Five heroes of Huntington High

JERRY PERSON

This week we will look back at five Huntington Beach High School

teachers who dedicated their lives to education.

Gordon Hjalmarson was born in Canada, but in 1939 he and his

family moved to California. After graduating from Ventura High

School, he enrolled at Pomona College and then received his master’s

degree from San Francisco University.

His first teaching assignment brought him to Santa Rosa to teach

science and biology.

In 1952 Hjalmarson got a job teaching the same subjects at

Huntington High.

Our next teacher and I shared the same address years apart. I

lived at 822 California St. 30 years after he did.

It was at the Gerstmeyer Technical School in Terre Haute, Ind.,

that Manford Sampson, graduated before moving to California to attend

Compton College. He would later enroll at UC Santa Barbara before

finally receiving his master’s degree from Saint Louis University in

Missouri.

By the time World War II broke out Sampson was married, and in

1942 he and his wife Rosemary became the parents of a baby boy, Larry

William. It would be awhile before Sampson would see his boy, for

Sampson was serving in the U.S. Navy and was stationed in the

Atlantic and later in the South Pacific.

After the war ended, he taught class at Antelope Valley High

School in Lancaster before coming to teach American problems at

Huntington High. While at our campus, he sponsored the World

Friendship Club and Noon Activities programs, as well as serving on

the Bleacher Conduct and the Welfare Committees.

When he was not in his classroom, Sampson would be found with rod

and reel in hand as one of his main hobbies. His other two hobbies

were hunting and drafting.

Now drafting may not seem like a hobby that a man like Sampson

would take up, but it was just the thing for a family man who was

planning to build his own dream house here in Huntington Beach.

It was in the early 1950s, and fresh out of Stanford University

with a master’s degree that our next teacher, Robert Grable, came to

Huntington High.

Grable too would serve in the military during World War II and was

a member of the U.S. Army’s 9th Division where he saw action in

France and Germany. During the war, Grable married, and in 1944, he

and his wife Patricia received the gift of a bouncing baby boy,

Roger.

While Grable was teaching at Huntington he became the editor for

the school’s football programs that were handed out at the games. He

would also teach his students the value of knowing American history

and the lessons it told. He was a sponsor of the school’s Dance Club

too.

Grable became vice president of the school’s Faculty Club in 1958

and, by the mid 1960s, became the social studies department chairman.

Our next teacher, Iris Wilson, arrived here in 1957 to teach

history and Spanish.

Wilson received her master’s degree in history at USC and received

her teaching credential from Cal State Long Beach.

Our last teacher taught typing at Huntington High in the 1950s,

but Boston was Marilyn O’Connor’s original home.

After she graduating from high school she went to UCLA. After

that, O’Connor would remain at that school as an assistant in typing

instruction.

She left UCLA to come to our campus. She was also a sponsor of the

school’s Advisory Council and secretary of the school’s Faculty Club.

Well, there you have it. I hope some of you have fond memories of

these teachers when you attended Huntington High, and I hope these

five helped shape a small bit of your future life.

* 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.