Our eyes skimmed across rows of familiar faces, bangs and curls in the front, pigtails and floppy hair in the back. This was us, the sixth grade class of 1971, an assembly of miniskirts and sneakers, horned-rimmed glasses and a chipped-tooth smile.
Inside a country-style home in Boerne, we are gazing at a photo taken 53 years ago in the Samuel A. Maverick Elementary School library. Outside, the homeowner is cooking paella for his classmates over a crackling fire. Steve Havel, the reunion organizer, tends to a bubbling blend of seafood, pork and rice as 1960s music stirs memories.
“What was that girl’s last name on the front row?” someone asks. “Sandra — what?” Blank stares and shrugs follow. Gaps appear in our 64- and 65-year-old minds. Names sometimes break or blur, even vanish, but one memory remains clear. We are perhaps the last class old enough to remember where we were on Nov. 22, 1963.
Mike Escareno was at home with his grandmother when his mother returned from work early Friday afternoon, crying. “What’s wrong?” Mike asked. “They killed President Kennedy.” Ted Roberts watched the news break on television and told his mother. Shawn Ellison saw sadness wash over his parents. I got word on the playground at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, where kindergarteners were swinging on monkey bars.
After arriving at Maverick Elementary in the fall of 1968, Mike, Ted and Shawn became my best friends. In fifth grade, we formed a band. On the last day of sixth grade, The Silver Underground Railroad played its first gig in the school cafeteria. I opened with a single-stroke roll on a tom-tom. Ted followed with an iconic guitar riff and that’s how we kicked off our graduation party — with “Wipe Out,” the 1963 classic by the Surfaris.
Before the party ended, I understood the meaning of “rock star.” A girl wrote in my autograph book, “Dear Kenneth, I love the way you play the drums and I love you, too.”
With the exception of Shawn, a gifted keyboard player, we were fledging musicians, learning our instruments. With Mike on rhythm guitar and he and Ted on vocals, we thrashed on and added a bass player. Four years after our first gig, we signed with an agent, Sam Kinsey. In the late ’60s and early ’70s, Kinsey represented ZZ Top and Christopher Cross. Mostly, though, Kinsey represented a slew of San Antonio bands who performed at his club, The Teen Canteen. Under a new name, “Midnight Flash,” Kinsey booked our band for dances, parties and weddings.
In an oversized breakfast nook at the host’s 10-acre spread, the guys recalled a Battle of the Bands performance at Lackland Air Force Base, circa 1975. When an airman requested “‘Wipe Out,” we obliged to raucous cheers. Fortunately, none of the other bands knew the song. On a military vote, we collected about $100. Everyone else left unpaid.
Pranks and paddlings
What was it like to be a sixth grader in 1970-71? There were pranks and crushes, love notes and lots of corporal punishment. One day after school, I bought a Coke from the soda machine in the cafeteria. The next day, I got sent to the principal’s office and got whacked. “What did I do wrong?” I asked. “The soda you bought was for faculty only,” came the reply. I was marked. On the first day of class, my father, a middle school vice principal, told every teacher, “If Kenneth steps out of line, you have my permission to paddle him.” The faculty enjoyed their liberties.
Pranks? One morning in class, Ted told a classmate, “At 2 o’clock, click your spiral notebook shut. Pass it around.” Word spread. At the appointed time, about 30 notebooks clicked shut, creating a loud, obnoxious sound. The teacher looked up, confused, aghast, her face reddening. It was all we could do not to burst out laughing.
Another time, I noticed a square tile missing from the floor in Mrs. Dahlberg’s home room. I picked at an adjoining tile until it loosened and came out. Then another and another. Soon, lots of kids were pulling out tiles and stacking them. After a couple of weeks, a massive, black scar stained the room. The entire class was moved into the hallway while maintenance retiled the floor.
Maverick, located in the San Antonio Independent School District, does not look the same today. Built in 1952, our class learned in a low-slung, antiquated facility. Modern technology in 1971 was an overhead projector. An occasional black-and-white television rolled down the hallway on a tall cart. The only computers we saw were those in Mission Control when rocket ships launched into space. The Maverick of my day had 20 classrooms. Two campuses could easily fit into the space occupied now by Wilderness Oak Elementary in North East ISD.
A 1997 SAISD bond election propelled Maverick into the modern age. The school was bulldozed and rebuilt on the original site at Raleigh Place and Babcock Road. Today, a two-story building sits on what used to be the softball field with 35 classrooms, three portable buildings and a gym. As a result, Maverick escaped the district’s recent spate of planned school closures. SAISD Trustee Ed Garza explained, “Current enrollment at Maverick is approximately 500 students.” A school located in a more affluent neighborhood up the street, Baskin Elementary, has dropped to 274 students. “When Baskins closes,” Garza said, “all of the Baskin students will be zoned to attend Maverick.”
A reason to reunite
Who organizes a grade school reunion? A big, tenderhearted friend who owns a T-shirt that says, “Legend since 1958, Husband since 1987, Dad since 1994, Grandpa since 2019.” Steve Havel likes to mark milestones. In early September, he messaged me about a reunion. I asked around and found sufficient interest. Steve set a date, opened his home and provided food and drinks. When the paella was ready, this Morgan Stanley financial consultant addressed classmates, spouses and plus-ones, 29 total. “You might be wondering what this is about,” he began Saturday afternoon. “We’re here because Ken lived.”
We are? I was stunned. Standing in his kitchen, Steve explained that people say the kindest things about friends after they die. So why not tell them when they’re alive? I had not told Steve much about my near death in January 2023, about the pneumonia, septic shock, kidney failure and liver failure, about coding as I lay in a coma. But he’d read the news my wife Judy and I posted on Facebook, which recalled waking up to a pulmonologist who said, “You are a living miracle.”
Steve was speaking to our class collectively, asking us to pull from the heart and share. To put words to feelings while we can. Still, as I looked around and took in the moment, I felt like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn at their own funeral. Before the afternoon ended, one classmate put a bottle of Merlot in my car, a second gave me a plant, a third handed me a bag with a lovely card, a cross and a wood cutout of the word “blessed.”
We were all blessed to reconnect and catch up, to recall stories that sparked bursts of laughter. There was the classmate who wanted to get even, a kid who called taxis and scheduled them to arrive at a teacher’s home at 2, 3 and 4 o’clock in the morning. Then there were the Davis twins, Becky and Charlotte, who deceived dates. Though unable to attend the reunion, Becky shared this: “We always liked the same guy and the guy never knew which one of us he liked. Charlotte decided in the middle of a movie that we needed to go to the ladies room. She told me she didn’t like her date anymore. We went back in and switched seats.”
We were blessed to have a trailblazing classmate, Loran Brenner. She walked into class one day in a stylish, soft pink pantsuit. Eyes widened in disbelief. Was Loran making a statement? Had she forgotten the dress code? At the behest of principal Gardis Weidman, Loran’s mother, a talented seamstress, designed an “acceptable” outfit. “And that was the beginning,” Loran recalled, “of girls being allowed to wear pants to school.”
Sadly, many of our classmates have passed. Two were killed in traffic accidents. One succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning. Others died from various causes. Many were unable to attend the reunion due to travel, failing health or scheduling conflicts. Those who came had a memorable time.
At a large, round dining room table, Alice Gonzales-Moore recalled a grade school boyfriend. “Wait,” I interrupted, “you and Robert Hernandez were a thing?” Robert gave Alice a ring, did something to upset her, then Alice, perhaps the nicest girl in school, threw it away. The table broke up, and maybe no one got a bigger kick than Matt Moore, Alice’s husband. Years later, on the last day of 12th grade, Alice heard an engine rumbling. It was her old boyfriend, riding his motorcycle through a hallway past slack jawed students, then thundering out a back door at Jefferson High School, faculty and administrators giving chase.
Time alters memories and people. Alice looked the same. Great big smile. Great big heart. She and Matt stood with me and Judy outside in the afternoon chill, beside a wood-burning fire. “It’s so good to see you,” she began. “We prayed so hard for your recovery and now here you are.”
Joe Cocker’s growl sounded through a speaker above us, his raspy cover of a Beatles’ classic, “With a Little Help From My Friends.” The song carried us back. Back to Big Chief tablets and No. 2 pencils. Back to love notes scribbled and passed during recess. Back to dodge ball and four square and friendships forged on a distant playground.
