Bruce Wodhams was principal of Springhill School for 24 years. His first impression of Springhill was very high after his previous experience in areas with less parental involvement and high academic standing. He was involved in the inclusion of several community organizations who met at the school (ie. scouts and LMYA sports). He supervised and provided a detailed description of the construction of the new facility. The special ed. program was developed, also the sustainable garden, solar energy, and the school spirit program.
He was very inspired by the support of parents and community for education. He describes Lafayette during the 50s and 60s as well as the big change in the 80s and 90s. His experience in the Lafayette School District and the community was very positive and rewarding.
Full Transcript Below:
Interviewer: This is an oral history recording for the Lafayette Historical Society Oral History Project. The date is August 3rd, 2015. The time is 2:40 PM and we are in the Historical Society Office and the interview begins now. Could you please state your name and spell that as well?
Bruce Wodhams: My name is Bruce Wodhams, B-R-U-C-E W-O-D-H-A-M-S.
I: And when were you born?
BW: I was born September 7th, 1949.
I: What were your parents’ names?
BW: Lloyd Wodhams and Florence Wodhams.
I: And were they originally from Lafayette, or were they… ?
BW: No, my mother was originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota. My father was originally from Los Angeles and I grew up in West Covina, which is about 15, 20 miles east of Los Angeles.
I: And when did your family move to Lafayette?
BW: Well I moved, actually, I don’t live in Lafayette, but I worked there for 24 years. I live in Concord and we moved here from the Sierra foothills in the summer of 1987.
I: And that was to become the principal of…
BW: Yes, I’d been hired as the principal of Springhill School.
I: And you were living near Los Angeles before that?
BW: No, as, been all over seven years up in, working at the school district in Yuba County in, which is near Marysville Joint Unified School District. Before that, I had been teaching for two years in Norway, Stavanger, Norway, the American School there, and before that—this is ancient history now—I was in the Culver City Unified School District which borders Los Angeles.
I: Were you specifically looking to come up here?
BW: We were moving to the Bay Area, employment from my wife was minimal living in the Sierra foothills and so we’d decided… we lived there seven years and had two children, and she was ready to go back to work so I interviewed in several districts in the Bay Area and some overseas districts, international schools as well.
I: So the sole reason for coming into the Bay Area was for your wife to…
BW: Well, although I had been a principal for five years in the Marysville district, we were looking for a better school district even though I had hired a number of, it was my own fault, I suppose. We were looking for a better educational setting for our two boys, as well as employment for my wife.
I: When you came to Springhill about, can you tell me about what that school was like when you first got there, your first impression, if you remember?
BW: Sure. I knew for certain I had very big shoes to fill. My predecessor had been, I believe, principal for nine years at Springhill, and before that he been a number of years at Happy Valley and so he had been at the district probably upwards of thirty years. He had quite a reputation and the school had quite a reputation, all of it was very, very positive, very active community which was a little different than I was used to in the Marysville district, it was sometimes difficult to get parents to become active in the school community. Here it was quite the opposite, parents more than happy to be very involved in the school, it was for me quite a change in that regard. Other memories of Springhill, have very high academic standing, very much the school was the, as it is in quite a few places even where I had come from, the school was, the focal point seemed to be the community, whether it was Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts or the various Little League. LMYA, even the Catholic Schools used our gym and whatnot, so very much a focal point, the neighborhood homeowners association would meet every year at our school, so as a result, I became very, I wouldn’t say active in these organizations, but I was certainly part of it because I’d come to the meetings as a representative of the Springhill, certainly all the athletic associations, I became very involved in… both my sons played basketball for LMYA, they played MOL, Moraga-Orinda-Lafayette flag football, Little League, everything imaginable, and so I ended up coaching, and so became very involved in the community as well.
RM: Those community organizations, was that something already established by your predecessor?
BW: No, I’d say I became much more involved with those, a lot of them, than my predecessor only because my boys were involved, and so I was involved, whereas my predecessor, Bob, did not have children, so he was on the periphery certainly of these because they had to get through him to get fields or the gym or, you’ve seen the multi-purpose room for all the things including Scouting, and if we had the Pinewood Derby was a huge Scouting activity, so I found myself very much in… my eldest son was in Cub Scouts too so I found myself not only as the educational leader at Springhill but as certainly very much engaged with everything else that was happening.
RM: Did you just mention the Pinewood Derby?
BW: The Pinewood Derby is where they fashion their own little race cars. There’s all sorts of… you can’t have… very limited as to what they could do but it was in a sloping track, and… huge deal. Big, big, big deal for the, you know, to win the Pinewood Derby, they would have different heats and whatnot, and that would take up almost an entire weekend at the school, so sometimes I felt like I was too engaged, too involved, spent all of my time at the school, but well worth it.
RM: During those years, did you come into the Lafayette area, or you kind of stayed…
BW: Well, both my boys went to Springhill School, so in a sense, I was allowed that perk as an administrator or as an employee of the district that my kids could attend a school in the district, and I had not planned on them being at my school, but both my predecessor and the superintendant at the time, Jim Martin, strongly encouraged me to enroll my kids at the schools, so my youngest was a kindergartener in ’87 and my oldest was a second grader and they both went through Springhill School until they went to Stanley and Acalanes, and I think the reason I was encouraged to enroll my children there is because it very much had a family feel to the school, there were probably, oh I’d say, twelve to thirteen other staff members’ kids going to this school when I was there so it kind of had that family atmosphere to it I that the staff was very engaged in what happened at the school because a number of their own children were there and mine included, so I think it was a very positive, I think even my boys would agree that it was positive. Maybe in the sixth grade my oldest had some doubts but all in all, it was great for me as their father and I think all in all it was very positive for all concerns and worked out well.
RM: Do you know if they still do that?
BW: Very much so, in fact, in my twenty-four years there, even my last year there, we probably had about eight, nine, ten staff members’ kids were there so this is my fourth year now, I’ve been retired and I would have guessed they kept that up because I think it was definitely a positive, it just seemed to be win-win. On occasion, it would be problematic but rarely, so for me it was great and I didn’t feel quite so bad about spending so much time at the school because the boys were there, and if my wife complained too much, I’d just… Mr. Mom, taking care of… so all in all, I’d say it was very positive.
MK: Would you be able to describe for me… because I knew it was torn down or remodeled, would you be able to describe the earlier, when you were…
BW: When I first got there, they had just finished up selling a… I’ll even back up more, I got there in a time of declining enrollment, so the district back in… Springhill was originally built in the 1950’s, 1954, which makes me a few years older than the school, but they had a number of other schools at the same time, some others they leased out to private schools, there is a school called “White Pony” over by Burton Valley that used to be Mendocino, and there was another property where the currently… Bentley Private School is off of Happy Valley Road, and my point being, there also was, off of Quant which is on the other side of Pleasant Hill, they had a K-2 campus, Kindergarten through second grade, and they had just sold that, and it must be to developers being made into housing. With the money from that, they built a multi-purpose room at Springhill School, my second year there is when they did the construction, and they did a duplicate of it at Happy Valley School and it was called the Multi-Purpose Room but it was a gymnasium with a basketball court with bleachers and a small kitchen, storage and whatnot, so one of my first projects was to some extent overseeing the construction of the Multi-Purpose Room, which used to be outside basketball courts and whatnot, so the district never regained the 1950’s-1960’s enrollment they had, so as I said they cut down on their properties and what they did with them, then in about ’96, I think, they had a bond measure which was good, the recession hadn’t yet hit, and the voters voted for, really, Springhill School to be replaced, the only thing we kept was two portable classrooms, or was it three, three portable classrooms, on the lower field and the Multi-Purpose Room which as I said was built in ’88, and otherwise, they leveled the entire school, that was about a two-year project, ’96 to ’98, and built a brand new school, so that was an interesting time because they did not redistribute the kids to other campuses, we kept everybody there in portable classrooms down on the field, the lower field, and the entire upper field, there’s two levels of fields at Springhill with the buildings in between, the upper field was the staging area for construction as well as the construction for itself, and way up on the hill, we had our kindergarten, two portable classrooms way up in the corner which would be the southwest corner of the campus, so those two years were interesting because the playground was tiny and we had to rearrange schedules, we didn’t have a library, the library was moved into the multipurpose room, just scheduling things so they could work, but all in all I think it was a very positive experience in that the kids got to see the new campus going up around them, it required everybody to sacrifice a bit, it wasn’t the most comfortable, one of the things I’ll never forget, there was a defect, the classrooms were all the same, they all had the same specifications as the one right next to it, well, it was something I’m used to now, one of the wettest winters we’ve ever had, and apparently in the defect in the drainage, water collected in the ceiling, and in four different classrooms within two or three days, a section of the ceiling gave way and water just poured in, and at one point, the student who was right underneath just got drenched, just head to foot, just as if she had been thrown in the dunk tank. Fortunately the others gave way in more opportune moments when students weren’t there, but we had flooding in a number of the classrooms, we actually had flooding before we started the construction, it certainly added to the more negative things happening to the construction, but it was the type of thing that you know kind just pull together, you just grit your teeth and keep going on, it really brought the staff together, it brought the community together, it was a very positive experience and the reward for persevering was a brand new school that we all had kind of build underneath us, and it’s a beautiful campus, well, it’s hard to believe now we’re seventeen years old, because we always referred to the new school, those students and families who came afterward say they don’t think of it as the new school, and yet I will see former students your age and older that talk about the old school versus the new school, yeah, I just came over, it doesn’t seem like what I grew up in. It’s funny, running into old students, they say, “Oh, I really like the old school better”, well, that’s good, you have good memories, so some of the terminology, they don’t refer to it as the new school anymore, probably doesn’t work for most people anymore, it just goes to show how old school I am.
RM: The Old School, as we’ll call it, I guess, fair enough, works for me, could you describe the layout?
BW: Sure, in contrast and in hindsight it was kind of an ugly school, and did not take advantage whatsoever of the beautiful setting, that when the architects for the new school came out and they said, “They just loved it, there’s just so much we can do, we’re going to have a second level, he said, well, we can have the use of Mount Diablo,” and I go, “I don’t think so, I mean I’ve (inaudible) this school and there’s no way in the world we’re gonna see Mount Diablo. I was quite wrong, happy to be proved wrong, particularly in winter when there’s no foliage, there’s some really beautiful vistas of Mount Diablo, back in the day they must have gotten a bargain on this chocolate brown paint and every school in the district was painted this chocolate brown, and it just was not an uplifting color at all, I didn’t really pay much attention to it at first, and the new school was a lot more open, a lot more windows, more airy feeling there much more lighted, not so dark, and it was a typical school that had been built back in the fifties, it reminded me somewhat of when I went to school in the fifties, some of that general layout of an elementary school, and you’d seen over the years what they had done to address air conditioning, you know we didn’t have air conditioning, heating, and different things that have been tried and hadn’t worked, but there were still things, residual leftovers, you know, in the ceiling and whatnot, fortunately, we were born late enough that we did not have the central furnace heating, which everything was wrapped in asbestos back then, and we had several schools that had to have asbestos abatement program go through, which was very disruptive, time consuming and expensive, we were built late enough that we did not have that type of heating system, we had kind of a central heating, but more forced air rather than forced heating it though the floor and whatnot, so we were fortunate in that regard but you could see over the forty years the school had been in existence what had been tried and what had been done probably successfully, but had been replaced, so not that it was a patchwork of things by any means but it felt old, it was certainly adequate, and surely I wouldn’t have had any complaints, you know, if they hadn’t changed it and built a new school, but bringing the new school, certainly for the staff and the students in the community already there, it was very refreshing, fostered a lot of enthusiasm, good will and whatnot, so it was a great time to be there and go through this, this transition into a new school, and when we got the new school, we had dignitaries come from Sacramento and we had our congressman as our current superintendant of public education in California, he was our local congressman, and of course… why can’t I think of his name?… I’ll think of it, but he came out and we spoke and said we got citations and whatnot from Sacramento so it was a very fun, heady time when we opened up this new school in ’98. The other big thing that came with it is actually during the transition in the portables, they brought the special ed program over, the special day classes had been at Burton Valley, and we had special ed, special ed has kind of been divided into either a special day class where kids are mainstream where they can have the most success, or identified special aid kids are in a mainstream class for most of the day, then pulled out, to get special instruction in those areas of need, so typically what I was used to is the pull-up program of identified students in a general ed classroom pulled out, I had never been on a campus, except at a high school where I was an administrator for two years, I had never had the special day class on sight and those kids being mainstream, that was all done at Burton Valley moved over in ‘96 over to Springhill and for me it was a real, almost change in careers because a lot of attention and a lot of time focused on the special ed program. For me, it was a very positive transition in that it was almost like a new career for me, the amount of time I spent in special ed and I have always said afterwards that if I was doing my career over again I would have gotten my special ed credential, I really enjoyed the kids, I really enjoyed the families, it was very positive, even enjoyed the attorneys and advocates which were a big part of it, but we really gained quite a posyive reputation of the special ed services that we did provide from ’96 on, and even to this day there’s three, if not four, special ed day classes at Springhill, so if I were to look at a legacy of some sort for me, I’d say that would be a huge part of it, is the special ed program and some of the successes that it enjoyed, but quite a change going from the old school transition, the transition was crazy, but again positive, and then the new school, the new school was pretty special and everybody, the community kids and staff certainly enjoyed it, now everyone’s used to it but for a few years there it was quite, created a lot of good will and good feelings.
RM: When the school was deciding to be built, did you get drawback or input or anything like that?
BW: Yeah, there would definitely be meetings, I remember one thing that was… they were going to have some sort of room that was going to be probably somewhat problematic for neighbors because it was kind of a shiny material, people being blinded next door, but I do recall that changed, and then later in a few years before I retired we got solar panels which something in the community, it was one of my things that I pushed for and we did studies and we got some free services from some solar companies who did studies and whatnot, but as far as the new school went, community had its input, meetings, not everybody was as enthusiastic, you know change does not come easy, but generally I look upon it and I’ve forgotten a lot of the negative I tend to do, when I look back I look at things positively, probably a survival… something of mine, but I did get to sit in on meetings with the architects, and my input was certainly minimal, but they would ask me “Would you rather see this or this”, so that was great fun, very positive, I definitely thought I was included in the process and certainly when the process started, the actual construction, I did get to know the site foreman and his assistants, we worked very well, much together because there would be deliveries, in which there was no access to the school for anyone else, big delivery trucks and whatnot, big cranes and all sorts of things that required a level of coordination between a school running and… you know, you can’t do it during dismissal time or arrival time, but I was fortunately very much involved in, I very much appreciated that, and again in hindsight being, so maybe Rose Keller didn’t have my view but it didn’t go very smoothly, and again the outcome of it was, but yeah, the community was very much involved, the later community involved when we went solar as well, also in the last few years of my tenure there we had a sustainable garden put in in a part of the school that was never… just kind of gone back to nature up in the southwest corner, and it was kind of off limits, we had an outside amphitheater and behind that just kind of let it go back to nature and we turned that into a sustainable garden which is now a huge part of the curriculum, of the science curriculum, growing their own… kids get to have a feast of plants they’ve grown several times during the year, so that was one of the things at the new school and the solar energy, you know, if I look upon my tenure there, I like to think if there’s a legacy of sorts, it would be the new school, the sustainable garden, solar energy, and definitely the special ed program, so all very positive outcomes. I think I will not take that much credit because of the staff and the community that came together in a positive… and I happen to be a very fortunate… I’ll take great credit for being lucky because that certainly was the case, it came together and certainly was one of the positive things that happened at the school and in the community.
RM: You’ve sort of mentioned, was it that the government just had some extra money and decided to redo the school?
BW: The community voted on it, and so being in Lafayette was a real blessing in that monetary concerns were not my… I didn’t have to pinch every penny, the budget and the parent club, kind of like the PTA, we were not affiliated with the national PTA, but we had a very generous parent club that would generate a lot of money that all came back to the school, so that was one of the blessings of being in the Lafayette community, they’re always supportive of education on a district-wide level through voting as well as site level, contributing money, pretty much what we all decided on as a school and as a community, we were able to be implement with so much support, and it wasn’t just monetary support, it was definably outright physical support, people getting out there and helping on site in the school, or going out and getting the word out about the vote for a parcel tax, a lot of time and energy as well as the monetary support, education is a big deal. Even in the library we are sitting in now is just another illustration of how supportive this community is as far as education goes. Not everyone is as fortunate as the community of Lafayette. I was here for twenty-four years as a principal, and it was great.
RM: You had mentioned, so there was a multi-purpose room, there was basically a one-story classroom, buildings like that?
BW: In the old school?
RM: Yeah, and then three portables and an amphitheater?
BW: Yeah, we had an amphitheater, we had a library, an administrative building with the teacher’s lounge, so let me think of how many buildings the old school had.. the multi-purpose room, the administrative teachers’ lounge and whatnot, right on the parking lot was two kindergarten classrooms, then behind the administrative building was the library, no that’s not true, that’s were it ended up, that’s the new school. In the new school, there was a block of classrooms, four classrooms, yeah, they were in pods, I guess you might say, of four classrooms, rectangular, opening out into kind of a grassy area in between the pods, so each one was four, then there was a library kind of in the middle of it, with a main hallway, with the pods on each side, so probably about three pods, including the library behind the administrative building, the main hallway, then coming down was the kindergarten, another classroom pod, library, and probably two more pods, so typically, we had three to four classes per grade level, not that often, on occasion we’d have to do what we would call combination classroom, like a three-four split or two-three and whatnot, just to accommodate numbers, because we tried to maintain a certain class size, and of course it didn’t always work out evenly, but it did fairly often, and with the new school, we kind of kept up that we still had three to four classrooms per grade level, with the new school there was the administrative building, then a building with some upstairs, more downstairs, and so we had pretty much the primary grades were upstairs, the special ed and upper grades were on the down floor, sometimes we had, as I said, it didn’t always work out evenly, sometimes we had a big class of a hundred and twenty kids so it might translate into four and a half classrooms, so we might have to put in a primary down on the lower floor, and we had the library, beautiful library, had a central courtyard which was really, really nice, with a big stairway going up to the upper yard, and every Wednesday we had what we called “Spirit Wednesday”, and we would have a class on the landing in the middle of the stairway, and they would have the flag salute, the mission statement, some sort of something, I would make announcements, might sing some songs, and the whole school would be gathered there, kindergarten through fifth grade, and we did this right odd the bat with a new school, and we, they were called Spirit Wednesdays, and we’d have all the students there, and it did a lot for school spirit, and every class got to participate on a rotating schedule, and that went well, that was always a good thing for bringing school spirit, bringing everyone together, working together not just as an individual classroom but as a collection of classrooms. The new school really was great for being able to accommodate and facilitate these sorts of things where we could come together as a school, like the library is another great example, the amphitheater was improved and wooden benches that get rotten every four or five years were replaced with steel benches and whatnot, and even had a tarp, it wasn’t entirely waterproof but it would certainly keep the sun off more that it would keep the rain off, and we’d have school elections, they’d last two days and the amphitheater would be there and all the kindergarteners, not the kindergarteners but third through sixth grade back in the day and then third through fifth grade. In the early nineties, our middle school, Stanley, which used to be a junior high, traditionally junior high is seventh through eighth grade, it changed to a middle school format in which it’d be sixth-seventh-eighth, and so, in fact, it’d be my oldest son, he was in fifth grade and we had sixth grade there at the time, his class and the sixth grade together we’ve sent two classes over to Stanley for sixth-seventh-eighth when the transition went from a traditional junior high to a middle school, so when I got there we were kindergarten through sixth grade probably about, let’s see, ’91-’92 we became kindergarten through fifth grade and Stanley became a sixth-seventh-eighth at that point, so that was a big transition but a lot of the community wasn’t sure about it, again, change not easy, but what it did for middle school especially was great, it allowed more continuity for sixth-seventh-eighth, it allowed for core classrooms almost becoming, rather than becoming strictly compartmentalized, they had a sixth, seventh and eighth grade core, educationally it was much more sound, it was almost like junior high was a revolving door that the seventh graders would get there, and they were transitioning to junior high, and then the next year they’re looking at high school, and whereas the sixth-seventh-eighth allowed for more continuity, all in all it was educationally sound and it was socially sound and really most of California had already gone that route, so we were playing a little catch-up there, but it was good for the school.
RM: Do you remember the surrounding areas from the school and if they’d changed quite a bit?
BW: Actually, they haven’t, right across the school, across the street from Acalanes High school, we were pretty much surrounded by Briones Regional Park, so any construction that was going to changed the face of the community had pretty much already taken place. Acalanes went though a stage there, and I’m trying to think, it was in the ‘90s, I guess, where they kind of remodeled the whole school, and as well had passed an bond issue, more or less the same community but the way it’s unlike most of California, Lafayette is an elementary district so it’s kindergarten through eighth grade with the elementary schools and a middle school, then there’s a union high school district which is made up of Acalanes, Miramonte, Campolindo, and Los Lomas. Typically, that’s really, really old school, but they kept it typically in the fifties and mostly the sixties, districts in California became unified and became K-12, and pretty much that was the rule throughout, there were some pockets that didn’t change and this area was one of them so you have your Orinda school district, and you have your Moraga school district, you have the Walnut Creek district, and you have the Lafayette district, those were K-8, they then all belonged to those communities, belonged to a union high school so it’s Acalanes High School Union District for, it’s only a part of Walnut Creek, most of walnut Creek is Mt. Diablo Unified School District so that’s a huge district, biggest in the immediate area, and they’re a unified K-12 Mt. Diablo, and they take Concord, Pleasant Hill, Walnut Creek, but these four communities had kept their elementary districts and would funnel their kids to the union high school district, my point being is that when Acalanes had their big remodel thing, they had to put out another bond issue for their voters that overlapped, of course, into certainly Springhill community, it also covered Walnut Creek, Orinda, and Moraga. Anyway, so as far as changes, you know, certainly not that many physical changes other than the remodeling of both our schools and Acalanes, as I said we are surrounded by Briones Regional Park which was great for us because we would take field trips, you know, a little nature walk and collect whatever they were studying as far as science went, and so it was very nice having Briones right next door and a gate that we just walked in, we also took advantage, we’d get in trouble every year, we’d take advantage of their parking lot, the staging area right next to Springhill School, well our parents would always, the overflow would park there, and occasionally there wasn’t places for the people who came to use the park so I’d get a nasty phone call and I’ll say I’ll do what I can do, and I wouldn’t do much because parking is always at a premium at any school, and we have some private rows next to us in which it is made very clear, you know, “School parking not allowed”, but you know that’s typical, the biggest problems you have in elementary school is usually traffic and parking and bus schedules and complaints about lunch, and so usually logistical issues like that.
RM: Did you have any opportunity to come down into down, like for instance when your kids were going to Stanley coming through downtown Lafayette?
BW: Quite often, for one thing, we just… the road here is about two blocks away is the district offices, so I was probably, a couple of times a week, at the district offices for principal’s meetings, evening board meetings, and services, yeah, spent a lot of time in Lafayette, occasionally go to the old library, came here a few times when this was first built, it was probably a year or two before I retired, and certainly with my own boys going to Stanley, usually I’d drop them off, I didn’t always have the freedom to pick them up, we had made other arrangements but I’d drop them off in the morning, also just spending time in other schools, it was not unusual to be on site at another campus for meetings, for a variety of things, transitioning a student, a special ed student, go to a meeting for that student at that other school and transitioning him or her to Springhill, so the one thing about this school district was it’s a small enough district in which we worked together a lot and worked together well, there’s four schools and the middle school, so a lot of articulation between, you know, with our fifth grade-sixth grade staff at Stanley, and whenever there’d be in services, the whole district would get together, typically it would be at Stanley School, where we could use either their multi-purpose room or their library, and so a lot of… and we’d have board meetings at different schools in the evening and also downtown, so I felt like I got to know the community of Lafayette very well, because of our having kids and their friends, typically we’d socialize, my wife and I and the family, socialized with Lafayette families, and then when the kids move on, the old empty nest, we find that that’s still our close social group is made up of Lafayette families, very often former parents at Springhill School who, even after all these years, still tolerate the principal, they still complain a little but not so much. Yeah, so I feel like I am a citizen of Lafayette, certainly during the drives for passing parcel taxes and whatnot, we would be recruited to call up families, make sure they’re going to vote and you know, we wouldn’t do arm-twisting but, you know, if you had questions, how this would benefit the district, et cetera, so yeah, so I feel like, if not a legal citizen of Lafayette then certainly an honorary… still do.
RM: Do you remember any, coming through downtown Lafayette, in the eighties and nineties and things like that, has it changed a while bunch since between then… ?
BW: Yeah, it has. In fact, as a kid, I had an aunt and two cousins who lived in Orinda and then Walnut Creek, we would come up here every summer, and I remember just before, you know I vaguely remember before Highway 24 was built, and I certainly remember when it was built and of course the tunnels going into Oakland and Berkeley, the Caldecott Tunnel was a big deal, I’d go with my cousins through the tunnel, and so I was somewhat familiar with the area when I got here in ’87, they all seemed kind of gradual but the Veteran’s Hall I remember, the old Veteran’s Hall was right here, where the library is now, and I attended a few functions there, but the new one was built down the road a bit, a number of school functions were there, that was a big deal for the community, when that was built, we’d have a number of things at the reservoir, kindergarten always had their end-of-the-year picnic at the reservoir which I’d always get over to, there’s the other thing next to Happy Valley School, it’s called the Samman Barn, Samman being… John is a local orthodontist, and there’s this barn which has been on his property next to Happy Valley School for a hundred years or so, so we had what we would called “Colonial Days” for the fifth grade and we’d go and they’d learn square dancing and some of the crafts, candle making et cetera, every year, and Dr. Samman, very kind and generous would let us use the barn, but as far as changes go though, they’re all kind of gradual, new restaurants come and go that we would frequent, various places where we’d have a TGIF for the staff, that hopped all over Mt. Diablo Boulevard over the years, but, a number of functions at the Park Hotel, we’d go to retirements, particularly, so I feel that the district always took advantage of what was offered, and yeah, you’d see those changes, for me, though, I think a major change, I think I’d almost have to have been here longer, you know, growing up, boy, it sure wasn’t like this growing up, but I do remember, as you go down Reliez Valley Road and whatnot, it wouldn’t take long to get kind of rural up there, in fact one of the school families that we’ve known forever, the Shuckmans, he is a vet, and he has about five acres at the north border of Lafayette off Pleasant Hill Road where there’s… but he’s got about five acres and he’s got llamas and iguanas and Big Tom Turkeys and, well, every year our kindergarten goes out there to the Shuckman farm, it’s called, and you’d get to see all these animals, well that’s intact, I’m still friends with Steve and his wife Jan, in fact Jan was made… worked at the school, but around them, it used to be pretty rural and you know, scattered houses here and there, has been developed so much, and talking to people who did grow up here say, “Oh, we’d have horses, and we’d ride down town Lafayette or go down to Walnut Creek, it’s changed dramatically from that, and we’ve seen some of it, I think definitely again going out Reliez Valley Road there, a lot of beautiful homes, beautiful communities, but it doesn’t quite have that rural feel, it certainly did when I used to visit in the ‘50s and early ‘60s, and it was quite a change when I got here in ’87, to see how much it had developed, my cousin who I’d sometimes see up here, he’s about 13 years older than I am, he lives in Sacramento, but he’d visit, and we’d check out Acalanes, because he had been a graduate of Acalanes in ’57, ’56 you know, but certainly talking with people you become very aware of how much it’s changed from the ‘50s and ‘60s, but still a great community, if you’re in education or if you have children that need to be educated or are school age, you could not have a better community than Lafayette to raise kids and so many, you know, outside of the schools too, the school’s kind of the focal point for the community, but that was because everything went through there earlier, all of the sports recreation opportunities, all the scouting, homeowners association, there’s so many things going on in Lafayette, and the schools have always been an intrigal part of facilitation that, if only to provide space, usually it provided much more than space, but certainly, I think that’s what made the schools so tight, the community, and as a result, the community being so supportive.
RM: Is there anything you miss about the older days?
BW: I love retirement, I have to say that, but I’ve realized what I do miss are the people, the kids in particular, having been here 24 years, I will go out to a restaurant or a movie, just somewhere, and meet, you know, people come up to me and say, “Mr. Wodhams!” and of course, I do not recognize them anymore, apparently I’ve changed certainly, but not enough to be unrecognizable, whereas, you know, an eleven-year-old as much as a thirty-year-old, but I’ll tell you, one of the things that’s so great about our school was I told you about the family atmosphere, well, being there 24 years, I hired former students, we had former students move into the area or stay in the area, and their kids would come through, so I would have parent conferences with former students, talking about their children, probably over the years I hired at least four or five former students as teachers, and probably hired about ten to twelve students altogether as staff members, either as aides, quite often aides, especially with the special ed department, had a number of aides work with the teacher and with the kids in the special ed, yeah, hiring former students, again that full circle type of thing, that family, so what I do miss, I miss the kids, you know, the staff and… I always said I never had problems with kids that couldn’t be handled, sometimes their parents was a different thing, dealing with the parents, it was always much easier for me to deal with kids than adults, but all in all a very positive experience, and I do miss that, still socialize with a number of people who lived in Lafayette, families, and I try to socialize with former staff members, I’ve been out four years now, and that changes at Springhill School as far as staff goes, and I can go over there and now that fifth graders this year will have been kindergarteners when I left, so they’re going to vaguely remember me, you know, kind of, but one thing I always did that seemed to be appreciated was I played guitar, I would take the guitar around every week and sing with all the kindergarten through third grades and I did that while I was teaching, so I did my whole 36-37 years or my career, always would start the school day off with singing with the kids so, in fact, my last year there, they did a CD of me singing with each grade level, some songs that they knew too per grade level, and made the CD and sold it as a fundraiser, that’s my fame there, my fifteen minutes of fame, is being on the CD, but the reason I mention it is typically the former students would come up to me and say, “Are you still singing that song? Do you remember that song? Please sing” and I go, “Yeah, yeah, I still do” and now I still go back three or four times a year and sing with the special ed kids, I’ve done that every year since I’ve retired, and I have a friend that I played music with, he plays the ukulele and the two of us go back three or four times a year, I still do that, so I do enjoy that, so I still have some contact with kids, but some of the changes with the, and staff, they’re going on their third principal since I left, my successor left after three years, we had an interim principal last year, he was a good friend of mine, he was our school, psychologist when I was there, now he’s the director of special ed, but he was there for a year, and then one of my teachers that I hired as a kindergarten teacher, she has just been hired as the principal, so starting my fifth year of retirement, there have been three principals since then, and new teachers that I’ll be introduced to, they’re very sweet, they’ll say, “I’ve heard so much about you”, and I’m afraid to know whether it’s good or bad, so change happens quickly with that sort of thing, and it doesn’t take long before you realize, you know, well, I really am gone, but was a great career and being here twenty four years was great, I just worked with wonderful people, and that’s what I miss, are the people.
RM: Okay well, that is the end of what I have, if you wanted to add anything else…
BW: Oh man, covered a lot of ground there, I’m sure I’ll get home and think of ten things I should have said.
RM: Interview ended 3:50.
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