would drive over to his place and we’d play pool over a couple of beer.  It was memorable.  I remember he told me of him getting married.  With all of his tenacity, I think Stuart Greene was a real friendly, gentle man.  I wish him the best success. Next, is Dave Vanderveer.  He had one of the longest running strides I’d ever witnessed.  I want to be careful with my description–his stride was like that of a Tennessee Walker.  He was a great athlete and a great guy with a great sense of humor.  He lived up on Vineyard in Duarte.  He was also very smart.  Though he did well academically, I never did hear where he went to college if, in fact, he did. Next to Dave is Jim Engel.  Never heard of him, though he looks like Gary Jackson who lived down the street from us on Royal Oaks. And finally, Charles Geiser.  I knew Chuck from sight only.  He used to live in the corner house on the southwest corner of Mt. Olive and Royal Oaks.  He was quiet, kept to himself and his friends, and was a great athlete.

Duarte High School football field.

Kaufmann’s Pharmacy in the Pantry Shopping Center.  You can read the address there on the window: 2221 E. Huntington Drive, Duarte, CA.  I didn’t have too many occasions to go into that pharmacy, though I am glad that it was there for so many years.

Coach John Hanley Mr. Hanley was one of the few coaches at Duarte High School that I liked.  He was friendly.  He was laid back.  Nothing bothered him, and I liked that kind of composure.  He was always happy or in a good mood, and that meant a lot to me.  There was one practice toward the end of the Cross Country season that he raced me against Bernard Ohanian.  Ohanian was a senior that year, and I was a freshman.  I was small and developing.  Bernard was joking with the older teammates, a little distracted, when Hanley nodded to me to take off.  So I did.  I bolted.  I ran about 30 yards quickly ahead of Bernard before he started.  And the race was on.  All of the other guys on the team were cheering me on but also cheering on Bernard to catch me.  I think he finally did but only at the finish line.  It was funny.  I was exhausted.  I don’t think that I ran that fast all season.  I remember one pre-season race we ran against two separate schools.  One was Pater Noster from Glendale and Burroughs High School in Burbank.  That was my first year, and during almost every training run and every other preseason I always stopped somewhere along the route.  But this meet was the first time that I did not stop.  I remember crossing the finish line some where around the 20-minute mark and walking up to Coach Hanley to tell him that I had not stopped.  The smile on his face was the greatest confirmation of my success as an athlete at that time of my life.  It would get crushed one day when I raced my younger brother, Joe, from our home on Elda to Highland Avenue in Duarte.  Joe beat me by a good quarter mile.  Pathetic.  There was one other memory of Coach Hanley.  He hosted an end-of-the year pool party for the Cross Country team.  It was held the same day that my brother, Dan, got married.  Dan married Esther in June of 1971, the 14th I think.  We attended the ceremony and then attended the reception in a banquet hall with lots of food and tables.  But I was constantly pestering my dad asking him to drive me over to Coach Hanley’s party.  My dad finally relented and drove me to West Covina where Mr. Hanley had a nice big pool with barbeque.  I could not have been happier.  It was one of the great high-school experiences that I’d had.  Outside of dating Sylvia Schivato.  Where is she?  I’d heard that she married a fireman and lives out in Cucamonga, Riverside, or Rialto.  I don’t know.  I wish her all the best.

I like this photo.  I cannot identify anybody in it, but I like it.  I like it because it reminds me of the civic support that existed in small-town Duarte on behalf of the students.  It reminds me too of the time that I worked the ticket booth to a Varsity basketball game; we were playing South Pasadena.  It was a big game.  I received money and issued tickets.  I worked the booth with another guy, Mike Carpenter.  After an hour of working the ticket boot that night, Mike went over to the chuck wagon and got us a couple of cheeseburgers and Cokes.  It was heaven.  He came back with cheeseburgers that were made from one of these vans.  They were delicious.

Mr. Jacobs.  What can I say about him?  He was a delightful man.  Not even sure what subject he taught.  He transformed his classroom into a kind of beatnik hut.  Colorful beads hung from the ceiling to floor as a partition curtain, sectioning off one part of his room with sofas and cushioned chairs from the dining tables and chairs.  It felt uncomfortable precisely because his room held the intention to make you feel as relaxed as possible.  No one trusted that; certainly no thinking person trusted that.  Still, we liked it.  He was always stroking the point of his beard, making ironic comments about himself, about students, about the whole enterprise beneath his breath.  He was a good guy and I liked his wry sense of humor about everything.  I wish him well.

Ron Sewell loved baseball.  I’d heard that he was a pretty good pitcher.  He was a good friend to my brother, Chuck.  The last time that I saw Ron was at the donut shop behind the Mobile station at Mt. Olive and Huntington Drive.  He’d just ordered some donuts.  He asked about Chuck.  Told me to tell Chuck to call him and to tell Chuck that we love him.  Pretty great guy.  Ron always had a wide smile on his face as he spoke.  He reminded me of Dick van Dyke.  He had that kind of a star’s face.

Though I recognize the faces of a few of the guys in the picture I cannot recall any of the names.  And because I didn’t know any of the men in the picture, I posted this mainly for that large canvass ball.  They were called “Earth balls.”  I’d played with one up at a Christian camp retreat in Big Bear back in high school and once at Duarte High School.  The high school camp was a Duarte Christian Club High School retreat.  Michele Glennan was there.  Carol Burgess.  Probably Andrea King, whom I think every guy in school and beyond had a crush on, Cathy Gruman, and a score of other good-looking high-school aged women.  But at the camp there was an Earth ball.  They were a novelty that never really caught on.  The point of the earth balls was that no single person could control it.  It was a team effort, a team ball, maybe some UN project in sensitivity training.  They were memorable precisely because they were so stupid.  But for group fun, as seen in the picture above, they could provide some short-term interest.

 

Mrs. Sullivan.  She was my 11th grade American history teacher.  He died of a heart attack before June of 1975.  Shane Kelley wrote a terrific tribute to her as a teacher and to her as a symbol.  I remember attempting to answer only one question in her class.  She asked about how portraitures paint presidents and famous people, whether they painted them with accuracy or with a bias to making them appear better than they really were.  Oblivious to the context of the question raised my hand and answered “As accurate as they could.”  Mrs. Sullivan shook her head and looked for answer from someone else.  She was nice enough to me.

Though I never knew Jerry Ashcroft, I did know his brothers Allen and Tom, both of whom were terrific athletes.

The guys that I know in this picture are JD Hart (2nd from left), Steve Sanders to the right of him, and Joe Molyneux with arms folded at the far right.  JD Hart, I believe, actually dated Claire, the young woman I met at Immaculate Conception in the early 1980’s.  Of the group, Steve Sanders was the most decent guy that Duarte had.  I have two pretty terrific memories of Steve.  One, he used to give me rides out to Citrus College when we both attended there.  Not every day, but several times I remember getting a ride from him.  He’d also give me a lift home.  I would treat on occasion with a cheeseburger at a local stand on Foothill in Irwindale.  The last time that I saw Steve was in the Ralphs parking lot in Duarte.  I was sitting in my parked truck waiting for my mom to finish her shopping when in the distance I see Steve Sanders walking my way.  I got out of the truck and called to him.  Steve stopped and we talked for a good 20 minutes reminiscing about Duarte and some of the folks.  He told me that he was working at the Royal Oaks Manor.  I thought what a great guy.  Steve asked about Paul Parker, who used to call Steve “Big Steve.”  Steve was and is such a decent guy.  I miss seeing him around Duarte, and I miss knowing his general whereabouts.

Mrs. Whipple

She was such a modern.  She really enjoyed teaching biology.  I enjoyed the dissections we did in her class.  We dissected a baby shark.  Kind of cool.

The only guy that I know in this photo is Coach Glenn Fessler.  The kid at the left is Bob McHenry, whom my brother, Chuck, knew by sight.

John Horvat was involved in sports throughout Duarte.  He was the Recreational leader at Valley View and at Royal Oaks at different times.  He was fun and loved sports.  That’s about all that I remember of him.

 

I took this picture not because of the girls.  In fact, I don’t even know these girls.  I believe that they’re a grade or two older than me.  No, I took this picture because of the spacecraft design.  I loved this structure when I was a kid because our mother would drive me, Tom, and Joe to Duarte Park with lunch and then we’d play on the different structures.  I did know Linda Zahl.  The girl in the middle at the top has a sister, Sheila Lewis, whom I believe danced on Soul Train as a regular.

The only 2 guys I know in this photo are Glen Fessler, at the far right, third up from the front who was my Mechanical Drawing instructor and who displayed one of my projects in his class.  That made my day.  The other guy that I know is John Zufall, who was in charge of Pop Warner football in Duarte at one time.

My sophomore English teacher, Mr. Carr.  He assigned us to read “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” in his class.  He also gave us Greek & Latin worksheets that I enjoyed.  I am sure that he worked hard.

Left to right is John Horvat, D. Wojkowski, D. Morris, Bob Busby, D. Brillhart, J. Coppock (who I believe is Steve Schibsted’s older brother), W. (maybe for Wilard) Long, Victor Barrie, who was an absolute all-star athlete, Hector Madrigal, Al’s older brother and an equally tough competitor, and Allen Ashcraft.  This is a collection of some of the toughest athletes in all of Duarte.  Hector Madrigal played basketball for years after high school, in pick-up games Irwindale and Azusa and throughout and then played in organized leagues, like the summer league and the winter league at night over at Cal State LA.  Allen Ashcraft, of course, was a phenomenal runner, winning almost all of the races that he’d entered.  He didn’t just compete; he won races and lots of them.  He’d gone to state champion competition.

Lynn Johnston

Lynn Johnston was not only an attractive woman, she was also really nice.  The only time that I met her was at Ray’s house.  I used to go over there all the time to play basketball, but so did a lot of other people.  I would have gone over there almost everyday, and for at least a week I think I did.  His mom would tell me that Ray can’t play basketball today, that he wasn’t home and for me to come back tomorrow or Thursday.  But there was one time that I was in Ray’s house.  Mark Williams from that corner house on Mel Canyon and Deerlane was over.  We were sitting at Ray’s table, playing a table game.  Ray was generous with his mom’s food.  But Lynn was there too.  She was sitting on the table with her bare feet on the chair next to me.  She was in shorts, cool-lots or something.  I just remember how nervous I was sitting next to a fantastically-looking girl.  Yes, yes, she was sitting on top of the table with her feet on the seat of a chair next to mine.  The nail polish on her toenails was drying.  She raised her foot to see if the polish had dried and accidentally kicked my arm.  She said, “Cold, huh?”  I didn’t know what to say.  She was so beautiful, like a goddess, something intangible and beautiful.  I am sure that I must have seen her a few other times since, because I was over there a lot.  Ray was a good egg.  Speaking of Ray Johnston, I should definitely get a picture of him.  There is that picture of him and Dave Densteadt coaching the sophomores during a game in the DHS basketball gym.  He doesn’t know it per se, but Ray with all of his Christian and basketball evangelizing was an integral part of my youth.  Ray used to drive around Duarte, into all neighborhoods of Duarte, to pick high-school kids up at 5:30am and drive them out to Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena for a Christian Breakfast Club.  Hey, we were served french toast, butter, bacon or sausage.  Meals were always group affairs in my life.  Eating at home was hurried, particularly if you wanted seconds; if you didn’t hurry, no seconds were left.  That Christian Breakfast Club was terrific.  So on Wednesday mornings, I’d end up having breakfast with Jimmy Flores, Beth Eaves with whom I had an enduring crush on.  I met her brother Dan Eaves years later and was shocked to learn that he was her brother.  Who else was at Lake Ave. for breakfast?  Oh, yeah, Steve Schibsted (sp?); sorry Steve.  Sometimes Bill Armas, for some reason Bill and I rubbed each other the wrong way.  He was vocal.  I was an introvert.  I think that Andrea King could have gone once or twice.  I know for sure that Carol Burgess and Michele Glennon went, but if my memory serves me Michele was not a morning person.  What was really great about Ray Johnston and his Lake Avenue Congregation Church was the small gym in the basement.  Ray had the key to the place.  On Saturday nights, a bunch of Duarte fellows would drive over there to play basketball underground, sometimes until 11pm.  I must be confusing events, because right now I had the thought that Henry Martinez used to drive us over to Lake Avenue.  That just doesn’t feel right.  Henry at Lake Avenue  In retrospect, the guys that I used to hang to hang out with were really nice to me.  Henry Martinez used to have a souped-up Chevy, and I was in it one night riding with the guys on the Cross Country team.  Henry was playing Creedence Clearwater’s “Lookin’ Out My Backdoor.”  It was one of the best nights of my teenage years.

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