Class of ’63 Asks, “What Are We, Chopped Liver?”

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In Stewart Slavin’s piece “”Public Invitation to Meet the Class of ’64: Now and Then” https://www.circlingthenews.com/public-invitation-to-meet-the-class-of-64-now-and-then/, reader Sara Jane (Ziering) Boyers took exception to some of his reporting.

“While I love most of what Stewart Slavin tells us about the Palisades, and especially the years when I too was growing up here, I have to take exception to Stuart’s announcement of the 1964 class reunion events and in which he claimed that all the early ideas were created by the Class of ’64.

“I am from the Class of 1963 and while it is true we spent our first year at UniHigh, we, the Summer and Winter Classes of 1963, were certainly among the lead, along with our younger fellow students from ’64, in creating the honored names, symbols and culture of the school – PaliHi, the Dolphins, et al -objects that still ID Palisades High School today,” Boyers said.

“We were there for Pali’s beginning and as the FIRST classes to graduate from Pali, we, the Summer and Winter Classes of 1963, were certainly more than involved with the various “1sts” that Stewart relates. Of course, we were happy this new class joined us but let’s share more than a little credit here :)”

One of the class of ’63, included Richard Hertzberg, who wrote in the introduction of his book Fists & Flowers: Leaflets from the Sixties, about the Palisades.

“Referred to by residents as ‘the Palisades,’ Pacific Palisades was, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a sedate, isolated, white, mostly middle-class enclave at the far western area of Los Angeles. We moved to the Palisades from the New York City area when I was in the fifth grade. I attended the newly constructed Palisades High School, and spent summers at Will Rogers State Beach, known simply as State Beach, bodysurfing and trying to figure out how to approach girls. Over the decades and for many generations, State Beach has been a sacred adolescent gathering place.

“My graduating class, in June, 1963, was the second one at Palisades High School. At eighteen years old, I was heading to the University of California in Berkeley to begin my freshman year . . . ..

“While in high school, our black-and-white television brought images of early civile rights demonstrations in the South to my sheltered, privileged world. Even though anti-discrimination protests were met with increasingly violent reactions from both police and enraged white people, it all seemed quite far away. The Palisades was a remarkably placid, bucolic place.”

(Hertzberg’s book, available in hardcover and paperback, was published August 22, 2023, by the Publishing Circle.

Slavin also has a book Memory-Go-Round, which was published independently in May 2024, and he says, ” I write about the beach scene, the movie stars we grew up with, my old haunts, music, travel and family — always trying to keep a humorous edge. A constant theme of my stories is my old high school and classmates at Palisades High School in Pacific Palisades, California. We had a corny nickname, the Dolphins. And in 2024 we are celebrating our 60th Reunion.”  

Maybe it is time to hold a reunion for the first four classes that graduated Pali and they can argue it out about who made the decisions.)

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