EVERETT – It had been 43 years since Carole Johanesen set foot in her old elementary school.

“I can remember the smell of the asphalt and the smell of the garbage burning when they could incinerate back then,” she recalled Thursday. “I remember the sound of the rubber balls – when they hit the asphalt, they had a ringing sound to them.”

Dan Bates / The Herald Fifth-graders Michelle Mosman (left) and Ana Robles lead former student Carole Johanesen and Johanesen’s former sixth-grade teacher Amy Strandell on a tour of Everett’s View Ridge Elementary School Thursday.

View Ridge Elementary School celebrated its 50th birthday Thursday with an open house to give tours to former students and staff. A program that night included a historical slide show.

The playground at View Ridge has changed a lot since 1962, including the addition of the school’s signature “Big Top” covered play area more than 20 years ago. But there was much that was familiar, too, during Johanesen’s visit alongside her former sixth-grade teacher.

Johanesen, of Seattle, was among the school’s first full class of students to attend from kindergarten through sixth grade, entering kindergarten in fall 1955.

Amy Strandell – then “Miss Wright” – taught at the school from 1958 to 1962.

As the two women strolled through the building, they noted the old tile floors still visible in spots, old intercom speakers still hanging in classrooms and a teachers’ lounge where, long ago, cigarette smoke was as common as the conversation.

Today, there are computers and students scouting the playground in red vests as “conflict mediators.”

There’s also a library with thousands of books. In years past, teachers checked books out of public libraries to supplement the bookshelf they each had in their classrooms, Strandell said.

Strandell, of Everett, looked over her old classroom, now home to a “highly capable class,” a term they didn’t have in her day for academically gifted students.

She recalled the day when a girl brought her pet hamster to class and it got loose. “We never did find it,” she said, pointing to the cupboards where the pet fled.

View Ridge was one of seven Everett schools built or rebuilt between 1947 and 1957, a time of exploding development at the end of World War II. It was built for about $366,000 and opened in fall 1954.

“This was to house all the baby boomers we hear about,” Everett historian Larry O’Donnell said.

Maurine Stapleton of Everett, one of the school’s original teachers who taught kindergarten there for 20 years, recalls the time well. Her class of kindergartners quickly grew to three sections.

One year, Stapleton had 38 students in one class and 39 in another.

“And I had no help,” the 96-year-old noted. “But we managed. Children at that age were eager to please, and their parents were very supportive of the teachers.”

As the community grew, so did the building. Opened in 1954, its first addition came just three years later to deal with overcrowding.

It wasn’t until 1982 that the school gained its signature covered play area – a tentlike structure known fondly as the Big Top – with the addition of a special services wing for children with special needs.

The Big Top and a girl seated in a wheelchair are among images pictured in a mural by Everett artist Bernie Webber. The mural was installed in the school’s main hallway this week as part of the celebration.

Another figure featured is Sue Cooper, a 21-year Everett School Board member and former View Ridge PTA president whose three children attended the school through the 1980s.

“We found it to be just a wonderful neighborhood school that was very welcoming. All the teachers and the principal were really child-oriented,” she said.

View Ridge Elementary has long had a history of producing school leaders, O’Donnell said.

The mural was limited to picturing three people from the school’s history, including former school board member Ed Diamond and former teacher Christine Unckles.

“Frankly, in the View Ridge case, we could just fill the mural,” O’Donnell said.

Reporter Melissa Slager: 425-339-3465 or mslager@heraldnet.com.