“The Class of ’43 had graduated…Senior A…walked slowly out of the auditorium and down the front steps…’I’m leaving now, to go out in the world to be shot, riddled with bullets, smashed by tanks, cut open with bayonets, or maybe I’ll be doing these things to other men. I’m going now to fight for the life I haven’t tasted yet. I’m going to fight with nothing to fight for!’ Suddenly down from the heavens…a voice as mighty as this school and everyone in it answered out of nowhere, ‘Nothing to fight for? What’s wrong with L.A. High? … If I said it was friendship and good fellowship and honor, you could laugh. If I said having fun as only kids can, kidding and joking, going out on a date, you could laugh again, but you don’t dare…There’s the tower shining clear in the sun…at graduation time those chimes up there vibrate the entire building with the message of a new life to come. In the back of you lies Memorial Park built to remember the dead of the last war…Turn your head to Housh Field where the cheering and enthusiasm of a student body for their victorious team is now only an echo…It’s all over, this era of your life, and I defy you to look me in the eye and say you’re glad.

“Well, there is L.A. High and every other school in the country. That’s what you’re fighting for, so other kids just like you and me can live in security and have the same kind of fun…It’s more than worth fighting for, it’s worth dying for…I may be in Camp Dix, Fort Henry, March Field…or maybe we’ll meet in Berlin or Tokyo. Who knows?’”

in the “Blue and White Daily,” the L.A. High newspaper, 1943