Better of Beth Ashley: Transient keep at a ‘happy place’ – Marin Independent Journal

Editor’s be aware: The IJ is reprinting a number of the late Beth Ashley’s columns. This is from 2008.

I see that Tam High School is gearing up for its a hundredth anniversary celebration this weekend.

I’m unsure but if I’ll go.

My highschool diploma is from Tam, however I used to be there for only some months in 1942 and ’43 — hardly lengthy sufficient to memorize the struggle music, one thing about purple and blue, we might be true.

Still, these few months left an impression, and a few the individuals I met there are nonetheless my shut mates.

We lived in Sausalito then, on a steep North Street hillside with a wonderful view of the bay.

I used to be within the junior class, starting to consider faculty. The struggle was on: We moved to Marin when my dad grew to become an govt of Marinship, the shipyard that materialized nearly in a single day on the shores of Richardson Bay. My brother labored on the graveyard shift.

My household had all the time moved so much — I had spent my freshman yr at Redondo Union High School, and a part of my sophomore yr in Laconia, New Hampshire, so beginning Tam chilly turkey was nothing new.

In some methods, my recollections of Tam are nearly a time capsule, with no reference earlier than or afterward. I bear in mind the excessive ceilings and the lengthy halls and the banks of metallic lockers. The campus itself was beautiful, with sidewalks and lawns and an out of doors theater the place we went to noontime rallies. The cheerleaders had been named Ditz Webster and Bern Bernardini. The principal was a square-faced previous gentleman named Ernest Everett Wood, nicknamed The Duke. He had white hair parted within the center. I bear in mind most of my lecturers, notably white-haired Ruby Scott, who taught Latin, and Elizabeth Keyser, an English trainer with a limp and a ardour for literature. Gus Gustafson, the soccer coach, was my historical past trainer and gave me the one B I received in my complete highschool profession. I appreciated him anyway.

I don’t bear in mind how I received to highschool and again — did I stroll? Were there buses? My classmates remembered taking the practice to highschool from faraway cities like Fairfax. I do know that after I received from Tam to Sausalito, I’d cease for ice cream on the Borden’s store subsequent door to the plaza, the place quickly afterward a plaque was erected itemizing Sausalito boys who had been combating the struggle.

I often went residence after college. I didn’t socialize a lot; I by no means went to a dance. I had a couple of buddies to eat lunch with, and at times I joined the gang who purchased snacks and smoked cigarettes on the canteen, downhill from the college. I didn’t keep at Tam lengthy sufficient to hitch the scholar newspaper employees, although I encountered a number of staffers later once we went on to varsity.

Few households had been untouched by the struggle. In one emotional week that yr, my brother was taken into the Air Force, my sister was referred to as into the Red Cross and my dad realized he was being transferred to Canada with Bechtel. My mom, in the meantime, had agreed to return East to be with my different sister, who was giving beginning to a toddler whereas her husband was away with the Navy.

Just like that, my household was breaking apart, and I had to determine the place I’d be. A few schools had been taking in children on the finish of their junior yr in highschool; I utilized and was accepted. I moved to Rancho Palos Verdes in Southern California to stay with household mates and re-enrolled at Redondo Union High School, ready for fall.

I mentioned goodbye to Tam High in a rush. The Duke wished me luck; Scott cautioned that I used to be too younger for faculty.

I didn’t assume a lot about Tam till years later, after I’d moved again to Marin and my nieces and nephews had been enrolled there. They had the complete highschool expertise; my nephew Wes was scholar physique president. In current years, I started attending reunion lunches with feminine classmates and a once-a-year social gathering for {couples} every summer season; I felt extra of a Tamite then than I had as a scholar.

For all of us, life is a patchwork of recollections and folks and locations.

Part of me will have a good time with the reunion attendees this weekend. My Tam was a cheerful place; I beloved the lecturers, lengthy gone, and lots of the classmates, now as gray-haired as I.

I nonetheless smile, remembering the linoleum flooring of the high-ceilinged halls and the shrub-lined paths that made the place really feel like residence.

I used to be kidding about not remembering the struggle music: “Tamalpais, Tamalpais, red and blue, in our hearts you are enshrined; we all love you.”