Greeting family and friends! This "Ralph Family Photo Album" episode features our dad's 1924 Castro Valley Elementary School photo. Dad is in the front row to the far left and his life long friend Minora Minicura "Min" is in the same row second from the right. Ironically 94 years later, at least if Fremont, it has been decided NOT to hold classroom instruction until there are 7 consecutive days without a new covid-19 infection in the entire county. Which could be a long time.....
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Our dad was in the first class to attend the new Castro Valley Elementary School in 1923. The imposing “modern” structure located on 2 acres on Castro Valley Blvd. replaced a series of wooden schools and would “rival any rural school in the country” proudly proclaimed Principal A.B. Morris. The population of Castro Valley at the time was only about 2,000 residents and our 12 year old father was among among the first 38 students at the newly completed school.
The attractive new $37,000 building was an encouragement for parents to send their children to the new school and by the end of 1923 enrollment increased to 180 students and to 350 by the early 30’s
Dad was a Farmer. That is, after graduation from Castro Valley Elementary School, he was a Hayward High School “Farmer” (Actually he was a tool and die maker for Caterpillar Tractor Company for 47 years). Founded in 1892, Hayward High is one of the oldest public high schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. The school adopted the Farmer mascot back when the Hayward was an agricultural center supplying the region with grains, fruits and vegetables. For more than 120 years the school’s emblem has featured a farmer in a straw hat and overalls along with a couple of plows.
The original school building was a small one story structure until it was replaced in 1911 by a architecturally classic structure complete with ionic columns, low pitched roofs and decorative friezes. Some students still rode their horses to school as recently as the 1960’s and tied them to hitching posts dating from the 1890’s (I can still remember seeing hitching posts in downtown Hayward along B and C streets). The attractive campus survived until 1962 when it was demolished to make way for the Hayward Civic Center Building and Hayward High was moved to it’s current location on East Avenue.
An oversize concrete “H” hidden in the brush on the hillside above City Center Drive is a reminder of earlier and simpler days when Hayward High School was the jumping off place for ten’s of thousands of students embarking on life’s journey.
Bill Ralph 7/12/20
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