By Sandra Finkle Harris

Rees, your Mom was at Longden Avenue school, and one of the most wonderful ladies I ever met. She would bring watercolor paper, brushes, paint to our 6th grade class, Mrs. Hansen's class. This is at the old Longden, before any up-grades.*

I don't know if she would remember me or my name, Sandra Finkle, sat next to Richard Scott (who had his snakes in cage between our seats) in back of Don Barker and Merle Nelson. She is responsible for my being an Artist/Reader.

I would go to the Library and check out Little House On The Prairie, Black Beauty and others. I wanted to be artistic like your Mom...I can close my eyes today, and still see her face.

I am running the 45th Reunion of the Class of '57, the first class to be out of TCHS, and we are getting lots of feedback right now, for we are doing a 3 day cruise to Mexico. I am new to the computer world, but my husband, Bill Harris, who also went to Longden, (also) remembers your dear mom. Ah, the "Good Old Days". I am in touch with a great bunch of guys and gals, who have run our reunions since the 25th.

She truly made a lot of difference in our young lives, and was respected and loved by many of us Ole Grads. Those were the great teachers, they were Mr. or Mrs., or Miss... wore suits, real shoes, dresses and even on occasions, gloves and heels to school. They had the Halls named after them, playgrounds, Libraries, they made classes like ours, going into the 50s, the real "Happy Days."

If I remember correctly, your mom chose one of my works of the Winged Horse, to go to District Office for display. It really did get me to love the colors, the look of art, and the way it made me feel. I liked being "the Artist". On page 41, of the Rampage '57, the book cover was my design... I had work in Beverly Hills Gallery of Adamson-Duvanne Gallery, and one of my paintings sat next to a real Rembrandt. Your Mom would have liked that...the plump little girl with pigtails, did okay, and she was my first Mentor.

Thank You Gwendolyn Clark...God Bless You.

Sandra (Finkle) Harris


*Ed. Note: Sandra Finkle Harris sent me this kind note upon reading of my mother's deach in 1996. In the time Sandra describes, Longden Avenue School was a Moorish palace, with thick concrete walls and a tile roof supported by thick, exposed wooden beams, which extended over 3 meter wide, shady exterior porches that surrounded an atrium (the Quadrangle). The sheer mass of the structure made it warm in winter and cool in summer. Wrought iron lamps hung by chains from the ceilings of the porches, and in the late 1940s two Sequoia sempervirons (coast redwoods) were planted nearby. Graduation from sixth (temporarily 8th in the mid-60s) grade was a civic event in the quadrangle, whereafter students attended grades 7 through 12 in Pasadena. Gwen's "office" in those days was in a half-basement beneath the southeast corner of the quadrangle, which in summer was never hot, so I spent many summer days reading newly arrived books on their way to the school libraries and classrooms.

Sadly, the building had been built in the 1920s of unreinforced concrete, and by the 1960s was considered unsafe. The final straw was a California state law making school board members liable for damages in the event of an earthquake, which got their attention. The quadrangle was demolished around 1970 and replaced by a building that is hot in summer and cold in winter, whose windows don't open, even when the air conditioning breaks down, and over whose eventual demolition no one will weep.

PS: At least two of the small wrought iron lamps mysteriously disappeared before the wreckers arrived.

—RC

The lessons of the Great Depression were well learned by Gwen and her mother. In 1947, when she built our San Gabriel house, teachers still made less than $2,000 annually. So lots of corners were cut from the budget.

Gwen then worked as art teacher and district librarian for South Santa Anita Schools (later Temple City School District), a one-horse district east of Los Angeles whose Longden Avenue school served the entire community from kindergarten through sixth grade. In that capacity, every Summer she opened scores of crates of books (in those days, books came in pallet-sized wooden crates, made of 1x10x4ft planks).

One late-forties summer, around 1947 or '48, we got some new furniture.

We now had an easy chair whose frame was really, really sturdy. Covered with lots of cotton batting and a green remnant of cloth best described as coarse, it was big and soft, and it became just the place for a boy to listen to the radio. Many an episode of The Lone Ranger and Sgt. Preston of the Yukon passed though its upholstery.

Across the room from the chair stood our bookcase. It was four feet wide, with one inch shelves made of ten inch planks.

An amazing coincidence, you're probably thinking.

By the mid-fifties times were better, and the chair was replaced by something more elegant, its cover becoming a book bag I carried to high school, among other things.

In 1996, when I sold Mom's house I left the bookcase behind, its underside stealthily labeled "California State Superintendent of Public Instruction."

Gwendolyn Ann Davis was born in San Francisco, California, on April 28, 1912 to Anna Goodwin Davis and Ephraim Rees Davis. She passed away in Bellevue, Washington, on October 22, 1996.

Gwendolyn Davis Clark was a teacher, librarian, artist and mother. She put herself through college, taught for over 35 years, built her own house and lived in it for 47 years. She cared for her aging mother and raised a child. Maybe she almost had it all.

Gwen's legacy lives on in thousands of students, a son and two grandsons and in most of the people she met.

UPDATE: Since this article was written, another generation has joined the fray. She'd be proud, in my humble opinion. —RC