Tuesday, January 17, 2017

A Note from Fall Student Body President, Rob Towner

Please enjoy this note from Rob Towner, our '68 Fall Student Body President as well as his Vesper's Invocation from 1968...

May 2018:

When Patti Gehrke asked me a few weeks back if I’d write a piece for our reunion,  I readily said that I’d be happy to without having a clue what I could meaningfully say. I guess the best I can do is to reminisce about our years at Wilson and share some of my memories. And given what the organising committee has planned for us on the Saturday night of the reunion, what better place to start than the Rolling Stones.

I loved the Stones’ music.  And although their best music came after we had left Wilson (the first of their four great albums, Beggars Banquet, wasn’t released until later in 1968), we already had Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Get off of My Cloud, Time is On My Side and Ruby Tuesday... and of course Satisfaction.  Interestingly the Stones have a connection with New Zealand (where I live), as an Auckland neurosurgeon saved Keith Richards’ life after he fell out of a tree in Fiji in 2006 and was flown to Auckland for emergency brain surgery (I’ve seen the framed letter of thanks which Richards wrote to the hospital staff after his recovery). And my wife Ann and I saw the Stones here in concert 4 years ago.

We had lots of great music to listen to during our years at Wilson.  Of course the Beatles were dominant in those days with their amazing run of albums – Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt. Peppers.  But there was also Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, Van Morrison, the Byrds, Cream, the Beach Boys and the Doors (my first ever concert was in the summer after we graduated, at the Hollywood Bowl, with Jim Morrison and the Doors, opened by Steppenwolf and the Chambers Brothers). And we loved the Motown music of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Temptations, the Four Tops, and Aretha Franklin (after all these years, I can still hear Kent Eastman singing Respect).  And let’s not forget slow dancing to Unchained Melody by the Righteous Brothers at the Bruin Den on Friday nights.

As well as listening to amazing music, we saw great movies during our years at Wilson.  How could we ever forget The Graduate (“Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me, aren’t you?”), Cool Hand Luke (“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate”), Bonnie and Clyde (“This here’s Miss Bonnie Parker.  I’m Clyde Barrow.  We rob banks”), In the Heat of the Night, or 2001: A Space Odyssey.  But TV was crap (Gilligan’s Island and Hogan’s Heroes were good but not exactly The Wire or The Sopranos). 

We didn’t have mobile phones, computers, laptops or iPads, and only a few of us (not me) had a car. We wrote out our assignments in longhand or using a manual typewriter.  We were fine; we had no idea what the future held.

But it was sport which was really important to me and most of my best friends at Wilson.  The highlight was unquestionably winning the Moore League football title our senior year, and to do so when no one – nobody – picked us to win at the beginning of the season (the pundits thought we’d finish 4th behind Lakewood, Millikan and Poly).  We played before some huge crowds at Veterans Stadium that year, and many of you would have been there sharing in the excitement.  My best friend Wes Edwards was player of the year in Long Beach. Those are great shared memories.  And how sweet was it to then go to the Bruin Den to dance and celebrate.

But we had our difficult times as well, none more so than in our senior year.  Just a few days ago, on April 4, Wes sent me a YouTube clip of Martin Luther King – 50 years to the day from the date of his tragic assassination in Memphis.  And then there was Bobby Kennedy’s murder in Los Angeles shortly thereafter.  I happen to recently come across the original copy of the speech which I gave at our Vespers Ceremony (in a folder which got sent to me only a few years ago after my mother died).  Our Vespers Ceremony was on June 8,1968, which was also a national day of mourning for Kennedy, and we shared a moment’s silence in his memory.  And two of my friends sadly died in our senior year, Scott McKenzie in an accident (only a few months after he had been a star of our football team), and Janice Holm from illness, a few months after we graduated.

And all around us there was hugely important stuff happening which I – and I imagine many of us – didn’t really appreciate the significance of at the time.  There were the riots in the urban ghettos from 1965 to 1967, there was widespread civil unrest, and the war in Vietnam intensified – and we didn’t then realise that President Johnson and the military were lying to the American people about the nature and development of the war (probably like you, I watched the images of the war on TV at night, thought we were winning, and at that time supported the war without thinking a whole lot about it).

Some of my personal memories of our senior year at Wilson include: the all night gambling party at Neal Peterson’s house; the grad night party, also at Neal’s and all night (instead of going to Disneyland on the bus), following which there was a report in the Press-Telegram about an unsupervised teenage party in Park Estates involving drinking; bodysurfing Huntington Beach and The Wedge with Wes and Craig Wiesenhutter; playing sport with my oldest friends Rob Sagehorn and Randy Rossi; speaking at an assembly at Poly before one of their football games (I think that it was Millikan); and heading off with Craig on my first road trip a few weeks after we graduated, to Yellowstone in Wyoming (but then turning around when we got there because it was raining and returning home for a night, and then heading off the next morning to Rosarita Beach near Ensenada to camp and bodysurf).

And I have a confession to make.  Yes, I was one of the group that toilet papered the quad the night before our very last day of school (we pooled our money and bought hundreds of rolls of tp).  Craig and Greg Pike were dumb enough to run the wrong way when several police cars showed up, hide under the wrong bush (under a bright light) and get caught.  They got called in the next day by Mr Nelson, but they didn’t rat on the rest of us, and we held our breath that last day at Wilson as we watched Craig and Greg clean up the mess.

We were young during our years at Wilson, and it was exciting to be growing up whilst being at a great school. We had a huge amount of fun. For me it was a time of innocence (apart from the toilet papering episode) and lots of new experiences. We all have our collective and separate memories, and for me the years at Wilson were some of the best years of my life.

It looks like Patti and the committee have organised what promises to be a fun and memorable 50th reunion – I look forward to catching up and sharing more memories – they were such special years.

Rob Towner




Sunday, June 9, 1968  Vesper's Invocation:

A new realm of life awaits each one of us: we are the men and women of the future – the voice of tomorrow. Yet tomorrow is not an easy road, tomorrow is surely a challenge. We realize this ever more in the tragic death of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. On this national day of mourning, let us hold the memory of Robert Kennedy dear, but let us also look towards the future. We are once again reminded of the trouble and violence in our land, again reminded of our challenge. Seniors, let us meet this challenge with open minds and open hearts. Let responsibility distinguish all of our goals, all of our efforts. May the spirit of truth be our guiding light. May we be people of conscience and let us possess an enduring courage in our convictions. Let us strive to bring understanding into the lives of all people, and may we have faith that the brotherhood of man will prevail. Most importantly, let ours be a time of joy and happiness. May the sunshine of our love illuminate the lives of all men. Let us meet this challenge with open minds and open hearts. At this time I ask that you rise for thirty seconds of silence in the memory of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Rob you covered things brilliantly!


We were in many ways privileged to grow into young adults during a time of such huge social and political change.

FYI . 1968 My 1st concert was to see Cream at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium

June 1972 Saw the Rolling Stones with Stevie Wonder doing the opening set at the San Diego Sports Arena

*For $6.50, you got to see the Stones, Stevie Wonder and… free parking?

2015 The Stones played a local North County SD venue -The Belly up on Cedros, Solana Beach. didn't go to this private party. but can you imagine?!