In addition to the stern administrators and gaggles of freshman, a secret benefactor now roams the halls of Garfield. Only the keenest eyes have noticed the 800 shiny new books adorning the library shelves, ready to be cracked by curious students. No fairy godmother can be credited for these mystery gifts; the Garfield class of 1958 has come back to give a little to the school that gave them so much.

Walking into the library one Wednesday morning, we met up with the celebrities themselves. Reclining in the hard wooden chairs, a group of fun-loving Garfield alumni joked around in the back of the room. Sauntering over to say hello, we were greeted by friendly smiles and warm welcomes; these people were full of goodness.

“We knew we wanted to donate something to the school,” one woman said. “Soon, we realized that we wanted to do something really personal, and started to donate books.”

Conversation soon drifted towards the atmosphere of Garfield in 1958.

“We were a scrappy, fantastic group,” said alumnus Willie Minor, a robust and charismatic man. Apparently, there was a bit of fighting going on. “We didn’t need cat calls; we just beat the hell out of ‘em!”

AP United States History teaches of the horrors and disagreements over the issue of school integration in the mid 1900s, and we wondered how this tension affected life at Garfield. They explained that the notorious events in the South were shockers to them. Garfield had integrated long before Southern schools, and the issue was not prevalent in the mixed classrooms.

“We were better than other schools, but it was still a big deal dating outside of our own races,” said alumnus Steve Sherman.

“Chinese and Japanese, they just didn’t date,” added alumna Jan Tanabe. “But there was a lot of sneakin’ going on!”

“Yeah,” said Sherman, “I got around the segregation by sneaking out every time I could.”

After talking a while about how Garfield has changed, we asked about the customs of the 1958 culture.

“We didn’t swear like they do now!” said alumna Maxine Lou. “And boys wore their pants at their waists.” We giggled, and asked if they participated in any club activities while in high school.

“Some people were on sports teams, some went to dances,” said alumna Connie Line. “And the rest of us just went out and smoked.”

Nonchalantly changing the subject, we slipped in a few questions about the Messenger. The group explained that the Messenger was great and came out every Friday.

We handed them a few copies of the most recent Messenger. As they shuffled the delicate pages, they squealed in delight.

“It’s in color!” they shouted. “In our day, it was all black and white.”