Education in Long Beach after the 1933 earthquake • Hi Lu

Parts of this article have been excerpted from scholars and heroes: The History of Long Beach Poly written by author and Tyler Hendrickson. Copies are available at this link (https://www.scholarsandchampions.org).

Despite the chaos in the scene in Long Beach schools due to the closure of COVID-19 across the city, this is not the first time that teachers and local students have had to meet to overcome the extraordinary circumstances.

On March 10, 1933, a strong earthquake struck the city at 5:55 pm, with 10 minutes of chaos that turned Long Beach upside down. If the earthquake struck five hours ago, a large portion of a generation would have lost – a 6.4-magnitude earthquake, centered offshore from Long Beach city center on the Newport Englewood fault line, destroyed every school in the city.

Because the earthquake struck a few hours after school, there was only one death on the local campus. A student of San Pedro University named Tony Gugliermo participated in a busy meeting in Wilson Hay and he was still in the shower room when he was P.E. The building collapsed.

Among the missing missing was the father of one of the city’s greatest citizens.

“My dad was across the street from Polly watching everything that happened in 1933,” remembers Billy Jane King in a recent interview. “Fortunately for him, he’s across the street.”

The Jefferson Junior Hay wreck.

As city schools, churches, and businesses were destroyed, society was looking at more than $ 50 million in estimated damage, an unimaginable amount of money in 1933, with the state in the grip of the Great Depression.

Similar to the short period between the closure of March 13 this year and the introduction of the LBUSD Home Learning Opportunities portal, there has been a period of deep breathing. Students were given two weeks out of school while officials tried to figure out how to finish the last three months of school with no schools.

It was difficult for teachers to plan because the classroom was destroyed. After a few days, the teachers were allowed to sign a death exemption that allowed them to enter the remains of their schools and take out personal things recovered for themselves and for the teachers. Students waited in class outside the campus as trash buckets filled with textbooks and personal items were carried out from their lockers.

There was no doubt about the loss of invaluable history and traditions, but David Burkham, principal of Long Beach Polly School, was optimistic.

He said at a meeting of the Preferential Trade Authority a few days after the earthquake: “Our buildings were destroyed, but not our school.” “Because we have our students, our teachers, and the courage to rebuild.”

Two teachers are clearing some of the damage to Long Beach Poli Hai.

The city soon passed a $ 4.9 million reconstruction bond for its schools, and in August, the Federal Public Works Administration agreed to bear 30% of the city’s rebuilding costs through federal grants. But while city and school leaders tried to figure out how to recover and rebuild, school officials and teachers had to figure out how to end the school year.

The plans in Poly High have been well dated by the school newspaper, High Life, and her annual book, Caerulea – which is a good microcosm of what happened across the city.

The “semester” resumed on March 30, and the school year was extended for two weeks until the end of June, leaving school staff three months from school to move.

Classes met at Burcham Field, the school’s sports field. When students arrived on March 30, they found stakes in the ground across the field, bearing the names of their teachers.

The school borrowed a broadcast vehicle from Texaco Oil on Signal Hill to address the students.

With the wreckage of the ancient sanctuary still surrounding them, students gathered on the lawn around their teachers to listen to the lectures. The principal rings the bell into a loudspeaker to indicate when it is time to switch classes or take a lunch break. The teachers stood outside, wearing sunglasses and large hats to protect themselves from the heat. Those who went to the beach brought large parasols to shade themselves or their students.

When the classes started, she was only 10 minutes long and students sat on the lawn, but when Porsham worked on his city connections, he managed to bring picnic tables from the city parks as well as the rescued bed sheets, quilts and black paintings.

“It was a real gypsy camp,” wrote Charles Francis Seymour, head of the school’s social studies department. “Although it was hot, cold, dry, wet and windy, with a place to sit in, the school became acceptable and lasted up to twenty minutes.”

Porsham referred laughing to Polly as a new “outdoor school”, but also helped make sure things quickly get back to speed. High Life was printing again within six weeks, and Caerulea put out this year’s annual book on schedule. Clubs painted bricks from rubble and gave them to graduates or sold them as souvenirs to raise money for new needs.

Registrar Frank Reed was forced to score grades, manage the school’s finances, deal with registration and transcripts for the following year in addition to the school’s graduates – and had to do all this with new records he created from scratch.

The “campus” improved slowly. Students of San Diego High, the great rival of Poly at the time, sent $ 70 to allow Poly students to purchase a PA system for outdoor gatherings. The challenges remained enormous. Toilets had to be built on the fly in greenhouses with salvaged plumbing fixtures. Since there is only one field for all activities, PE lessons and group practice will continue next to the math class.

“Everywhere, crowded academic classes competed in screaming in physical education classes or the stark brass rules of ROTC,” wrote Charles Seymour. “It was time for a personality test.”

However, it was fun too.

“The school took part of the fun beach party with the dignity and seriousness of the almost forgotten former school,” student Mary Wright wrote in Caerulea that year. “We got acquainted with our teachers as human beings, a fact that we did not realize before. They became friends with us.”

This is how the school year ended. When the class started again in the fall, things looked a little more organized. With a lot of rubble removed from the campus around the city, there was more room to create a temporary building while new schools were being built.

The use of the Burcham field has evolved in Long Beach Poly.

In Boley, 71 tents with 30 offices were built on wooden pallets around the Burcham Field pathway, all connected by electricity and gas heaters to protect against the cool ocean breeze that cooled up the morning sessions. The tents had wooden frames with white fabric designed to form temporary walls, with a beaver board midway on both sides to mount the blackboard. The tents were inhabited by 35-40 students and teachers, at a cost of building $ 250-325 per tent.

The cabinets were installed outside, and bricks from the rubble were laid as passageways between tents so that students could move from one class to the next without getting muddy when it rained.

Things continued this way for a few years until a new campus was built – and many, like Polly and Wilson, stand today.

School Optimist David Borsham’s optimism is a wonderful representative of the entrepreneurial spirit of the time, and their content helps explain why current LBUSD Chris Steinhauser referred to 1933 in discussing how happy he was with the way his region met in the face of a COVID-19 pandemic.

This is how Porsham directed students as a graduate school in 1934:

“Polytechnic students – the past two years represent the most interesting period in the history of our school. Three thousand students are in tent homes, an ordinary full-time school and each department works efficiently – and this is the picture in short.

“The most important of all is that a new spirit was born in the face of a major emergency. He developed the challenge that must be faced in the face of physical disabilities, limited strength facilities, self-reliance and resourcefulness, and a happy and democratic atmosphere of our external atmosphere.

“Moreover, there is a spirit of optimism, loyalty, and united action that have brought us extraordinary victories in school activities.”

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