Ontario High School 1964 yearbook
It has now been more than fifty years since I moved away from Ontario. I was in the second grade when I moved there from Scotts Mills, Oregon. Technically, Scotts Mills would be my hometown. But I always identify Ontario as the place where I grew up.
My parents farmed on Ontario Heights and I rode the bus seven miles to Lindbergh Grade School on the east side of town. Class photos from grade school include people in my high school graduating class. In junior high new friends came into the picture when students from Conklin, Lindbergh, and Pioneer blended together.
My connection with classmates dissolved almost instantly after I graduated from high school in 1964. I stayed in Ontario as an apprentice printer at the Argus-Observer for three more years. People went off to college or became involved in careers and we no longer saw each other in the halls of Ontario High School.
The OHS class of 1964 unintentionally became an under-valued and increasingly vague memory. I could have made the drive across Oregon to attend class reunions, but it never seemed more important than other things I was doing. In the fifty years since leaving Ontario I can count on one hand the classmates I have seen in person (with one or two fingers unused).
Their is a special beauty in growing up with classmates in Ontario and I am now able to reflect back with a new sense of appreciation.
The journey with peers through childhood and adolescence is a one-time experience shared with others equally inexperienced at the task of growing up. In school district 8C we learned together by trial and error. We learned more than what was in the curriculum. Perhaps the best word for the non academic learning is socialization. Ontario was a special incubator for this.
I bemoan the level of polarization that exists at so many levels of twenty-first century culture. But in the 1950s and early ’60s in Ontario I didn’t see the polarization that is so obvious today. The four rivers flowed as one. In ethnicity my classmates were Japanese American, Hispanic American, Basque American, and European American—the cultures featured at the Four Rivers Cultural Center. Religiously we were Catholic, Protestant, Mormon, and I expect Buddhist. And the financial status of our parents ranged from economically disadvantaged to economically privileged.
The beauty of our congeniality was not based on uniformity. Nobody was the same as anyone else—not even the Miles twins. We all knew who were the smartest, the best athletes, the most popular, the fashionably dressed, and more. The fact that I didn’t fit in the top ten of any of those categories didn't make me feel unaccepted or disrespected. I choose to believe that our differences had less significance than our common experience of growing up together.
My reflections more than a half century later might be flawed and might not correlate with the experience and thoughts of classmates, but in my memory the places where some excelled did not create relational barriers. As I think back on grades 2-12, I hope my school experience in Ontario, Oregon, represents a positive example of unity in the context of diversity.
Mrs. Watkins sixth grade class at Lindberg Grade School, Ontario, Oregon.