A LOOK BACK:Huntington students experience a snowstorm

This week we’re going to look at two alpine holidays that concerned our students and teachers of Huntington Beach High School.

Our first alpine holiday began with an idea for a school musical by a talented music teacher at Huntington High, Ruth Harlow. In 1938 Harlow got the inspiration to compose an original school musical using the talents found at her school. She selected Switzerland as the setting for her musical because this small, neutral nation was in the news just prior to the start of World War II in Europe.

Harlow began jotting down an outline for her romantic composition that year, but because of pressing teaching assignments at school, she decided to set it aside where it lingered for the next six years.

Then in March of 1944 she pulled it out and with the help of fellow teacher Margaret Squires, began in earnest to complete the work. Squires would tackle the job of composing the music for the three choruses while Harlow composed the songs and the libretto.

The two spent three months with an average of six hours a day arranging and re-arranging the musical numbers several times before they were satisfied with the finished result.

Harlow named her musical composition “Alpine Holiday” and it would center on an American touring Switzerland and the daughter of the mayor of the Swiss town of Altendorf.

They tackled the problem of casting the actor/singers, then the creation of the sets and the costumes for the two-act musical, and finally the rehearsals for the singers and dancers.

For the leading part of Dick Crittended, the American tourist, Bill Heil was selected and Kitty Case was chosen to play Trina, the mayor’s daughter.

Directing the boys’ choir, girls’ choir, and the freshmen glee club was the responsibility of Everett Crosby, Harlow and Squires.

Costumes for the program were made by cast members under the able direction of Maurine Harris, while Norma Elliott and Dorothy Latasa were in charge of teaching the students in their dance numbers. Bill Gardner, with his students, would handle the sets while the lighting effects were handled by Dale Smith.

Members in the cast beside Heil and Case included John Achey, Joan Bailey, Pat Coe, Danny Gillis, Eldridge Kobernik, Barbara Krenwinkel, Don Moffitt, Barbara Prior, Steven Tait, Jim Thomas and Virginia Wise. The students spent many long hours rehearsing their parts or practicing their dances.

Up to this time no other school production had so large a chorus as “Alpine Holiday,” composed of strictly home talent.

When all was ready and the curtain rose on Friday, March 16, 1945, the cast looked on to a packed auditorium and again the following day.

Kitty Case appeared onstage wearing a white costume with a quilted skirt adorned with bright flowers for the second act, while members in the skating number wore bright, colorful costumes.

Harlow and Squires held their breath as the curtain went up, hoping the audience would enjoy it as the school had invited the music directors from many nearby schools and colleges, music critics and some motion picture scouts to the Saturday performance.

Harlow and Squires need not have feared, for there was standing-room only at each performance and the audience at each performance thoroughly loved it.

Our second alpine holiday adventure in March nearly ended in disaster.

It was on Friday, March 2, 1945, that 42 Huntington High students and their adult chaperones began their holiday with a trip to the San Bernardino Mountains.

The 17 Hi-Y boys and the 25 Tri-Y girls along with Huntington Beach High Coach Leon Miner, Dr. Melvin Strong, Mary Vidal and Dorothy LaTasa chartered a bus to take the group to Moon Camp in the San Bernardino Mountains on Friday.

That evening the group feasted on Mulligan stew, went on a moonlight hike, played games and participated in a community sing-a-long at the camp.

On Saturday morning the group drove 11 miles to Big Bear for a morning of tobogganing, skiing and sledding. The group returned to Moon Camp for lunch just in time to see the first flakes of snow fall to the ground.

In the afternoon the group of young people toured Snow Valley as more snow began to fall. As night fell the group supplied their own entertainment over a warm campfire.

Snow continued to blanket the ground that evening, and by morning the road over the mountain was blocked with snowdrifts.

Just after 3 p.m. Sunday the bus started for home by way of Victorville, but the old bus was plagued with a frozen fuel pump. With the bus out of commission, Leon Miner and Alfred Kerr hiked nine miles in the snow toward Ewing Camp to call for help while the rest of the group remain aboard the bus.

Meanwhile an Army B-17 bomber made an emergency landing on a road leading to Twentynine Palms, ripping out several telephone poles and cutting communications to Ewing Camp.

Miner and Kerr hiked back to the bus and attempted to temporarily repair to the pump so that for the next 21 miles the bus limped along in the heavy snowstorm until they reached Victorville.

Snow was now falling at a rate of one foot per hour when the bus arrived in Victorville and was taken to a local garage for repairs. The mechanic spent two hours repairing it.

With the bus running again, the alpine adventurers headed back to Huntington Beach where they arrived on Monday morning to tell of their experiences in one of the heaviest snowstorms in history.

Both alpine holidays ended in triumph for the students of Huntington High and in the end they gathered fond memories of that March of 1945.

JERRY PERSON is a local historian and longtime Huntington Beach resident. If you have ideas for future columns, write him at P.O. Box 7182, Huntington Beach, CA 92615.