Walking Tall

WOODLAND HILLS —  No one streaked across the stage. No graduates were hauled off for unruly behavior--although a graying physician received a tongue-lashing for leaving his seat to take a picture of his grandson.

One young man received a diploma, attended a funeral and went to Disneyland, all in the same day. A 14-year-old percussionist in the Conquistadores orchestra sat in the June sun for three hours to strike her gong a total of 13 times. Then she went home.

All in all, graduation day at El Camino Real High School last Thursday was entirely ordinary. And entirely extraordinary, just like every commencement at every high school in every big city and every cow town in the country.

The ceremony undoubtedly reminded some in the bleachers of their own graduation day, and such indelible moments as discovering that their friend’s middle name was, say, Elmer, as one David Elmer Lowe of El Camino Real happens to be named.

It informed little brothers and sisters that their own graduation might involve a remarkable number of detailed instructions on sitting, standing, marching, talking and hand-shaking. And it certainly suggested to some adults what might have been had they just been able to pull that failing English grade up a couple of points and go home with a faux-parchment diploma like all the others.

David Sanabria was still waiting the day before graduation to learn if he’d passed his English final. At 19, the son of a Salvadoran immigrant had been forced to repeat the 10th grade for missing too many classes. This would probably be his last chance.

*

It is 7:30 a.m. and rehearsal is just beginning. To make it on time, the dozens of students who are bused to the peaceful suburban campus from downtown, South-Central and other gritty sections of Los Angeles rose at 5:30 a.m. to catch the 6:30 “big banana,” as 18-year-old Jeannette Brown calls the school bus.

Before running through the complicated steps of the ceremony, though, there are some last-minute details to review, problems to solve.

About 20 students owe El Camino something--a math or biology text, a field-trip fee--that must be returned or paid off before a diploma will be awarded.

Another name beginning with the letter Z has been added to the list--eight Zs in all now--and the seating must be rearranged.

There’s the issue of pronunciation, no small thing when the graduation roster reflects this melting-pot city with names including Songpol Sangwanphanit, Dayspring J. Smelko and Ansumana Bai Seisay. There are other name-related details as well.

“If you’ve always been called ‘Junior’ and you don’t want to be called ‘Junior,’ then let us know so it can be read right this afternoon,” Principal Ron Bauer calls from the podium.

With more than 450 graduates accepting diplomas at an outdoor ceremony in the sweltering San Fernando Valley, expeditiousness is of primary concern (though an ambulance will be standing by for the heatstroke victim who will need attention later). So an elaborate system has been designed to hasten the ritual of calling the names and handing out the diplomas.

The graduates are seated in gray plastic folding chairs arranged in four separate sections on the football field. Their names, they are told, will be announced from the podium, but they will not cross the stage. Instead, they are to stand, march over to a counselor stationed on the running track, shake hands and accept their diploma folder--the actual certificate being awarded after the ceremony and upon return of the rented gown. Then they are to execute a 90-degree turn, proceed to another school official, shake hands, execute another 90 degree turn, march to another official. And on and on, in a labyrinthine pattern, eventually returning to the same seat in the same quadrant, but remaining standing until the rest of the row is in place.

OK.

The names begin to emanate from the loudspeakers, one student being called from one section, then one from another, the old alphabetical system thrown to the nonexistent wind. There is fog this morning, though, and the sounds fade quickly in the heavy air.

Erika Padilla . . . who doesn’t yet know about the impeccably detailed black Honda Civic, wrapped with a huge red ribbon, she will receive as a graduation gift at the end of the day. Her father, Mario, a plumber who never finished school himself, will later make her a deal: She can have the car if he can hold her diploma in his hands.

Jeffrey Paul Wolff . . . who won a competition to sing the national anthem this day and has been practicing for five months. He is terribly worried about hitting the high F note.

The marching routine is not easy. Nor is it pretty this early in the morning, with most of the grads-to-be still bleary-eyed and dressed in sweatshirts and shorts, one of them leaving an empty bottle of Coors Light on his chair as his name is called.

But the names keep coming, the students keep standing.

Jeannette A. Brown . . . an average student with an above-average smile, a two-hour round-trip bus ride from Central Los Angeles and “one of those very weird family histories” that have kept many a student from ever graduating. Jeannette has never seen her birth mother, though the two spoke by phone on her 16th birthday.

She was adopted by Dora and Jessie Brown--who also raised Jeannette’s mother, until she gave birth to Jeannette and ran away. Dora will be here this afternoon. Jessie died eight years ago, but not before telling Jeannette, “I have dreams for you. You’re going to be something.”

Yes, said Jeannette, a few days before graduation. “A child psychologist, because of what I’ve been through.”

The students are still having problems with the procession routine, starting to shake with their left hands instead of their right, or veering off in the wrong direction.

“Where are you going?” one irritated administrator keeps shouting. “That way. That way!”

“This is so confusing,” one girl cries out.

“Just do whatever the person in front of you does,” comes an authoritative response.

Mark Evan Dragin . . . clean-cut, polite and serious. He was an outfielder on the varsity baseball team that belted its way to the city championship this spring, and is one-half of an inseparable couple known by one friend as simply “Mark and Lisa.” It hasn’t been an easy year. Mark’s father, Bill, has undergone a series of major surgeries and been unable to work. He will make it to the afternoon ceremony with the help of a cane.

Eventually, all the graduates return to their seats. Assistant Principal Larry Markle, who will have a sunburned face but still a gentle smile by the end of the day, takes the microphone to explain the final flourish of the ceremony.

“You move your tassel . . . ,” he says, motioning with his hand. Then he hesitates, confusion clouding his face. Finally, Markle says, “Mrs. Turner, where do they move their tassels?”

From right to left, it is decided.

And off the students go to spend their final hours as high schoolers, one heading for the parking lot in an orange T-shirt that says “Agent Orange,” another in a green T-shirt that reads “Hippies Smell.”

It is 18-year-old Ryan Whitman of West Hills in the “Hippies Smell” T-shirt. He will have to change his clothes soon. He’s the one with the funeral to attend, of his girlfriend’s grandmother.

“I kinda got a full day,” he says.

*

By the time the graduates return around 4 p.m., are searched by police, and begin gathering out of sight of the football stadium on a nearby sports field, the haze has burned off and it is hot. The school’s booster club is making a killing hawking bottled water at $1 a pop to the relatives and friends now filing into the stadium--a fund-raiser to help buy lights for one of the few unlit high school stadiums left in the city.

The orchestra begins warming up.

Freshman Maggie Ta is the gong player. The ensemble will perform four tunes, including numerous repetitions of “Pomp and Circumstance.” But Maggie will play in only one number, a piece from the soundtrack to the film “Independence Day.”

“I don’t mind not playing a lot,” says the impish Maggie, who will soon seek shade behind the 4-foot dull-gray gong. “When you hit it, it has a big effect.” Shortly after 5 p.m., the procession begins, a green-and-yellow river of graduates flowing down a gentle slope, funneling between the goal posts and pooling in the folding chairs. Literally hundreds of video and still cameras whir and click.

“Aw, Mom,” says Alexandra Naveau, as mother Chris Turner chases after her with a camera, calling, “Alex! Look here!”

“I’ve never seen our parents so rowdy,” one graduate says to another.

When all the students are in their seats and have pledged allegiance to an enormous flag hung near the blank scoreboard, Jeffrey Wolff blows into his pitch pipe. Then he launches, a cappella, into “The Star-Spangled Banner.” His young voice wavers slightly at first as the notes reverberate off the school buildings and surrounding hills, then gains strength. He hits his F with ease, and the standing-room-only crowd of 2,700 begins to cheer just as he begins the line “ . . . and the home . . . of the . . . brave.”

Jeannette Brown sprints across the field, losing the tassel from her cap, and with a sheepish smile takes her seat. She, her mom Dora, and a gaggle of friends and relatives got caught in traffic.

With the all-night graduation party set to begin in a few hours at Disneyland, spring semester senior class President Sharon Yeshaya delivers a valedictory address that would have thrilled the Disney folks, referencing everything from the “Fantasyland” of high school to the graduation night leap into “Frontierland.”

Other words of traditional commencement wisdom are offered by the principal and other student leaders. And then, the calling of the names begins again, for real this time, and the graduates, now dressed for the occasion, begin rising from their seats.

Megan M. Goodchild . . .

Two young children in the bleachers look at each other and at the same moment repeat Megan’s surname. “Goodchild!” they squeal, dissolving into giggles.

The names roll on, the crowd’s response supporting the uncomfortable axiom that any name met with wild cheering is certain to be followed by a name greeted with silence.

Robert Shor, the graying doctor, and his wife, Mimi, are waiting for the name of their grandson to be called. Because Mimi is blind, the couple has some of the best seats in the house, on the track, inside the chain-link fence. Robert has been waiting, camera in hand, through 30 minutes of names. “He’s in the next row,” Robert says every few minutes, narrating for his wife. “The next row.”

David Camacho . . .

Shor darts toward the beaming boy, whose parents are seated up in the stands, snapping away as he accepts his diploma. That’s when the school official runs after Shor, pointing a finger and telling him to return to his seat.

“When he was born, he was a little preemie,” Shor says of his grandson, after obeying the stern-looking administrator. “So it’s pretty amazing to see him grow up to be a 6-footer.” He pauses. “I’ve been waiting years for that.”

The convoluted procession that caused such confusion this morning is flowing more smoothly now, the green-clad figures crossing and meeting and passing each other with the kind of strange symmetry that lies just this side of chaos.

Lisa Dawn Weisbaum . . . that Lisa, the “Mark and Lisa” Lisa, who tied her flowing hair in a ponytail and kept score from the dugout this past baseball season while Mark took the field.

For prom night, the tall, 17-year-old Lisa, Mark and some friends took a limousine to the Biltmore Hotel downtown. As a graduation gift, her parents are paying for a weeklong cruise to Mexico with four girlfriends.

But in private moments she cries at the thought of separating from Mark, who plans to attend UC Irvine while she goes to San Diego State. “All of a sudden, your lives change.”

While Lisa and Mark and a couple hundred other couples ate chicken Marsala at the Biltmore on prom night, David Sanabria was at another hotel just a few miles away, the Ramada Limited in Hollywood. It was his regular 3-to-11 Saturday shift, and he was emptying trash cans and unplugging toilets to help pay the rent at the Hollywood studio apartment he shares with his mother, Noemi Quintanilla, 18-year-old sister Yesenia and 3-year-old brother Daniel.

The job was not the only thing keeping him from the prom. Poor attendance and low grades during the fall semester barred him from the dance, just as it had kept him five years earlier from commencement ceremonies at Hale Middle School; he got his Hale diploma in the mail.

On the day before high school graduation, the stocky young man with the well-trimmed goatee rode the bus to El Camino to check on his final English grade, to see if he would be the first member of his family to graduate from high school.

“I got a D. That’s all I needed,” he said that morning with a shy smile. “It’s a little bit exciting.”

And finally, his name is called.

David A. Sanabria . . . His mother, sister, brother and grandparents cheer from the stands, and cry. David joins what has become a decidedly lovely, fluid procession, clutching his diploma in both hands.

Times staff writer Duke Helfand also contributed to this report.