Oceanside CA— The annual all class reunion for Oceanside High School and Oceanside-Carlsbad Union High School took place at Heritage Park on Sunday June 28, 2015.
More than 100 former students plus family members of both the combined school and OHS were in attendance with alumni from high school classes of the early 1940’s to the early ’70’s.
“Every year the crowd from the earlier classes at “OCU” seems to get a little smaller.” said Daniel Soto, class of 1949 as he walked to the event from the nearly full upper parking lot at the park. “I’ve lived in Carlsbad all my life. We keep losing more people every year and the pickings are getting slimmer.” lamented Daniel, “but it’s just the way life works.”
Some alumni traveled from Hawaii and the East Coast to attend the reunion while others have never left the region.
Jack Carpenter, class of ’44 was looking at some old photographs of students on display with Danny Lawrence, who traveled from Honolulu to attend. “That’s me in the that open top car.” said Jack.” Seventy-two hours after that photo was taken, we were all in the Navy.” Danny warned “Be careful. Jack will tell you the same story three or maybe five times and not even know it.” to which Jack replied, “It’s okay. I change it a bit each time.”

Lewis Mitchell and Monte Yearly from the class of ’48 were reminiscing “Time moves on. This was all orange trees and cow pastures when we grew up.” said Lewis, a retired San Diego Sheriffs Deputy. Monte said “After graduation, you either worked on farms, pumped gas or went to San Diego to work for Convair. There wasn’t much else for someone to do around here” Monte is a Yacht Broker at his company, Yearly Sailboats at the Oceanside Harbor.
Oceanside and Carlsbad shared the high school until 1958. “We were the last class of the combined school.” said Nancy Boschetti, class of ’57. “We were also the last class to have senior ditch day on Catalina Island.” Nancy explained “I’m sure the fuse was lit by the classes of ’55 and ’56 but the class of ’57 was the last straw. After us, the people on Catalina Island called the high school and told them not to let the students go to the island anymore. We had a kid get a DUI while riding a bicycle while another gave the wrong phone number to the police when they tried to call his parents. They had enough of OCUHS.”
While the reunion had a good turn out from the earlier classes, the later classes don’t attend attend the event in large numbers. Mona Greenspan from the class of ’71 said “Our class was never very good at this reunion stuff. ”

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Lucinda Chatfield, Class of ’72, plays a mean harmonica

A video posted by OsideNews (@osidenews) on Jun 28, 2015 at 2:02pm PDT