Classes of ’39–’42 reunite at San Dieguito Academy

“I knew someday I’d be the last person from my class,” said 92-year-old Del Mar resident Henry Knorr. “I just didn’t expect it to be so soon.” Knorr was a member of San Dieguito High School’s graduating class of 1939.

He was also the oldest attendee at an October 22 founders’ reception held on-campus by the school’s alumni association. The event was to honor and reminisce with alumni from the school’s first graduating classes (1937–1942) and to unveil the first phase of engraved "legacy" brick pavers. The first 100 bricks were recently installed around the school’s bell tower.

Back in the 1930s, most area students living in what is now known as La Costa and south to Carmel Valley started junior or senior high school at the school known as Carlsbad-Oceanside High. In 1937, the new San Dieguito High School’s first graduating class (30 members) marched to "Pomp and Circumstance."

Known as the Mustangs, the school's 1937 “Hoofprint” yearbook received congratulations from 58 area businesses. Each of the advertised businesses listed only a two- or three-digit phone number. Of the numerous cafés, mechanics' garages, and neighborhood markets, only two businesses remain 76 years later — La Paloma Theatre in Encinitas and R.E. Badger, an agricultural management firm in Rancho Santa Fe.

During the brick-paver dedication on October 22, four saxophonists from the school’s current band played the long-lost school alma mater, “Oh Hail to San Dieguito.” The tune’s arrangement had been lost when the campus converted a from high school to an academy in 1996; it has not been heard on campus since then. Band director Jeremy Wuertz researched and eventually found the two-verse song.

About 50 fellow alumni, teachers and staff, and current students attended the brick unveiling. Henry Knorr’s had his brick inscribed, “Some of the best days were spent here.”