by Garth Meyer
From the second-floor classroom windows, students could see few houses, just fields. To the northeast, wooden oil derricks, and over the hill were flower farms. To the east was a large pig operation, its scent evident if the wind was offshore during school hours.
This is the recollection of a student at the original Beryl Heights Elementary School in the 1940s.
Mrs. Joan Stuart will be in attendance again Saturday, Sept. 20, as the Redondo Beach school marks its 100th anniversary.
The current building was built in 1954-56. The original opened Sept. 7, 1925.
Saturday’s celebration runs from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m., with teachers, alumni, games, crafts, music through the decades, food trucks, a mayor’s proclamation, an historical display, and speakers including former PTA leader Anita Avrick, whose daughter now works at the school, its two current longest-serving teachers, Ms. Marci Cohn and Ms. Jennifer Conant, and Redondo Unified School District Superintendent Nicole Wesley.
Another particular Beryl alumni who will attend is Keri Tafoya, the granddaughter of Peter Serrato, founder of Peter’s Garden Center, who was a Beryl student in the 1940s, followed by his daughter, grandchildren and now, young cousins; four generations of attendance at Beryl Heights.
Mrs. Stuart, who described the view from that third floor classroom, returned to teach kindergarten at the school in 1957, retiring in 1999.
You could see from Zuma Beach to the San Gabriel Mountains.
In 1933, a Long Beach earthquake damaged the school, but it was not until juvenile vandals set a 1954 fire that a new building was commissioned.
Part of the Sept. 20 historical display will show Beryl Heights’ annual May Day event, including maypole and king and queen. The tradition ended in the 1990s.
Claire Tillotson Izakowitz, historian for the Centennial Committee, went to the school, and now her kids do, starting its second century. ER
