Remembering a school of many names

Young Chang

The Newport-Mesa Unified School District is huge today. With 30

total schools, the district educates more than 21,000 students. But

early scholarly endeavors in Costa Mesa had humble origins. There

weren’t that many schools and high school student had to travel to

Santa Ana to attend Santa Ana High School in the early 1900s.

The first school on the Westside was called the Costa Mesa School

and was at the intersection of 19th Street and Newport Boulevard. It

taught first through eighth grade. By then, the Newport Harbor Union

High School District existed.

Costa Mesa School was demolished after the ripples from a big 1933

earthquake in Long Beach shook things up in Costa Mesa. A city

already struggling because of the Depression four years earlier now

also faced ruined businesses, including staple economy boosters like

the oil drilling industry and the bank, according to former mayor Bob

Wilson’s book “From Goat Hill to City of the Arts: The History of

Costa Mesa.”

The school was rebuilt and expanded in 1935, said Gladys Refakes,

a volunteer at the Costa Mesa Historical Society, and also gained the

name Main School.

In 1957, the school was renamed yet again after members of the

Board of Trustees voted to tribute retired teacher Clara McNally.

Starting then, Main School was known as the Clara McNally School.

McNally worked at the Main School as a substitute teacher starting

in 1935. She hadn’t taught in a while and had never taught school at

the elementary level, Refakes said.

The teacher was quoted in a 1957 issue of the “Globe Herald” as

saying, “There was a shortage of teachers in the area at that time

and I felt a need to return.”

She was said to patient and compassionate and had a way of

successfully teaching “problem students,” Refakes said.

McNally retired in 1946.

The space that held the school with many names now houses the

Federal Pacific Savings Plaza.

* Do you know of a person, place or event that deserves a

historical LOOK BACK? Let us know. Contact Young Chang by fax at

(949) 646-4170; e-mail at young.chang@latimes.com; or mail her at c/o

Daily Pilot, 330 W. Bay St., Costa Mesa, CA 92627