|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The assembly took place in Livermore High School’s auditorium, but the attendees weren’t Livermore High students – not really.
Oh, some were freshmen at the Maple Street campus, which dates to 1891, and others were eighth-graders, due to arrive the following school year. But they weren’t Cowboys. They didn’t know what they were, which was the reason for the gathering.
It was March 8, 1963, some 10 months before the 154 members of what would become Granada High School’s first graduating class, as well as 200-plus students who made up the following year’s class, would begin attending school at the still-under-construction facilities across town on Wall Street. The fledgling and not-yet high schoolers’ task was to choose colors and a mascot for their new home.
“We had this tremendous responsibility,” said Greg Zitney, a 1966 Granada graduate. “We thought we were pretty important, that we had these decisions that we were going to make that would last for, to use a mathematical term, infinity.”
While it’s nowhere near that point, the class of ’66 and friends from the class of ’67 are set for a 60-year reunion with the products of that long-ago assembly – black and gold, and Matadors – long-since firmly entrenched in Granada lore.
The celebration – to reconnect and stroll down memory lane – is scheduled for Sept. 26 at Alden Lane Nursery in Livermore. In addition to the class of ’67, the only other present when Granada opened on Jan. 6, 1964, the festivities will include Livermore High’s classes of ’66 and ’67. Though they quickly found themselves on opposite sides of a budding crosstown rivalry, the members of all four classes have always shared a strong bond, given that many had attended school together since their kindergarten days.
“We feel very related to the class of ’66 with Livermore, and the class of ’67 with Livermore. That’s why they’re invited,” said Jacquie Williams-Courtright, Granada’s first student-body treasurer.
Among Granada’s 1967 graduating class was Jean Quan, who went on to serve as the first female and first Asian American mayor of Oakland from 2011-15.
Those first Granada students officially became Matadors when school resumed following Christmas break nearly 63 years ago.
“We were almost the Granada Gophers,” recalled Williams-Courtright, the longtime Alden Lane owner who inherited the nursery from her parents, Ruth and Jack.
Among other possibilities considered, according to an anniversary publication produced by then-Granada principal Kevin Drake and former Granada teacher Peg Hauselt in 2014, were Toros, Trojans, Rebels, Thunderbirds and Wildcats. Still, the process went relatively smoothly.
“I think we made a good choice,” said Irv Whitten, a member of the class of ’66. “I mean, hell, we could have chosen the red-and-white Woodchucks or something, and probably everybody would be happy with that, too.”
There were no older students around to offer critiques.
“We were the top dogs,” Williams-Courtright said. “We were so spoiled. At any other school, if you’re a sophomore, you’re a sophomore, and you have upperclassmen telling you pretty much what you’re going to be doing. We didn’t have any of that.”
The advantages are obvious, but there were downsides, too, according to Todd Morgan, who served as Granada’s senior class president in 1965-66 after having moved from Oregon to Livermore prior to his sophomore year. A member of the football, wrestling and track teams, Morgan and his fellow athletes often found themselves competing against older opponents who also enjoyed the luxury of history on their side.
“There were no Granada High traditions,” said Morgan, who went on to become an agricultural lender and now lives in the Stanislaus County community of Turlock. “We didn’t have anything to fall back on – this is how we’ve always done this, whatever that might be. One of the best parts about that is we were able to create our own, I suppose, but the other part is we didn’t have that structure to rely on for guidance as to how things should proceed.”
Daidre Foote-West, who was Granada’s first California Scholarship Federation chapter president and the school’s initial yell leader, felt the same dynamic.
“I was, I think, kind of uncertain about how to navigate a new school, but there was a lot of guidance from the faculty,” she said. “Pat Fracisco comes to mind. He was the football coach and, I think, a P.E. teacher. He may have also taught history. He kind of knew how to hike up the enthusiasm for sports, which was kind of where it started about having some energy around a new school.”
It wasn’t until a class reunion many years later, Foote-West recalled, that Jack Lee, Granada’s first principal, shared strategy utilized by the Livermore Union High School District, a forerunner of the Livermore Valley Joint Unified School District.
“The district intentionally hired a young, really excellent faculty to spearhead the first years at Granada,” Foote-West said. “Boy, they were fired up about their subjects. They were such good teachers. They really went the extra mile to provide a good education for us.”
One of the initial 13 teachers who moved from Livermore to Granada was Laurie Tognetti, known as Miss Faoro at the time. She had barely graduated from the University of California, Berkeley and was still an intern when she began teaching algebra and geometry at Granada.
“The students related to us because we were so young,” Tognetti said. “The students and the faculty, we were a very cohesive group.”
Tognetti, who spent two years at Granada before teaching the next 34 years at Novato High in Marin County, recalls those first students fondly.
“I think they were like any other typical teenagers at the time,” she said. “I don’t remember anybody making any real trouble. I know they gave me a bad time in the classroom because I was so young. That, I do remember. But they got taught. It was a learning experience for me, and for them, too.”
Granada’s first students faced an important test when construction of the school’s swimming pool threatened the existence of an ancient oak tree on campus. A student-led movement saved what became the “senior” tree, which still stands in the athletic quad.
Other, smaller challenges were also prevalent in those early days. With Granada still very much under construction when the school opened, athletic and other facilities simply did not exist. Students rode buses nearly two miles to May Nissen Park not only for football practices and home baseball games, but also for physical education classes. Students also bused to Livermore High for some activities.
Unusual goings-on at school took place every day.
“I recall attending classes with the sound of saws, hammers and construction equipment,” said Zitney, a resident of Novato who went on to become an environmental planner and certified wildlife biologist. “I don’t recall it being something that was distracting to the extent where it interfered with learning. I don’t recall teachers being annoyed. It was just something that was in the background.”
Granada’s groundbreaking ceremony had taken place on Jan. 10, 1963, but a series of delays due to labor strikes, rain and construction difficulties resulted in the school not opening until about a year later. At first, Granada consisted merely of two wings of classrooms, a section of the administration building, a wood shop and a multipurpose room.
The school’s first assembly took place outdoors, in the cold of January, and later that winter, a break in a gas line caused classes to be dismissed early. Lights, heat, water, clocks, doors, lockers and blackboards were among luxuries that barely existed, if at all, and it wasn’t uncommon to see workmen crawling out of ventilation shafts.
There was no bell system in place. Lee, who served as Granada principal until 1976, or another member of the administration would walk outside and manually ring a bell to signal time for classes to change.
“Going to a new school, that was kind of an eerie feeling,” said Flo Smith, a member of the class of ’66 and current resident of San Ramon who has 14 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. “We didn’t know what to expect, what we would have there. It was just a basic school, kind of small, in respect to Livermore High School, which was established way back when.”
“But there was an exciting part to it, too, because we would be brand-new to it and put our ideas into it,” Smith added.
After having spent their first year and a half of high school pretty much limited to one tiny wing at Livermore High, though, at least some members of Granada’s first graduating class didn’t find the new school to be all that small.
“I remember that it felt really cavernous,” Foote-West said. “It felt empty, and big, because we had been used to being stuffed in that one hall at Livermore High School, all of us. Once we got to the new campus, it was big. There was lots of open space. It was muddy, because they didn’t have grass planted yet. So, physically, it was a huge change.”
All of this, of course, played out during the turbulence of the 1960s.
“It was a tumultuous time, and yet Livermore remained very stable, very peaceful,” Whitten said. “Looking back on it, it was a really great place to grow up.”
Livermore in those days featured a “sheltered life”, according to Foote-West, who is retired after having worked 49 years as a nurse and now lives in Olympia, Wash.
“I think one of the differences between now and then is how safe we felt,” she said. “There was really nothing to be frightened of. We would walk home from the Vine Theater after the 10:30 movie. That was such a nice security.”
All these years later, even with many of their classmates gone, Granada’s first graduates cling dearly to a fierce sense of pride from their high school days.
“I don’t want to sound corny, but I feel like I was very fortunate to be part of the class of 1966,” said Whitten, who owned an office-machines company for 29 years and now lives in San Diego. “I think it’s a very good group of people. The ones that I’m aware of grew up to be good, solid, salt-of-the-earth people, the kind of people that are the backbone of the United States. A lot of it comes from our education, our growing up in Livermore and going through a high school where good values were instilled in us.”
The same remains true for today’s students, according to Clark Conover, the school’s principal since 2022.
“We are incredibly fortunate that Granada High School’s founding class provided the strong leadership needed to establish our rich tradition of spirit and pride,” Conover said.
Editor’s note: This story is dedicated to the memory of Rita Wood-Bankhead, Dan’s older sister, who was a member of Granada’s class of 1966.
San Ramon police credit Flock cameras with helping nab fleeing armed robbery suspectsAugust 20, 2026 9:26 am
