It was 1960. Clark Gable died. Harper Lee’s classic “To Kill a Mockingbird” was published. A first-class postage stamp cost 4 cents. And voters elected John Fitzgerald Kennedy as the nation’s 35th president.
Ken Eisenberger was a sixth-grader at Longfellow Elementary School in Pasadena, Calif.
With his parents, an older brother and a younger sister, he spent a childhood that in family snapshots evokes the era of “Father Knows Best” and “Leave It to Beaver.”
Today, Eisenberger is 60. A counselor and clinical social worker, he lives and works in the Everett area. He’s about to travel back in time.
Saturday, he’ll return to the California school with his Longfellow classmates, a group of mostly 60-year-olds. They’ll renew long-lost friendships, tour classrooms, be recognized at the school’s Family Fun Festival, and celebrate the year when they were the class of 1960.
“We’re all in this group headed toward retirement. The excitement generated has just been phenomenal,” said Eisenberger, who has never attended a reunion, not with high school or college friends. At this stage in life, he’s thrilled to be back in touch with people he knew as a kid.
The reunion idea started with two female classmates looking at school photos and trying to remember names. That began some serious searching and organizing. Eisenberger even compiled a CD of 1960 hits. He picked some great tunes, Roy Orbison’s “Only the Lonely” and “Cathy’s Clown” by the Everly Brothers.
“What started with a small group, six or seven of us, there’s a whole energy now. We’re up to 18 or 19 people who are coming. It’s going to be unbelievable,” Eisenberger said. “Plus, our sixth-grade teacher is still alive.”
Floyd Fraley — his former pupils still call him Mr. Fraley — is 79. Retired and still in Pasadena, Fraley said Wednesday he has vivid and happy memories of his class of 1960. That class was his last. After six years of teaching, Fraley left Longfellow in 1960 and moved into administration, working as a principal.
“I remember my class, I had a great group of kids, thoughtful and cooperative,” Fraley said.
The teacher’s mother died the year Eisenberger was in his class. Fraley, who was in his early 30s in 1960, will never forget the day. “The principal came to my room to say my mother was ill. I dropped everything and left,” he said. By the time he reached her, she had died.
“The kids found out about this, and when I got home there was a great big basket of fruit. It really touched me. I will always remember,” Fraley said.
He’s seen huge changes since his years in classrooms, and believes families in the early 1960s put more emphasis on respect and learning.
“Now kids dress differently, the type of music, everything has changed. It affected education,” he said. “And the teacher did not dress like the kids. I wore a suit and tie every day.”
He has fun memories, too, of a Halloween haunted house that teachers created at school every year, and of playing at recess.
“I played baseball in high school,” Fraley said. “Kids were always asking me, ‘Come out on the playground, Mr. Fraley, and hit us some flies.’ “
From that carefree time, Eisenberger went on through junior high and high school. He earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of California at Santa Barbara, a campus not immune to violent protests against the Vietnam War. He worked at several jobs, including for a TV production company. After getting a master’s degree in clinical social work at the University of Southern California, he started in private practice as a counselor.
When he heard from a former sixth-grade classmate, now a doctor, he couldn’t wait to take the nostalgic trip. “For whatever reason, that was a very impressionable age for me,” he said.
That doctor is Elizabeth Menkin, who works in geriatrics and hospice care in San Jose, Calif. In Longfellow Elementary School’s “Aloha” yearbook for 1960, her name was Betty Serrell. She and classmate Linda Wells cooked up the reunion idea while trying to remember all the kids’ names.
Menkin has no trouble remembering her teacher. “Mr. Fraley got married the summer after we graduated,” she said. Admitting to a little crush, she added, “he was a hunk.”
“It had a nice ring to it, the class of 1960 was turning 60,” Menkin said. “I’ll be curious to know if I can still recognize people.”
“It’s been a very, very interesting journey,” Eisenberger said.
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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