Estancia High’s first graduates returning for 50-year reunion

It has been many years since 1967, but for the crop of graduates from Estancia High School that year, it was particularly special.

The roughly 300 seniors carried the distinction of being Estancia’s first graduating class. The Westside Costa Mesa campus had opened two years earlier with an initial student population of juniors and sophomores, mostly from Costa Mesa and Corona del Mar high schools.

At the outset, they chose the school colors — cardinal red and gold — and a mascot, the Eagle.

Now, 50 years after receiving their diplomas, members of Estancia’s class of 1967 are returning for a reunion.

Festivities will start Oct. 6 with a visit to the Placentia Avenue campus at 3 p.m. Another gathering will follow around 4 p.m. at the Crowne Plaza hotel on Bristol Street.

Organizers said other alumni, not just members of the class of ’67, are welcome at the hotel gathering.

On Oct. 7 at the Mesa Verde Country Club, the 50th-anniversary class will have an exclusive gathering at 6:30 p.m. featuring a video and honoring alumni who have died.

Class of 1967 alumnus and reunion organizer Dick Burke, who lives in the Sacramento area, will be among the roughly 50 alumni who have confirmed their attendance so far.

“It’s very interesting to see people as grandparents now, retired, done with their careers,” Burke said.

Back in ’67, Burke kept busy on campus playing football — the team struggled to get uniforms in those days, he said — and wrestling. After graduation, he continued playing football at Orange Coast College and UC Riverside. He worked as a restaurant manager, a police officer in Colorado and a private investigator.

School rivalries began early, Burke said. It was Costa Mesa vs. Estancia, crosstown rivals that later developed the annual Battle for the Bell football game.

“I wish we had thought of that,” Burke said.

He noted how the Estancia campus, which received its official dedication in November 1965, wasn’t quite finished when the students moved in after their summer break. It had an “open school” concept, with classrooms having large openings, not doors, feeding into hallways and common areas.

“It was neat,” Burke said.

Class of 1967 alumna and reunion organizer Gabrielle Hass — known during her Estancia days as Gaby Snellen — now lives in Huntington Beach.

She was on the cheerleading, volleyball and track teams. She also was chosen a homecoming princess and prom queen.

Hass, who immigrated to the United States from the Netherlands, credits Estancia’s English faculty with helping her master what was then a new language in a new country.

“Teachers were really accessible,” she said. “I know I ended up going to college and majoring in English literature because Estancia’s English department was so great.”

Hass and Burke can’t recall whether any bona fide celebrities emerged from the class of ’67, but they noted it did produce many educators, business leaders, a Topgun fighter pilot and a lawyer who worked with Johnnie Cochran.

“The different things they go into, it’s very interesting,” Burke said of his classmates. “It’s kind of fun to find out what they’ve been doing for so long.”

bradley.zint@latimes.com

Twitter: @BradleyZint