Yesterday’s heroes of the chalkboard

JERRY PERSON

As the small beach resort community of Pacific City grew in

population at the turn of the last century, the community leaders

needed a school in

town so that their children would receive the best possible

education, and not have to travel so far away.

The city founded the first permanent school in the upper floor

above Walter Schmidt’s grocery store in the 100 block of Main Street.

The townsfolk hired its first regular elementary school teacher,

Clara Christensen, and in this room Christensen taught kindergarten

to eighth-graders.

It was a makeshift classroom. The seats were on runners so that

they could be moved out of the way when the room was being used for

dances and other social events.

Christensen would later marry a man named Boyer and would reside

for years in Garden Grove where she lived to be 80 years old.

In the last couple of weeks we have been looking atsome of our

teachers who have educated our many children in the 1950s at our high

school.

We will again be looking at the lives of these great individuals

before arriving at Huntington High School.

It was on the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies that Stuart

Mepham

was born of Canadian parents, and it was there that he attended

grammar

school.

When Mapham was in the sixth grade, he and his family were

captured by the occupying Japanese forces during World War II and

taken to a

concentration camp in Sumatra, where they spent the next three and

a half years.

After their release from the camp the Mapham family moved to

Vancouver, Canada, where Mapham entered high school and also had to

learn to speakEnglish.

In 1947 Mapham moved to San Francisco to attend Samuel Gompers

Trade School before spending three years at Stanford University.

San Francisco State was where Mapham received his master’s degree

in physical science.

Before coming to Huntington High he joined the faculty at Mission

High

School in San Francisco as a science teacher.

Knowing just what chemicals to mix so as not to blow oneself up

was the

responsibility of Clarence Mason, who came to Huntington High from

Seima, Calif.

It was in that town that he received his early education before

coming to Chapman College. He later received his master’s degree from

USC.

In 1937, he joined the faculty at Dinube High School and remained

there for 10 years before coming to Huntington High with his wife

Harriet and son Edwin. They lived on Crest Avenue in Huntington

Beach.

It was the lure of its warm weather and beautiful flowers that

brought Margaret McWethy to California from her hometown in Indiana.

Having receiving her master’s degree at Indiana State Teachers

College McWethy began her teaching career both in her hometown of

Clinton, Ind. and in Chicago, where she taught English.

When she was not teaching at Huntington, she could be found

working in her garden, where McWethy and her husband, Cecil, lived at

their home on 11th Street in Huntington Beach.

Teaching sophomore English was Gerald Pomeroy’s specialty. He came

from Oregon to attend USC.

Pomeroy served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and in Korea

for

seven years. After retiring from the military, Pomeroy taught

English

in Long Beach before joining the faculty at Huntington.

Knowing how our country began and how its history evolved was the

responsibility of Betty Reider.

She received her early education at Central High School in

Parkersburg,

W. Va. and at Kent State in Ohio.

After she received her master’s degrees from Western University in

Cleveland, Reider served in the U.S. Navy as a WAVE officer and was

stationed in San Diego.

Before teaching at Huntington she taught history in Fullerton and

she

lived on California Street.

When not teaching machine shop at Huntington, Raymond Royes, his

wife Beverly, and sons Gary and Ronald would be enjoying their desert

cabin in the Morongo Valley.

Royes graduated from Torrance high school and from El Camino

College

before attending UC Santa Barbara and Cal State Long Beach.

For several years, Royes was a journeyman machinist before coming

to

Huntington to impart his knowledge of machine shop workings to his

students.

Our last hero of the teaching profession is Marion Wallace and had

an

amazing educational background, where she graduated from

Bloomfield, N.J. High School, and received her master’s at the

prestigious Radcliff College.

She taught economics at . the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology, she was dean at Franklin College in Massachusetts.

Wallace had been principal of Wheelock College in Boston and

professor of English at Massachusetts State Teachers College before

joining her fellow faculty at Huntington.

For many years she owned and operated a children’s camp.

Wallace and her husband, Earle, were the proud parents of two

daughters, Janet and Harriet.

There are so many more teachers that we have not touched upon in

these three short weeks, but one day I hope to bring their rich

personal

history to our readers.

So as today’s teachers leave their classrooms for the summer

vacation I

hope as they walk along the hallowed halls of Huntington High that

they

take a moment to reflect on their predecessors who

also walked those same hallowed halls and give them a silent

thanks. The should also say thanks to Huntington Beach’s first

teacher, Clara Christensen, who began our long line of heroes of the

chalkboard.

* JERRY PERSON is a local historian and longtime Huntington Beach

resident. If you have ideas for future columns, write him at P.O. Box

7182, Huntington Beach, CA 92615.