Wow...that was fun!!!

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Top Songs of 1968

           Forty years. 40 years. Two score years ago....no matter how you write it, it is a long time! Didn't the Israelites wander around the desert that long before they got to the "Promised Land"?  

This year marks that milestone for the 1968 graduates of Wm. S. Hart High School ...the only one in the SCV when we graduated...way back when. Sure, Canyon High started in the Fall of 1968 but in June, we were the only Senior High School in the whole valley.  

We may have forgotten that little fact given all that happened in 1968. Assassinations of  Dr. Martin Luther  King and Robert Kennedy. The war in Viet Nam with the TET battles just beginning. Riots, protests, demonstrations, and that was just at the Democratic Convention (and all over the country). Laugh-In was getting great ratings but soon to be taken off the air...little wonder we don't remember that HART HIGH was about to have another school invade the SCV.  

From the day the members of the class starting school in the SCV about 1955 until we entered classes at Hart, we knew just where we would go to High School. We had no doubts. "Like really...just who would want to move up here to the sticks?"
"It smells like onions and cow plop much of the time and it takes forever to get to the valley."  Note: Going to a Santa Clarita City Council meeting can give you the same sensations.  

But I digress and I promised I wouldn't...SO, we knew we were going to Hart and could almost tell you the day when we were in 5th grade at one of the five elementary schools in the valley at the time...but that too changed. Like the promise of a Castaic High School , the promise of our starting at Hart was a little delayed. Half way through our eighth grade year at Placerita or Sierra Vista Junior High School, (the only two Junior High schools in the SCV at the time), we were informed that we would be in the ninth grade at our junior high schools and not at Hart. 1965 was the first year Hart didn't have freshmen since it started.  It hasn't had any since.  

Given two years as the "Top Dogs" in junior high school we had just a few problems being on the bottom rung starting tenth grade. So we weren't. The class started winning the homecoming float competitions and talent shows, and just about everything else at Hart.  

Years passed and the day came and we were sitting on the football field at Hart High listening to the same speech by Judge MacDougal that he had given for the last fifteen Hart graduations. We were it. We sang the song, "All Hail Hart High...", (Lyrics by Mr. Sims), and filed along in alphabetical order to get our diplomas...then it was off to... DISNEYLAND !  

The Wm. S. Hart Senior High School Class of 1968 has award winning entertainers, professors, engineers, lawyers and stunt artists for the movies and TV. We've managed to spread out world-wide with some of us living in Australia and others in Europe . We traveled all over, married, raised children, divorced, been drunk, got sober, been to war, and protested against war. Some of us joined industry and made our fortune and a few turned on, tuned in, and dropped out.

But here we are, 40 years older and maybe just a little wiser, telling our grandchildren things we said we'd never say to them, or our children. Our faces have lines around our eyes but I like to think that is from laughter, not tears. We did "OKAY" for a class graduating in a year that rocked the world.  

So what do you do when a forty year event comes along? To quote a line from many, many movies of our day and even now..."PARTY!" (Not a Toga party but we can arrange that if you want).  

So a few of us have started the planning for a reunion. Just a little "get together" that will reunite us again. No, it isn't "The Promised Land" but our efforts give us some idea of how Moses felt as he gathered the Israelites together to enter that land...yes, we feel like we're "herding cats". (Heard a rabbi friend of mine once describe what Moses had to do in just those terms).  

Darryl Manzer

So y'all need to know the particulars of the reunion and here they are: 

October 18, 2008

El Chaparral Mexican Restaurant

19132 Soledad Cyn. Rd., Canyon Country

(661) 252-5599

W.S. Hart
Put your hands on your keyboard and R.S.V.P. Jan or Karen now!

Jan
Click on my picture and "E" me

Karen
Click on my picture and "E" me!