Sunset Stories

Being reminded of those Sunset School years, through the pictures hanging in the Gallery, brings back the sweetness of my time there in the late 40s and reinforces the meaning those 3 years have had on my life.

I started Sunset in the 5th grade in 1947. I was Julie Work. Sarah McCloud became a good friend right away. She was an old-timer at the school, being a student since kindergarten. We were classmates in Mrs. Mylar's fifth grade in room 6. There was a fateful day, probably in the spring of 48, a warm one because the windows at the east side of the room were open. For some long-forgotten reason, Mrs. Mylar displeased three of us. We took solace in writing critical notes about her. Passing them was unwieldy as there were too many students between us. So we would wait until her attention was diverted and then send the offensive note through the air to the other person. I had the note, in the front row, Mrs. Mylar turned to the blackboard, and I launched the note to Sarah. The note flew out the open window. At this point Mrs. Mylar turned around and saw the note in the air and its path out the window to the patio below – the one in front of the present day Carpenter Hall, then the cafeteria.

Mrs. Mylar said, "Julie, go down and get the note." I was so scared but being the compliant child I was, went down and searched for the longest time for the note. Never did it occur to me to say I couldn't find the note. I did not think of that possibility until at least fifty years after the fact. So among the pea gravel, lay the offending, critical note.

I brought it up to the classroom and handed it to Mrs. Mylar. Thoughts of doom raced through my brain. Mrs. Mylar had Sarah and me (the third person, Phyllis Burnette, who was part of the critical note passers totally remained anonymous) come to the front of the room and the two of us stood there, fearing the worst. Mrs. Mylar lectured us and the whole class about the evils of note passing, the disruptive behavior of same, for what seemed like forever. All this time she held the note in her hand. After Sarah and I were thoroughly chastened and suffering, Mrs. Mylar did something that made a huge impact on both of us, a lifelong lesson. She said she did not believe in invading anyone's privacy, even that of guilty miscreants, and therefore would not read the note. She then tore it up and threw it in the nearby wastebasket.

Sarah and I bonded, with the 5th grade note experience. We went through almost all of later schooling together, even college at Stanford. We have remained close for all these years, through marriage, divorce, single motherhood and now old age. We both still live here. While we do not always agree on issues – for instance, some local issues and how to fairly split the bill, which began when we would share a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, costing 75 cents. 37 ½ cents not being possible. We argued over whose turn it was to provide the extra penny that day. Our lives are still connected and that began in the fifth grade at Sunset.

Written by Julie Work Beck with the input of Sarah McCloud Berling, both Sunset class of 1950, friends for the long haul.