Burbank High School Graduating Class of 1967 blog. See photos and read messages from the past and present!
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We have added a Live Auction to be held at the conclusion (about 5:30pm) of the Golf Tournament. We have reserved the Starlight Room at the Castaway Restaurant.
Open to the public. Tickets at the door $29. Golfers, volunteers and spouse tickets included in registration price.
Hors D'oeuvres:
Walnut Crusted Chicken Tenders with Pineapple Horseradish Dip
Crab Stuffed Mushrooms
Buffalo Wings
Cheeseboard Selection with Fruit and Crackers
Baby Vegetable Basket
Smoked Salmon Canapes
Cookies & Brownies
Coffee Station
Jerry Garcia and the Rolling Stones are among the fans of Travis Bean's electric guitars, made with a solid aluminum neck and headstock. He came up with the design in a Burbank shop in the 1970s and quit making them after five years rather than compromise quality.
Guitar maker Travis Bean is shown in 1977 at the National Assn. of Music Merchants trade show.
Photographer Rick Oblinger / Travis Bean Guitars
By Valerie J. Nelson, Los Angeles Times
July 16, 2011
In a Burbank shop in the 1970s, Travis Bean reinvented the electric guitar.
To enhance string vibration, he suggested making the instrument's neck and headstock out of solid aluminum instead of wood. The resulting guitars, manufactured for only five years, remain prized for their unique tone and durability.
Among the famous who have strummed them are Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead – whose Travis Bean guitar was auctioned for $312,000 in 2007 – and many of the Rolling Stones.
Bean died Sunday in Burbank after a long battle with cancer, his family announced. He was 63.
"He came along when there was not much of anything in terms of fresh ideas when it came to making guitars," Jim Washburn, a music writer who has curated guitar exhibits, told The Times. "Then he revolutionized things a bit. He made a pretty good mark for making them for such a short period of time."
Guitar Player magazine has compared Bean to maverick automaker John DeLorean because both "pushed the envelope by doing something radically different with a familiar product."
Other guitar makers had tried using aluminum to improve neck stability and vibration but Bean and his two partners – Marc McElwee and Gary Kramer – "took the concept to prime time," the magazine said in 2005. Kramer later founded his own company that made aluminum-necked guitars.
Manufactured from 1974 to 1979, Travis Bean guitars were also known for their exotic hardwood bodies and a high-end price tag that could top $1,000.
When company investors called for prices to be lowered, Bean decided to stop production instead of compromising quality, according to the magazine.
He was born Aug. 21, 1947, in San Fernando and was adopted by Raymond and Betty Bean, who named their only child Clifford Travis Bean. His father worked for Shell Oil Co.
A 1965 graduate of Burbank High, Bean was a woodworker with a penchant for redesigning objects when he turned toward the guitar.
When employees and guests at the guitar shop would jam in a back room, "there was always a ton of guitarists and bass players but never any drummers," so Bean took up the drums, said his friend Philip Culp.
"That was the essence of Travis," Culp said. "He could teach himself how to do anything."
Bean is survived by his wife, Rita; son Darren Miller; daughter Dawn Norvel; and four grandchildren.
What a GREAT time we had up at DeBell's Clubhouse Grill last Saturday!
The Class of '67 is talking about doing it again next year maybe in August for their 45th reunion.
Carol Nicholls Lebrecht, Mike McDaniel, Deanna Lloyd Jennings, Wes Clark, Cathy Nicholls Coyle, John Coyle, Joanne Yoffee Furer, Greg Van Der Werff, Diane McCall Ward, Alan Singer, Ellisa Dibble Weekly, Neal Hershenson, Duane Thaxton, Madelaine Zelenay Whiteman, Dona Foy Bruckner, Don Ray, Linda Mustion, Flora Angel Ferrens, Guy Gingell, Cathy Palmer, Allison Gingell, John Whitt, Nancy Krough Brez and Vivian Blum Gillette
Cathy Nicholls Coyle, Greg Van Der Werff, Alan Singer, Dona Foy Bruckner, Neal Hershenson, Deanna Lloyd Jennings, Cathy Palmer, Joanne Yoffee Furer, Carol Nicholls Lebrecht, Madelaine Zelelay Whiteman, Nancy Krough Brez, Jeanne Barron Aikman, Diane McCall Ward, Vivian Blum Gillette and Joan Nobile Ortega
Greg Van Der Werff, Alan Singer, Cathy Nicholls Coyle, Dona Foy Bruckner, Neal Hershenson, Cathy Palmer, Deanna Lloyd Jennings, Don Ray, Ellisa Dibble Weekly, Joanne Yoffee Furer, Carol Nicholls Lebrecht, Madeaine Zelenay Whiteman, Linda Mustion, Nancy Krough Brez, Jeanne Barron Aikman, Diane McCall Ward, Vivian Blum Gillette and Joan Nobile Ortega
Nancy Krough Brez, Joan Nobile Orgeta, Vivlan Blum Gillette, Cathy Palmer, Ellisa Dibble Weekly, Joanne Yoffee Furer, Dona Foy Bruckner, Deanna Lloyd Jennings, Carol Nicholls Lebrecht, Cathy Nicholls Coyle, Jeanne Barron Aikman and Madelaine Zelenay Whiteman
Vivian Blum Gillette, Ellisa Dibble Weekly, Deanna Lloyd Jennings, Dona Foy Bruckner, Nanacy Krough Brez, Joanne Yoffee Furer, Cathy Nicholls Coyle, Joan Nobile Ortega, Linda Mustion, Carol Nicholls Lebrecht, Jeanne Barron Aikman, Cathy Palmer, Diane McCall Ward and Shelly Perez Lucero (BHS '67 classmate and owner of Clubhouse Grill)
Carol Nicholls Lebrecht, Mike McDaniel, Deanna Lloyd Jennings, Wes Clark, Cathy Nicholls Coyle, John Coyle, Joanne Yoffee Furer, Greg Van Der Werff, Diane McCall Ward, Alan Singer, Ellisa Dibble Weekly, Neal Hershenson, Duane Thaxton, Madelaine Zelenay Whiteman, Dona Foy Bruckner, Don Ray, Linda Mustion, Flora Angel Ferrens, Guy Gingell, Cathy Palmer, Allison Gingell, John Whitt, Nancy Krough Brez and Vivian Blum Gillette
This Friday, Burbank celebrates its centennial. The city ambitiously billed as the media and entertainment capital of the world—and which, for much of its history, also served as a major hub of the aviation industry—hardly betrays today its humble origins as a dentist's sheep ranch.
The city is named after David Burbank, a New Hampshire-born dentist who came to California in a covered wagon in 1850. After the Civil War, Burbank moved to Southern California and purchased a 9,000-acre ranch that included all of the Mexican-era land grants of Rancho Providencia and Rancho Cahuenga, as well as part of Rancho San Rafael. His new fiefdom, situated at the eastern end of the San Fernando Valley, cost him only $1 per acre.
Burbank at first populated his ranch with sheep. But in 1884 a land boom, fueled by an influx of migrants from the Midwest, gripped Los Angeles County. Over the next four years, this speculative bubble would spawn more than one hundred new towns across the county, many of them in the San Fernando Valley. Burbank capitalized on the boom and in 1886 formed the Providencia Land and Water Development Company with a group of Los Angeles-based investors with the goal of subdividing and developing Burbank's sprawling sheep ranch.
Dentist David Burbank owned the sheep ranch that later became the city of Burbank. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library Photograph Collection.
Drawing of Rancho Providencia, which later became Burbank, circa 1840. Courtesy of the Landcase Maps Collection, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
Providencia Land and Water Development Company collage showing plans for the town of Burbank, circa 1886-1887. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library Photograph Collection.
On May 1, 1887, the new town of Burbank opened with a $30,000 hotel and a one and a half mile-long, horse-powered street railway. An irrigation system transported water from nearby Toluca Lake to the fledgling community, and a depot along the Southern Pacific Railroad brought freight and new residents.
At first the town flourished, but by 1889 the land boom had turned to bust, and many of the new towns failed, but the strongest of the new communities—which included Burbank—emerged intact if hobbled. The resulting regional depression coincided with years of unusually dry weather, constraining further development of the town. Some farmers planted vineyards and drought-resistant crops and thrived, but for years Burbank's growth would not exceed what its natural resources could sustain.
View southeast down Olive Avenue, circa 1887, showing the fledgling town of Burbank in the distance. Streetcar tracks run down the middle of the road. Courtesy of the Title Insurance and Trust / C.C. Pierce Photography Collection, USC Libraries.
That changed late in the first decade of the twentieth century, when two developments resurrected the Valley land boom.
First, 1905 brought plans for a massive and controversial water project. The Los Angeles Aqueduct would transport snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada's eastern slope out of the Owens Valley, across the Mojave Desert, over the San Gabriel Mountains, and into the San Fernando Valley, essentially watering one valley at the expense of another.
Construction began in 1909 and in 1913 water once bound for Owens Lake flowed into the San Fernando Valley and through the taps of Burbank homes and businesses.
Second, Southern California's interurban rail network, the Pacific Electric Railway, began to expand into the San Fernando Valley and connect the mostly-undeveloped plain with downtown Los Angeles and other regional population centers.
With a modest population, Burbank residents had some trouble convincing the Pacific Electric to bring its streetcars to the town. The railway only agreed to extend its Glendale-Los Angeles line into Burbank after extracting a subsidy of $48,000 from residents.
Like the aqueduct, the arrival of the Pacific Electric was not without controversy. Burbank resident J.W. Fawkes had patented the nation's first monorail, a suspended car that he dubbed the Aerial Swallow. Fawkes built a prototype along a short segment of Olive Avenue and planned, after securing the right-of-way, to extend the line to Glendale. He urged his fellow residents to reject the Pacific Electric's demands and instead adopt his own experimental concept. In the end, Burbank chose the Pacific Electric's more conventional option. The Aerial Swallow became known as "Fawkes' Folly," and the first Pacific Electric streetcar from Los Angeles rolled into Burbank on September 6, 1911.
With much of the now rapidly-developing Valley being swallowed up by the City of Los Angeles, residents of Burbank petitioned the state legislature to allow the town to incorporate as its own city. On July 8, 1911, the City of Burbank came into being.
In the succeeding years, independent Burbank became a major center for two industries that would dominate Southern California.
The filmed entertainment business, nominally headquartered in Hollywood, came to Burbank in the 1920s when First National Pictures built a film studio on Olive Avenue. Following the success of First National's 1929 talkie film, The Jazz Singer, Warner Brothers Pictures acquired the studio and moved from its Hollywood home to the Burbank lot. Other production companies would soon follow: Columbia Pictures purchased land in the city for use as a backlot and, in 1939, Walt Disney Productions moved into its new home on Buena Vista Street. (Next year, KCET will follow in their footsteps when it moves into its new Burbank facility.)
In 1928, another transplant from Hollywood, the Lockheed Aircraft Company, settled down in Burbank. An early leader in the fledgling aviation industry, Lockheed became a crucial supplier of Allied warplanes during World War II—and a major attractor of new workers and residents.
As Burbank celebrates its 100th birthday, you can learn more about the city's history with the help of L.A. as Subject members and other institutions. Explore the San Fernando Valley History Digital Library, maintained by CSUN's Oviatt Library, for archived images from Burbank's past, or visit the Burbank Central Library from August 1 through October 14 for its "Snapshots of Burbank" photo exhibit.
If only I could have found a more productive outlet for my creative juices.
Today, I finally learned the name of a man who was my inspiration. For a while, I wondered if maybe I hadn't really seen him --- that maybe it was something I had conjured up in a dream. But thanks to YouTube, today I was the 94th person to view the proof that he existed.
I wasn't dreaming.
I saw him on the evening of February 12, 1962, live on the television program, "I've Got a Secret!" I had just turned 13 the month before. It's a well-know fact among members of my family that I didn't take good notes in school -- and not at all while watching television. So I didn't remember his name. Today, I learned it: Stan Berman.
Why would I be inspired by a Brooklyn cab driver? It was because of his secret: --- he was a gatecrasher. I'd never heard the term before, but by the end of that TV program, I was already dreaming of the day I could be one.
I didn't remember the long, gatecrashing resume he had displayed in photographs that evening, except for one. I'll never forget seeing him sit with the Kennedy Family at the Inaugural Ball for President John F. Kennedy the year before on my 12th birthday, 1961.
That's Stan Berman seated three seats to JFK's right (your left). I don't know who the woman is seated to the right of the applauding Stan Berman, but to his left is the President's father, Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Sr. The President's mother is between him and his father.
No, I didn't make a career out of being a gatecrasher, but I never stopped thinking about pulling such a clever, albeit harmless prank. I will confess that, as a journalist, there were times when I used some of Stan Berman's inspiration to help me get closer to people I needed to interview, but I only did it recreationally one time.
And I consider it one of my greatest accomplishments.
It was at Burbank High School on a Saturday evening, when I was an 11th grader. As usual, I showed up early to an event -- this time earlier than anyone else, it turns out. It was in the auditorium. and it was slated to be a collection of musical performances by some popular music personalities. Most were probably on the downward side of their careers, but they were at least once-popular. The person I was bent on seeing live was a young folksinger who was very popular in Southern California, Tim Morgan.
I don't remember exactly when I decided to attempt the crashing of the gate, but I know when the action started. I was the only person standing in line at the ticket window. Nobody was even inside the booth yet. The custodian walked up with a set of keys and asked me if I was the ticket seller. I responded with a single word -- a word that would launch my own inauguration to gatecrashing.
"Yes!"
A moment later, I was alone in the ticket booth and was able to "sell" myself a front-row, center seat. A moment after I placed the ticket in my shirt pocket, a pretty girl (who was pretty concerned) was knocking on the door to the booth. I opened it and she said, "What are you doing here?" Someone had once told me two rules to follow when caught red-handed: 1). Don't flinch. 2) Always answer a question with another question.
"What are YOU doing here?"
She said she was supposed to be selling the tickets. I said the same thing back to her, but I quickly suggested we split up the task. I allowed her to take the first shift. I'd come back later to relieve her, I lied. I knew I would never come back. Instead, I walked to one of the three or four entry doors to the auditorium. I almost handed off my ticket, but I started thinking that it had been too easy. I didn't want it to end that quickly.
I noticed that there was a second attendant at the door. He was handing out the program booklets.
"Excuse me," I told him. "We've run out of programs at the side door. Could I please take some of yours?" I took my half-stack to the side door and told the person there that he was to go cover one of the other doors. I was supposed to work this door now. Then I handed out the programs until I was down to just one. I carried it inside and took my seat.
Still too easy! I was front-row, center, but there were people with a better view: they were backstage. I watched one official walk through a door that led backstage, so I waited a couple of minutes, got up and walked backstage. I hadn't thought about what I would say if someone asked. They didn't, however.
Then I saw Tim Morgan sitting on a stool, warming up with his beautiful guitar. I had to talk to him. I walked up to him and said, "Hi, I'm with the school paper. May I interview you please?" He was happy to oblige me. Afterwards, I asked him if I could play his guitar. After all, the first four chords I had learned on my $7, used Sears Silvertone guitar were the chords to his cult-favorite song, "The Cat Came Back" (E-minor, D, C, B7 -- a most difficult chord to play). He handed me his guitar and I nailed the B7! He was impressed.
Then I wandered over near the light and curtain cage -- just off stage left. Nearby, the designated student "introducers" were reviewing the 5x7" cards someone had handed them --- cards with the introduction information for each artist.
At that moment, there was a crisis at the light and curtain cage. It seems that the custodian who had opened the ticket booth door for me was working the lights, but he was apparently drunk. I think he had just walked away, so there was nobody there to work the lights.
I volunteered and took over. It was a stupid thing to do because I didn't know the first thing about the lights or the curtains. The drama teacher, a former Marine named Miss Wolfson had been barking orders from the projection booth behind the balcony. I'd listen to the intercom and then look for something with a label that matched what she was saying.
Apparently I failed, because a few moments later, she was there at the cage and was chewing me out for screwing up the lights. "You were on the stage crew! You should know how to do this," she said. I didn't think it was a good time to volunteer the information that I had only been a volunteer for one production, "My Fair Lady," the prior year --- and, no, I never learned the lights. Anyway, she kicked me out of the cage.
That left me without a job, so I went up to the person handing out the "introduction" cards and asked for mine. Whoever it was giving them out didn't question my credentials, so I took my card and waited my turn.
Two performances later, I walked out onto the stage and did a pretty darned good job introducing singer Bobby Day singing his hit song, "Rockin' Robbin."
Then I retired as a gatecrasher. It's always good to undefeated -- sort of.
A postscript: After posting this, I found out that Stan Berman died at age 41. How sad.
Died. Stanley Berman, 41, Brooklyn cab driver and self-proclaimed "World's Greatest Gate-Crasher"; of a blood infection; in Brooklyn. No occasion was too exclusive, no dignitary too aloof for Berman, who posed as a waiter to demand Queen Elizabeth II's autograph during her 1957 visit, crashed J.F.K.'s Inaugural Ball in 1961, and had his finest moment in 1962 when he charged onstage to hand Bob Hope an Oscar in front of 100 million TV watchers.
1962: Comedian Bob Hope hosts the Oscars from the Santa Monica Civic Center. As the cinematography award is about to be announced, a strange man suddenly rushes the podium and grabs the mike. Calling himself Stan Berman, he declares: "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm the world's greatest gatecrasher and I just came here to present Bob Hope with his 1938 trophy." Handing a miniature statuette to actress Shelley Winters, he says "This is for Bob" and splits. Hope later quips, "Who needs Price Waterhouse? All we need is a doorman."
1962: The most memorable event of the night was when Stan Berman, a New York City cabdriver, awarded Bob Hopes a homemade Oscar after he had slipped through security and made his way to the stage. http://classicmovieguide.com/content/view/445/69/
Cathy - I took this picture last week. I can't drive past (I don't think it is possible to drive "through") Sardis, Texas without smiling because of this little cafe.
Thanks for everything you do.
LeAnne (Benedict) Dann '67
Here's a closeup... yep, that's him alright! Wonder where they got him??
