The ones who stayed

". . . Garfield High, a school that passed in a single decade from a period of great sophistication and excitement to virtual collapse." - Seattle magazine, March 1970

It was as if an entire class of students was wiped out. Ten desks suddenly empty in each room. A football team with no backfield.

In just a couple of years, enrollment plummeted by one-third in what might have been the greatest, most publicized exodus from a Seattle school.

Garfield High School, once called "a model of integration," appeared to be a model of disintegration.

The school was portrayed in news stories as a place racked by racial tension, hallway assaults and restroom robberies. It was more than white flight - students of all races were transferring out, moving out or dropping out. There was talk of closing it.

Three decades ago, Garfield High almost became history. But today the Seattle landmark - where music legends Jimi Hendrix and Quincy Jones once walked the halls - is still going strong, thanks in part to the Class of 1970.

This multiracial group of students, which helped keep the lights on during some of the school's bleakest hours, celebrates its 30th reunion next weekend.

It was a class that included people like Aletha Stuckey Johnson, a leader of the school's "Senior Soul Sisters" - a group of African-American girls who defused tension through humorous skits.

And there was Bernie Weber, who stayed at Garfield while most of his fellow white classmates left. He set a hopeful tone for senior year, writing "Pride is returning" in the school newspaper.

Both Weber and Johnson helped organize the upcoming reunion for the Class of '70. Such gatherings can be bittersweet.

"When we get together at reunions," said Weber, "we always talk about the ones who didn't make it to the final year. `Whatever happened to so and so?' "

"The (enrollment) drop has been alarming." - Seattle Times story about Garfield High, Feb. 23, 1969

Garfield tumbled hard in the 1960s after starting the decade with such promise. It had made headlines for having the most graduates of any school in the state earn college doctorates. It won two state basketball titles in a row and in 1963 came within eight points of winning a third - something no team has ever done.

But Garfield, which opened in 1922, was more than a school with a great academic and athletic tradition.

Maybe it was the award-winning stage band adopting the jazzy Henry Mancini hit "Peter Gunn" as the school fight song - while other schools were stuck with shopworn Sousa marches.

Maybe it was student floor sweeper Stanley Saloy Jr., electrifying crowds at basketball games by putting on a halftime show with his mop, doing 360s and the splits.

Maybe it was the purple-and-white uniforms. The Bulldog mascot and spirit.

The Garfield of the early 1960s seemed to have something special. And it seemed to be linked to its rich racial mix, so unusual at that time.

"It was the first high school in the Pacific Northwest to become truly integrated," said Frank Hanawalt, its principal from 1959 to 1968. "Garfield was always in the limelight partly because of that heritage."

The handsome brick school on 23rd Avenue in the heart of Seattle's Central Area had a mix of races and religions that made it a teenage United Nations. It drew from some of the city's wealthiest and poorest neighborhoods.

Hanawalt seemed to be perfect for Garfield in the 1960s. He spoke of civil rights like John F. Kennedy and looked a bit like space pioneer John Glenn. Looking back at the era, when most schools around here were all-white, Hanawalt said Garfield was ahead of its time.

"They (students) learned to be able to live with diversity without having to try. They didn't have to wear it on their sleeve. They didn't have to be afraid."

"Sword of Damocles hangs over Garfield High" - Seattle Times headline, Dec. 25, 1967

Yes, Garfield was in imminent danger, according to the highbrow headline that appeared during the Class of '70's sophomore year. As the story put it:

"The problem the school board must settle is: `What to do with Garfield? Should, as some integration proponents have argued, the school be closed?' "

While it wasn't news that most of Seattle's other high schools were at least 99 percent white, it was big news in 1962 when Garfield became more than 50 percent black (and 35 percent white and 15 percent "other" - mostly Asian American). To avoid lawsuits over segregated schools, the Seattle School District in 1963 implemented a voluntary busing program.

It didn't work well. By 1970, Garfield was 79 percent black, 16 percent white, 5 percent "other."

When the busing program, Hanawalt had high hopes that it would encourage white students to transfer in and lessen the pressure to close the school.

That first year of the program, about 100 black students volunteered to go to predominantly white schools in the North End. But at first, only two whites transferred in - including Hanawalt's oldest son, Peter.

"I remember the disappointment the school felt," said Hanawalt, who now lives in Federal Way.

The exodus was on.

By the time the Class of '70 entered Garfield as sophomores, enrollment at the three-year school was 1,654. By the time they began their senior year, that figure was down to 1,090, and Weber recalls that the daily attendance figure often was around 600.

"It got very quiet," Weber said.

Enrollment was dropping at other Seattle schools, too, but nothing like at Garfield.

That June, when most other public high schools in Seattle graduated 500 to 600 students, Garfield handed out 380 diplomas - and even fewer the next year.

"Racial disturbance under control in Garfield High area" - Seattle Times headline, July 2, 1968

Bernie Weber stood out at Garfield. As a senior, he was the only white member of the track team and one of only a few whites on the football team. He even got a role in a play about Malcolm X. Yep, the only white actor on that stage. Weber was used to that, though, as his white friends whom he grew up with on Capitol Hill went elsewhere.

"I'm the only (white) guy who stayed," Weber said matter-of-factly. To him, it was no big deal. Neither was going to Garfield, which meant he had to go into the predominantly black Central Area, depicted in newspapers as an increasingly dangerous place.

This was during the rise of the Black Power movement, and Garfield was in the middle of it. So wasn't he afraid, like so many other white students who transferred out? Weber smiled at the question.

"Guess I wasn't there the day everybody got beat up," Weber said wryly. "Nobody ever treated me badly."

Weber, now a real-estate developer who lives in Ballard, speaks of Garfield as if it was any other high school - the parties, the games and the student paper, where he was editor.

It did help, he said, to be on the football team and have a friend whose older brother was a Black Panther. And some basic urban survival skills helped, too - you didn't flash money or jewelry, you were friendly, and you treated people with respect and avoided walking into potentially dangerous situations. (The school district reported 10 "serious" assaults on campus during the 1969-'70 school year.)

"You knew when to not go that way. You went that way."

But he never ran away.

"Garfield High cheerleaders imitated but not duplicated" - Seattle Post-Intelligencer headline, March 17, 1962

If there was a symbol of what was intimidating about Garfield, it could be the yearbook picture of Aletha Stuckey Johnson and her fellow "Senior Soul Sisters."

Here was a group of eight African-American girls with their fists defiantly raised in the Black Power salute. It shocked much of white America when guys did it. But girls? No wonder so many people were afraid of Garfield. No wonder they were wrong.

The group was simply formed to promote school spirit and provide some entertainment at a school already famed for that.

"We just struck a pose," Deborah Glover, a fellow Soul Sister, said at a recent reunion meeting.

"That's as scary as they got," Susanne Umeda, another reunion organizer, added with a laugh.

Johnson is more like a cheerleader than a militant and can be disarmingly friendly, someone who hugs a reporter appearing at the door of her Rainier Valley home for the first time. Someone who talks excitedly about her high-school days: "My thing was to be happy, and I was happy. I loved Garfield!"

If there were problems there, Johnson didn't see many. She was too busy focusing on her classwork, she said. School didn't come easy, and her parents demanded she get good grades. Johnson, now a journeyman machinist and shop steward at Boeing, admits she did have some fear at Garfield.

"I was afraid I might not graduate."

"Tear gas fired at 23rd, E. Alder" - Headline under photo of Garfield High, May 26, 1969

A school couldn't have gotten much worse publicity than the photo of police firing tear gas at demonstrators outside of Garfield that spring day in 1969. The incident began when students from nearby Seattle Central Community College marched over to Garfield as part of an effort to get an African American on the all-white community college board.

The confrontation turned violent about the time students were leaving school, with rocks thrown and a police officer shot. Priscilla Arsove was waiting for a bus home.

"It was very scary that day," said Arsove, a member of the Class of '70. "But I never gave any thought to going elsewhere. There was so much energy at Garfield."

Other schools were also experiencing their own problems, which had nothing to do with race. It was a time of teenage rebellion and student unrest as the Vietnam War escalated.

And the situation at Garfield was overblown by the news media, which rarely wrote about anything good happening at the school, members of the Class of '70 said.

Mike White, an African American, said he tried to be a calming influence at Garfield and would defuse hostile racial situations, which sometimes meant standing up for a white friend.

Such moments of interracial brotherhood were not uncommon with the Class of '70. They said they often banded together, regardless of race, to protect one another.

During a football game their senior year, white punter Charlie Heffernan was knocked down hard by an opposing player.

"The black players (on Garfield) quickly surrounded him to make sure . . . nothing else happened," according to a newspaper story.

Coach Byron Johnson, an African American, was proud of the example his team was setting. He was quoted in the story: "It has made us more cohesive."

Heffernan, a planner for the city of Seattle, has the story framed in his office and recently circulated copies of it to his classmates as the reunion approached.

"Garfield is mending its wounds, little by little." -Seattle Times headline, Feb. 16, 2000

There was bad news coming out of Garfield this year again - the suicide of a popular teacher and its principal resigning under a cloud.

And it has dropped to the district's fifth most popular of its 10 high schools, according to preferences listed by incoming freshmen.

But it's considered the district's flagship school and usually is up there with private Lakeside School (Bill Gates' and Paul Allen's alma mater) in producing the most National Merit Scholars in the state. It has a globe-trotting jazz band and a basketball team that made news this year when it didn't win the state title.

Johnson and Weber walked the familiar halls recently, triggering memories of a school that's always been close to their hearts.

Ask Johnson about Garfield, and she sounds almost haunted.

"I think about Garfield all the time. All the time. There's something I need to do there."

She and her classmates might already have done it.

Some graduating classes give their schools a water fountain, statue or plaque. Garfield's Class of '70 did a bit more than that. It gave a great and dying school life.

Bill Kossen grew up wanting to go to Garfield. This is about as close as he'll get. His phone message number is 206-464-2331. His e-mail address is: bkossen@seattletimes.com.

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The sounds of Garfield

To hear the 1965 Garfield stage band's version of "Peter Gunn," call The Seattle Times InfoLine, 206-464-2000, from a touch-tone phone and enter category 4866 (GUNN). This is a free call within the local Seattle calling area. To hear the song on the Web, go to www.seattletimes.com and click on the story under "Lifestyles."