Rufino Aguilar

   Rudy and Bonnie Buchanan (58) never missed a class reunion and were always so proud to stand up as the longest married couple in the house.  They were married the summer after our Sophomore year at IHS.  They were sweethearts in the IHS Band...Rudy played the Sax.  They raised a fine family and lived in Hawthorne, Ca.  
     Rudy worked in maintenance  in a big skyscraper downtown Los Angeles, and many years ago, Jim and Rudy took my nephew, (a skyscraper fan) on a tour to the top of his building...an unforgettable event for a teenager.
     Rudy was friendly and outgoing and organized a traveling group called the "Amigos", mostly family, and they traveled in a large group to many places.  He organized many events at the old Mayflower Ballroom on Manchester near the Big Donut and always wanted us to have a class reunion there...me too.
     Rudy and Bonnie were in Can Cun on vacation when he died...they could not get medical attention soon enough. I hope Bonnie will come to our 50 year reunion...she has never missed one, yet.  

Diane Deal Tollefson 

Robert Akee

Douglas Allen

Joseph Allen

Carole Degenfelder (Ausen)

Stuart Babendure

Floy Buckles (Baker)

Diane Holliday (Bell)

    Diane lived down the block from our house and her home was the polling place and the first place I ever voted.  She had a very nice mother, Virginia, who graduated from IHS in 1939 or so.  
    After Graduation I met Diane downtown Inglewood and she introduced me to her husband, William Alouisious Holliday III, and not too long after that came IV....aka Butch.  Butch had some mental challenges and Diane and her husband spent their lives nurturing and guiding him in his life.  The first time I ever heard of the "Special Olympics" was because her son was participating.  They were a wonderful little family of three.
     Diane came to our 30 year reunion and she was suffering from some type of illness, both she and her son had great speech problems.  
     She called me in 1995 to tell me that she had breast cancer and made me promise to have my own physical exams regularly...and I promised her I would.  She died in 1997 and I went to her funeral.  in 2008, Bill called to tell me that Butch died...and was finally diagnosed with MMD...the illness that Jerry Lewis had a marathon for each year.  It is a sad story, but I have to say that she was one of the greatest moms I have ever seen...and both she and Bill were both loving and excellent parents.
     I think about her a lot.

Diane Deal Tollefson

G. Larry Bennetts

Allan Berrin

Gary Boelzner

Maybelle Hope (Bunje)

Nancy Schweizer (Burket)

Paul Burleson

Class of 1960,
It is with great sadness to tell you that my love, Paul Burleson passed away April 16 from cancer that reached his beautiful brain.  He had a seizure on March 25th and was hospitalized same day.  They did an MRI and located a tumor on the right side.  I brought him home on April 1 and he was put on Palliative care thru Kaiser, hoping that being home he would get better, but that didn't happen. He wasn't eating, he said he wasn't hungry, it was getting difficult to give him his medications with apple sauce. The doctor for palliative care came to check him and told me that he would put Paul on hospice care. This past Monday, Paul was put on hospice with all the equipment (i.e. bed, oxygen, lift, meds, etc.), by Tuesday at 4:50 p.m., the love of my life went home to be with the Lord.

I know that he would have participated in the events you are planning, he loved you all, I've heard great stories about his life at Inglewood High.

I hope it is a success.
Gail

Anna Thompson (Buschhing)

Norman Greg Carroll

In Memory of Norman Greg Carroll

Dear Classmates, I got a phone call just now from Larry Bennetts.  Our good friend Greg
Carroll passed away.  You will see Greg in a photo from 1957 when he was in the Boys Choir..
top row, far right.  I knew him when we were in the IHS Acapella Choir…his sweetheart, Julia
McKinney sat next to me in the Alto Section.  They married in 1962 and had a happy life together.
They had three children and Julia was happy being a home teacher.  They were both on our
High School reunion committee and Julia was the Treasurer.  She passed away after our 30 year
reunion and it was a tragic event.  Greg eventually met a wonderful lady, Joanne, at their church
Singles group and they have been happily married for several years.  I was glad to see them at
our 75th Birthday party at Pala Casino last year. His illness was brief, pancreatic cancer.  Larry
spoke to Joanne and there will be a memorial in May.  If you want to send Joanne a card, her
address is:  Joanne Carroll,7026 Roma Court, Riverside, CA  93506


Diane Tollefson

Michael Cavanaugh

    Mike was a quiet and thoughtful guy....an artist type personality....and probably the first "flower child".  After talking with his sister, Susan, last night, we both agreed that he fit that type.  Mike died in 1991, of melonoma, a type of skin cancer.  He never married and lived in California all his life, somewhere between Torrance, San Francisco and Marysville where he died at his sisters home. She told me that he was in the Navy for a brief time and never married and just took odd jobs to support his painting talent.  It sounds a little sad, but Susan said that he was happy...and active in community affiairs and had a lot of good friends. 
     John Whatley sent me an old photo some years ago with a bunch of guys...all dressed up for high school graduation day...Bob Akee(60), Mike Cavanaugh(60), Ray Miller  (60)and Don Fucci (59)...they were all arm in arm in front of an old garage.  Bob told me it was the "Club House"...and the inside of it was all painted up with Mikes artwork. 
       He died too young.

Diane Deal Tollefson
      
         

Robert Christenson

Judith Mapes (Cook)

     I knew Judy in A Capella Choir...She was a bright and happy red head....I called her "Cookie".  
     She lived on Magnolia Street in inglewood all through the years and worked at Centinela Hospital.  She was married and had children.  She was widowed too young and some time later met up with her high school sweetheart who was also widowed.
They lived out their remaining years together and she died fighting cancer...he died within a month of her death.
      I visited her a few months before she died....she was still  very sweet and darling.  
      
Diane Deal Tollefson

Richard Dietz

Diane Deal Tollefson June 12, 2015
    Tonight, I called Alfred Klaus, to invite him to the picnic.  It turned out that he and Richard Dietz were
lifelong friends.  They both lived in the South Bay area of Los Angeles County and they both owned
homes in Baja California, Mexico.  Alfred reported to me that Richard had died and that he lived in
Menefee, Riverside county when he died.  So…we have to add another name to our growing list.

      Richard Herbert Dietz  born 28 Oct, 1941, Orange, California  Died 23 February, 2008, Menefee, Riverside County, CA.

       Alfred said that he left two children, a son and a daughter.  He was a Refrigeration Mechanic for Hussman.
       Alfred and Richard joined the National Guard together and were posted in Inglewood during the Watts Riots.

Donald Douglass

     I knew Don quite well, we were in the same "gang" and went to parties together even after we were married and starting our families.  He married a girl from Westchester High School and they were a wonderful couple, they had two sons and had a new home.  He went on a vacation to a Dude Ranch and was thrown from a horse, had some very serious head injuries which lead to his early death.
     He is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery on Slauson out near Culver City....I was just there again for his mothers funeral...and went over to his grave with his brothers and widow and friends.  WAY too young and what a nice guy he was.

Diane Deal Tollefson

Joanne Hough (Earl)

Margaret Canning (Gardener)

Douglas Gaut

Susan Paster (Gilbert)

Sue Mooney (Gillman)

I met Sue in Junior High @Crozier. We hit it off right from the beginning. We remained friends through high school, our weddings and as young marrieds. I was Sue's Maid of Honor and she was mine. As our lives became very busy raising our children and taking care of our famlies, we saw each other less frequently and then only at IHS Reunions. Sue was a very spirited and enthusiastic girl. She was to me a Good Friend, a lot of fun and she encouraged my interest in music. She was very talented musically. As young teens, we would spend the night together listening to record and harmonizing together while Sue played piano. One of our favorites was "In the Still of the Night". I am sure we sang that at least 500 times! I joined Jobes Daughters (a Masonic organization) because of Sue. In Jobes Daughters, Sue became the "Honored Queen". This position was an honor that took much preparation. Most of us from IHS remember her as a Yell Leader. She cheered , again with absolute enthusiasm at all the games. One classmate
described Sue as being that friendly face on campus. Always smiling and willing to help others. Sue had her rebellious times also. Often in our Senior year she and I would escape IHS at noon through a hole in the fence behind the auditorium. There we would sit in my car and smoke a cigarette! A few years before Sue died we both made intermittant attempts to contact each other but just never connected. Then one day I received a call from Andy (Fredricksen) Hard informing me that Sue had died and there was to be a memorial service............the saddest part of this is Sue and Dan had retired and moved to Oceanside, CA about a year prior and we lived less than three miles apart! I miss Sue and so wish she could be here at our 50th. Lynda (O'Connor) Klemroth

Dennis Goldsworthy

Leric Goodman

Brian Grooms

Larry Grudt

Mary Wolde-Tsadik (Hansen)

Sue Evan (Hefler)

Dan Horan

Jo Ann Hurst

Hal Jones

Ritsuko Nakata (Kagawa)

Reported by Nancy Wimberly Shinno.

Robert Lichtman

Acclaimed fanzine fan Robert Lichtman died July 6 at the age of 79. He was an 18-time FAAn Award winner — six for his fanzine Trap Door, 10 for his letters of comment, and twice scored “Number one fan face”. Trap Door also was a two-time Hugo finalist. (Issues 21-34 can be downloaded from eFanzines.com.)

Lichtman was born in Cleveland in 1942. His family moved to Southern California in 1951, and he lived there until 1965, except for a six-month period in 1961 spent living in (mostly) Ray Nelson’s attic in the Bay Area. 

He discovered fandom in 1958 when he encountered Robert Bloch’s fanzine review column in an issue of William Hamling’s Imagination. That same year he produced his first genzine, PSI-PHI, coedited with Arv Underman. 

After discovering fandom, he joined LASFS. He even became one of the international members of the short-lived Young Science Fiction Readers Group (YSFRG) formed in 1960 for the British Science Fiction Association’s under-25 members.

Upon graduation from university, he returned to the Bay Area, settling in San Francisco just in time for the beginnings of what he called “the Hippie Era.”

He reflected on his early life in a File 770 comment last year:

Now and then I wonder what my life would have been like if I hadn’t discovered fandom at 15. My parents wanted me to become a banker, a concept that made me want to throw up. (I came sorta close 1965-68, when I worked for credit rating agency Dun and Bradstreet as a “credit analyst.”) I didn’t meet my previous wife, the mother of my four sons, via fandom (through Stephen Gaskin’s Monday Night Class, instead, when I was being a semi-hippie living near but not in Haight-Ashbury) — but having them in my life, and so supportive, I count as a happy blessing. Before her, there was Margo Newkom, whose name might be familiar to some of you. She was a “Berkeley fringefan,” and also very funny and smart (and beautiful). We never married, but we had some good years together.

In 2000 he married his second wife Carol Carr; she died in 2021.

In the Seventies Lichtman and his girlfriend (soon to be his wife, and six months pregnant) followed friends to live on The Farm, a 1,700-acre commune in Tennessee. Although he was largely inactive in fandom throughout that decade its myths returned to mind now and then. Lichtman wrote, “Sometimes we would get together and laugh about how we’d more or less ended up in ‘the love camp in the Ozarks’ of which the notorious Claude Degler wrote over half a century ago — though we were on the Highland Rim, not in the Ozarks.  Close enough, we thought.”

 

He stayed there until the summer of 1980 when — after the end of his marriage — he moved to Glen Ellen, California and began working with Paul Williams (the one who began Crawdaddy) on his Entwhistle Books publishing venture. Lichtman had experience doing sales and promotion for the Farm’s publishing wing, The Book Publishing Company. Through Williams he started seeing issues of Dan Steffan and Ted White’s fannish fanzine Pong. Lichtman wrote a letter of comment to it, and soon found himself back in fandom.

In 1983 he started publishing Trap Door. Beginning in 1986 he took up the office of Secretary-Treasurer of FAPA, fandom’s oldest amateur press association (founded in 1937). By the end of the decade he was once again such an integral member of fandom that he was voted the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund delegate of 1989 and attended the UK Eastercon. (Some of his extensive notes towards a trip report are here.)

Prior to the advent of the internet he regularly edited collections of hard-to-come by fanwriting and made them available . These included a collection of F. T. Laney’s fan writing titled Ah! Sweet Laney!, a fanthology drawing from Lee Hoffman’s fanzine Quandry titled Some of the Best from Quandry, and a collection of Walt Willis’s “Fanorama” columns (from Nebula, the British SF magazine) titled Fanorama.

He also edited Fanthology 92, Fanthology ’93 and Fanthology 1994, which were published by others.

When the internet finally caught up to him, he produced a PDF edition of Jack Speer’s Up To Now, a history of fandom as of 1939, (available on eFanzines.com).

Lichtman was a pillar of Corflu, the annual fanzine fans convention, where he was often honored. In addition to all the FAAn Awards he won there, in 1992 he was named Past President of Fan Writers of America (fwa), and he received the Lifetime Achievement Award at Corflu in 2020.

Charles E. Linson

Ray Livernois

It has been nearly a year since my brother Ray passed away. There are still days that I cannot believe he is gone.
We were close friends during our days at IHS. We had moved from Maine and were new students. It was such a comfort that we were there together. He was always a meticulous person and took such pride in his 1957 white
chevy convertable. I could't believe he let me drive it to my senior banquet!
Ray was a kind, caring man that did not have a jealous bone in his body, he was always truley happy for anyone that came upon good fortune. He so enjoyed helping & healing people with his chiropractic care. He was so devoted to caring for our elderly parents and often spent his one day off with them. ( I might mention that Ray was a work alcoholic). On  holiday's he would come over for dinner, but always took the time to check us out and give us our adjustments. He always wanted to make sure we all felt healthy. 
I was always amazed  that as a single father, he always remembered to send greeting cards to all of us, birthdays, anniversaries, christmas, etc.  He always picked out a loving brithday card that made me sound so much better than I was. I will miss those cards, but not as much as I miss him.
He was a devoted father to his three children, whom he loved with all his heart.  Ray was just a good guy.

Dale Lundberg

Dale and I hung out for many many years. We joined the Navy together in Nov. 1960, We spent countless hours cruising the Blvd. and fun times at the "Stand". We had good times and bad times but always remained friends. I haven't seen him for about 11 years but we would email a few times a year to catch up.  His last years were with a wonderful lady and they shared each others interests  to the fullest.  He passed on May 2, 2015 from cancer.  I will miss him alot. He had a heart of gold and truely cared about people.  He was in sales a good part of his adult life and could sell a polar bear a black fur coat. I never heard anyone say a negative word about him.   Enjoy your journey my friend.  You are truly missed by many Dale and I hung out for many many years. We joined the Navy together in Nov. 1960, We spent countless hours cruising the Blvd. and fun times at the "Stand". We had good times and bad times but always remained friends. I haven't seen him for about 11 years but we would email a few times a year to catch up.  His last years were with a wonderful lady and they shared each others interests  to the fullest.  He passed on May 2, 2015 from cancer.  I will miss him alot. He had a heart of gold and truely cared about people.  He was in sales a good part of his adult life and could sell a polar bear a black fur coat. I never heard anyone say a negative word about him.   Enjoy your journey my friend.  You are truly missed by many.
Tom Alu

Richard Marlin

     I guess Richard went out with me on my first date....he was one of 5 guys in the car...my date was the only one with a car and so all his buddies came along.  I think we went to the Wichstand for a coke.  
     Through the years, Richard and I were always pals and when he married Linda, I visited them in their home.  He was so tall and she was so short...they had a Corvette and he put blocks on the pedals so she could drive it.
     Linda and Richard moved up to Manteca, CA and raised a nice family.  Jim and I went to visit them in 1992, just after our Class 50th birthday party.  He never attended any reunions and I took the photo albums up for him to see all the people...he sat for an hour looking and asking about everyone.  We had a lovely evening and the next day, too.  He sat and chatted with Jim while I spent time in an antique shop...as we were leaving he said "Bye" to me...and then shook Jims hand and asked him when he was coming back to go fishing...I guess they bonded...
    Richard loved fishing and when they retired they had a trailor that they lived in. In the winter in California and in the summer in Southern Washington....on the river...  and that is where he died.  I got the word from his childhood friend and good buddy, Al Nieman, who often rode his motorcycle up to visit them at their fish camp.
    Richard was a good guy and a great mechanic, too.

Diane Deal Tollefson 

Sharon Mathes

     When I think of Sharon Mathes....I see her in her GAA sweater...what else?  I always liked Sharon, she was friendly and bright and did me a big favor one time.   I joined up with the GAA and she put me on the first team...we were playing softball against the Senior Girls...and I heard one of the teachers ask "Why do you have Deal on your team"...Sharon gave some answer and they stood there together watching me play right field for the first time.   Three BIG fly balls came my way and I caught each one of them....I looked over at Sharon and she smiled and nodded...and knew that she had picked the right girl...one with little experience but with a lot of enthusiasm.   I felt so great.
     Through the years I have tried in vain to locate Sharon.  Everytime a reunion comes along...I asked around and tried to find her.  I heard that she was in the midwest and a teacher...so you know, teachers do not list their phone numbers...it was only this last year, with the help of my computer that I finally found her....her obituary.  I called the school, University of Iowa, and they sent me her profile, photos and awards and merits she received through the years.  Yes...in the Athletic Department, and in particular with the promotion of women in all fields.  
    So...after all these years, Professor Mathes, thank you for your kindness to me all those years ago in GAA.  It was a moment in time that lifted my self esteem.

Diane Deal Tollefson 

Jon Matson

Jon remained my best friend through all the years.  For me, he was a rock troubled waters, incredibly funny,  forever real,  and a man of his word.

John McCasland

Bruce McClish

Julia Carroll (McKinney)

     I always looked forward to seeing Julia and Greg at the reunion meetings....but the last meeting she attended she excused herself from her job as treasurer because she was ill.
Darn it...she had cancer and did not live too long after that.  Greg called me and asked me to come and sit with her the night she died....She was still alert and knew me when I got there...and we talked about the ACapella Choir where we were such good friends...and where Greg was singing tenor.
     Oh they were quite a number ...everyone knew they were probably going to get married...which they did...and they had three great kids and made a wonderful life together. 
     Julia loved her faith, her husband and her family....she eminated "good character" and made you want to be a better person.  Always a sweet smile and tender words from her...and she was patient with me...ha
     I recently spoke with Greg, and, though it took him a long time to recover, he is doing great....he married a nice lady from their church and the kids all love her.    I know that Julia would be happy to know this.   
      What a big loss for all of us....this sweet gentle girl.

Diane Deal Tollefson

Helen Sage (McVey)

Donald Mellgren

Barrett Morgan

Penny Hakkila (Munyer)

John Perello

Patricia McCormick (Potter)

Carol Richards

     Carol was very bright in High School....if you look at her Senior photo, you can see she was very active in school and one of the smart ones.  She never attended reunions until the night of our 50th birthday BEACH party.  She and her husband arrived just as we were leaving....it was getting too cold.  She promised to go across the street where we planned to continue the celebration.  She never showed up and I wondered what happened.
     A month later she called me to say that she went to get a bite of dinner and got ill, so they went home.  She had gone to the doctor and found that she had cancer and not much time left.  I felt so bad, Jim and I drove up to the bay area and took all the photo albums of reunions for her to see...we spent a whole day with her and had a wonderful time.  I enjoyed her so much and was sorry I did not know her in high school.  
     She took a European trip with her mother ....something that was on her "bucket list"...and she accomplished that...and then I got a letter from her mother telling that Carol had passed away peacefully.  She had asked her mother so send me the photos of herself on prom night for the album....which her mother did.   
     Diane Deal Tollefson

Dick Ricker

Glenn Saffell

Benny Samamiego

    If you remember Benji, you remember a happy guy who had a quick smile and good laugh.  He was a very talented pianist and I remember seeing him around building J....the music building.  After graduation, he worked for the family buiness and married and had two children.  He became a regular on the reunion committee and I always looked forward to seeing him there.  He had a divorce and lived with his folks and children and managed the family business...so he was a very busy guy.
     In 1990, he came to my house and played the piano for my mothers 85th birthday...Oh, she enjoyed hearing all that old music from the 30s and 40s that he played so well...I was shocked the next year when I heard that he had died.  He had a heart attack on Thanksgiving Day at his home.  Many classmates from the reunion committee attended his funeral....nice guy...he died too soon.

Herbert Sander

.....I sure do not remember him from high school days, but he was on the reunion committee for our 25th reunion...and he was very outgoing and friendly...wore  a cowboy hat and called himself "Red"...I suppose because he had a full head of red hair.
He owned his own pharmacy and was married and had a nice little family when he had a terrible airplane accident in 1988...he was the pilot and lost the use of his legs, the other guys in the plane died.   Red had a lot of spunk and the computer became his friend...I remember that our reunion committee for the 30 year reunion collected money and helped him get a lift for his van.   He actually showed up for our 50th birthday party ...alone in the van....for the beach party.  The guys picked him up, made a flat place for his wheelchair out by the firepits and handed him a beer.  He was the happiest guy on the planet.  
    The next night his wife brought him to the party in the hotel...and  he participated in the "last dance"...we all did...a big circle holding hands and swaying to "Thats what friends are for"...a little moment I will always cherish.  I did not have my glasses on...I thought everyone was smiling and they were actually all crying....it was so beautiful.
     Yeah....I think about Red when I hear that song...He had a rough time and his dear wife and family had it tough too...

Diane Deal Tollefson

Mary Jane Kriha (Sisson)

I went to Mary Jane Sisson Kriha’s funeral yesterday.  Just 3 months ago, she went out to lunch with me and Judy Collins Barlow and we had a wonderful time.  She was on an oxygen condenser 24 hours a day and I knew she had some bronchial problem what was chronic.  She was a lovely girl, tall and very pretty and after graduation, she was in movies and tv and then worked for the airlines…not as a stewardess, because she did not like flying, but in the office.  I remember seeing her downtown Inglewood one 

Linda Skaggs

     Linda Skaggs, Coralie Comer and Elizabeth Wallace were all teenage friends.  They all shared a dream of being nurses and  Linda got her dream....as a pediatric nurse for many years in West Covina.
     She never married or had a family of her own, but most probably enjoyed thousands of babies and children in her work. 
     I sent a letter to her last known address and spoke with her friend who shared a condo with her for many years.....Linda had a happy life working and shopping...and she never spoke of her youth or childhood.  
     There is probably a lot more to the story, but I can only tell you what I found...sorry I did not have all this computer research stuff a long time ago.

Diane Deal Tollefson 

James Skelton

Dennis Roy Skirvin

James Snavley

Nancy Bowman (Stewart)

Gary Thorpe

    Gary Thorpe...Butch haircut and a very smoothe face...and an easy smile, right?  Well, I saw him in 1968 at a construction site in Agoura and did not recognize him....he was very tall, and had a huge head of dark hair and a full bushy beard.  He asked if I was Diane Deal from Inglewood High school and I said yes...and could not believe it was Gary..hahah   We had a good chat...he
worked as a carpenter, and i was a designer working on the model homes of the project.
    I remember seeing him one other time after our graduation...it was the Palladium, gradnight 1962, and his date, Charlotte Queen (IHS 1962) and Gary announced their engagement.  What a cute couple they were....I was so saddened when I heard of his early death of cancer and shortly after, her death of cancer.  They left two daughters.
    what a nice and friendly guy he was...

Diane Deal Tollefson 

James Tollefson

Vincent Varsalona

Vince was a great friend and in high school I would say along with Bob Vargas my bodyguard!! I grew up with Vince we lived on the same street West 64 th Inglewood Ca. I Frank Williams knew him since I was maybe 8 years old !! Yes there are many many great memories of our time together!! He will be missed!!

Paulette Rigsby (Villeneuve)

Paulette Rigsby (Villlenuve)

My wonderful friend, Paulette, came into my life at age 11 when her family moved next door.  Although we were the same age, I was still shapeless and Paulette was fully developed and quite curvy, with bright blonde hair.  She seemed like a movie star in my eyes, witty, sharp, knew all the fashions and movie star gossip -- a cool friend to have.  Our relationship developed over the next 65 years to a deep understanding of each other, and the knowledge that we had each other's backs.  

We attended the same schools, and would go to her house after school and play records, dance and sing -- just the 2 of us.  We would also play with the Ouija board and it would whiz so fast when we asked it a question that a third party had to keep track to catch the message.  I would work it with anyone else and it moved so slow it was too tedious to play, but Paulette and I together were the right combination to make it efficient.  However, with some of the answers that came up, we eventually decided it was evil and gave it up.

We did homework together, went horseback riding, dieted, double dated, walked together to parks in the summertime, read the same books, vacationed together (with her family) and loved each other.  She was a bridesmaid in my wedding and we remained life-long friends, including her bout with cancer when I took her to every fourth treatment.  

She was artistic and very smart.  She married John Rigsby (class of '58) and they stayed together until his passing.  They had two beautiful children who are fully grown and have produced 6 grandchildren and several great grandchildren.  The grandkids called her "GeeMaw" and loved to visit her, coming in and out of her home at will.

Her last 6 months were a problem because she was falling constantly' probably due to the return of cancer and weakness, but she didn't complain and was always very humorous about her problems.  I had seen her 2 weeks before she passed and I was not aware it was so close.  I will miss her always and remember her fondly as  being upbeat, witty, smart, friendly, loyal, and a cherished friend.

John Whatley

    John, aka, Whitey, was a friendly and good natured guy.  He loved cars and had a wide variety of very classy cars.  He was in the T Timers and also the Sleepers racing team.  I first met Jim Tollefson at a birthday party at his parents home.  His parents were wonderful people and were so kind to all his friends.
     Jim and I kept in touch with John through the years and when he moved to Bellingham, Washington, he would often
call and chat.  The last time we saw him was at our 30 year reunion for the class of 1960 in San Diego.  It was also a reunion of our "old gang" and so he had a special film made and brought it to the event...a film of some of the old parties and car shows and weddings...it was great.
    Before he died, he sent me a whole bunch of his favorite photos from his Inglewood days. lots of photos of his favorite cars....BEFORE AND AFTER their accidents.  

     Diane Deal Tollefson 

Michael Willer

Lona Olson (Winterhalter)

     Her photo is not among our Senior Photos, but she is in the photo of the A Capella Choir.  She was married in our senior year and I remember going to her apartment once with her.  I thought it so strange that she was so young and married.
    She never attended any reunions, and I lost touch with her after graduation, but apparently she had a good life, because one of her children was asking about her on the Classmates site.
He reported that she had passed away and was looking for old photos of her.   I could only show him photos of her in the choir photo.  She did not stay married to Olson, and her sons last  name was Slack.
     She was a self reliant and strong girl....very matter of fact and an excellent housekeeper..for a 17 year old.  Sure wish I could have kept in touch with her.

Diane Deal Tollefson 

Thomas Woods

2-24-43 -  12-15-16 He volunteered at our animal sanctuary for 15 years, sitting with our kitties to give them socialization when no one else cared. He was the absolute best scrabble player ever, and he had some interestong stories to tell always. He was an athlete. He swam and traveled. He was stubborn, but in a good way. He lived life to the fullest. He was kind hearted and loved his 4 kitties. He spoke German and could amaze you with his knowledge. He was a true gentleman. He will be so missed.