Sunset Stories

A Sunset at 100 story, as told by Lucinda Lloyd, Sunset School alumna

Lucinda Lloyd can trace her childhood in Carmel by following San Carlos Street.

In 1946, at five years old, she left her home on San Carlos between 13th and Santa Lucia and walked along what she remembers as the only residential sidewalk to kindergarten at Sunset School. Her classroom was in a small cottage that still stands today, now used as a yoga studio.

Each year, Lucinda moved a little farther through the Sunset campus.

By third grade, she had made it up the ramp to Miss McCausland's classroom. Miss McCausland had two black Scottie dogs who came to school wearing red plaid jackets. That year, as the students studied Native American cultures, Lucinda's class built a hogan while another class built a teepee.

Year after year, the classrooms changed as the students made their way through Sunset. By eighth grade, Lucinda's class had reached the terrace.

In her memory, their progression through school was almost a journey through Carmel itself.

"We had gone from 10th Street to 8th Street, the length of San Carlos Street and Sunset School," she remembers.

After completing kindergarten through eighth grade at Sunset, the students finally made the much bigger journey uphill on Ocean Avenue to Carmel High School.

But before that came a childhood centered almost entirely around Sunset.

The girls played on bars set in a large sandbox, jumped rope on the terrace and played four square and kickball in front of the auditorium. The boys had their own playfield, where Mr. Art Holman taught athletics.

Holman had been an Olympic hurdler, but he was also a musician. He taught the children music and led them in singing folk songs.

And then came the tetherball controversy.

When the boys received a tetherball pole on their playfield, Lucinda decided the arrangement was unfair. The girls liked tetherball, too.

So she went to the principal.

Lucinda asked that the girls be allowed onto the boys' field so they could play tetherball with them. Permission was granted.

"Thus we invaded their sacred space," she recalls.

The playfield is now a parking lot, but a rock honoring Holman remains near Mission and Eighth — a reminder, Lucinda says, of "a wonderful man who contributed so much to our lives."

That sense of community extended far beyond the playground.

Before Woods School opened to accommodate the growing number of children living north of town in Carmel Woods, Sunset brought together children from throughout Carmel.

"We knew everyone at school, their families and their pets," Lucinda says.

Those relationships endured.

Even today, she says, those who attended Sunset and Carmel High together think of one another as something more than childhood friends.

"We consider ourselves more like cousins than friends."

For Lucinda, it was an idyllic time to grow up in Carmel.

And perhaps nothing captured the connection between Sunset School and the larger community more vividly than the annual Christmas Pageant.

Each winter, students from Carmel schools came together to tell the Christmas story on Sunset's stage, while other children filled the choir.

Lucinda was one of the singers.

She remembers filing into the auditorium wearing robes and carrying flashlights covered with gauze to make them look like candles. The choir entered singing "Adeste Fideles" and departed to "Angels We Have Heard on High."

"It was our gift to the community," she says.

The music never entirely left her. More than seven decades later, Lucinda says she can still sing the alto harmony to most Christmas carols.

"Sunset School was the center of our childhood lives."

From Schoolhouse to Cultural Center

Nearly 80 years after Lucinda first walked through Sunset as a kindergartner, the building remains part of her life.

Only now, the school she remembers has become Sunset Center.

To Lucinda, it is still "the jewel of Carmel."

When she attends the Carmel Bach Festival there today, past and present meet.

She remembers festival founders Dene Denny and Hazel Watrous from her childhood, when the Bach Festival lasted four days and relied heavily on local participation. At 11 years old, Lucinda and her best friend handed out programs in the balcony.

Today, she watches international musicians perform as part of a festival that has grown far beyond the event she knew as a girl.

Other spaces have changed purpose while remaining familiar.

Carpenter Hall was once her school cafeteria. Today, she returns there for talks hosted by the Carmel Public Library Foundation and informational meetings organized by city staff.

The children have grown up. The classrooms have changed. The playground where Lucinda fought for the girls' right to play tetherball is gone.

But the role Sunset plays in Carmel has endured.

"Sunset is still the hub of cultural, creative and informational Carmel life," she says.

As Sunset enters its second century, Lucinda hopes it remains exactly that — a place for culture in all its forms and a gathering place that serves the people of Carmel first while welcoming the greater Monterey Peninsula and visitors from around the world.

She also hopes its physical surroundings receive the same care as the history contained within its walls, including thoughtful landscaping and improvements to the sidewalk for beauty and safety.

But there is something even more important she hopes Sunset carries forward.

Its memory.

"Please honor Sunset's history on an ongoing basis," Lucinda says. "As we old timers age out, the importance of Sunset's history will be lost."

Her own story helps make sure it won't be.

From a five-year-old walking down San Carlos Street to her first classroom, to an 11-year-old handing out Bach Festival programs, to the woman who still returns to Sunset today, Lucinda has watched the building change without losing what mattered most.

For nearly 80 years of her life, Sunset has remained what it was when she was a child: the heart of Carmel.