MONDAY, MARCH 26, 2012
Volume 11 Issue 115
Santa Monica Daily Press
MATCHUPS SET SEE PAGE 15
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THE LOOK AT HISTORY ISSUE
Alumni gather to celebrate school’s past BY ASHLEY ARCHIBALD Daily Press Staff Writer
miles north to Malibu to surf the world’s best waves. Born Feb. 3, 1927 in Santa Monica, Gabaldon was part of a small AfricanAmerican community that had been present in the city since the turn of the century. Rather than risk ostracism at some other beaches, many African-Americans in Santa Monica headed to “The Inkwell,” a 200-foot stretch of sand off Santa Monica State Beach where anyone was welcome.
PICO BLVD Nearly 30 people gathered at the Thelma Terry building in Virginia Avenue Park Saturday to celebrate the 80th anniversary of Garfield Elementary School, a pioneering institution that educated Santa Monica’s minority students and was home to its first African-American teacher, Dr. Alfred Quinn. The dread inspired by high school reunions is the stuff of satire and B-movies as people either peacock their accomplishments or try to fade into the wallpaper. Those emotions were notably absent at the Garfield reunion. “That’s me!” crowed Betty Taylor when a class photograph from 1953 popped up on the projecting screen. It’s been many years since Taylor last set foot in Garfield School, a institution of learning that was once where the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District’s main office now stands, but the memories of dancing the cha cha cha in her sixth grade class or borrowing a puzzle or ball from the toy loan at recess remain fresh. So did the prevailing sense that Garfield’s small population of African, Mexican, Russian, Italian and Japanese Americans were effectively family in a time where African-Americans couldn’t get hired at Sears and enjoyed only a portion of the Santa Monica beach called the Inkwell. “It was a close knit community, and that’s what made it so special,” said Carolyne Edwards, Quinn’s niece and the co-founder of the Quinn Research Center, an organization dedicated to preserving the history of Santa Monica’s African-American population and honoring Quinn’s memory. Quinn taught sixth grade at Garfield, and, along with Thelma Terry, the namesake of the building in which Saturday’s brunch was held, ran the summer programs held at the school’s youth activities center. The school founded a number of pro-
SEE SURFER PAGE 11
SEE GARFIELD PAGE 11
Photo courtesy Joe Quigg
HISTORIC DUDE: Nick Gabaldon (far right) rides a wave at Surfrider Beach more than 60 years ago. A new documentary tells the story of how Gabaldon became the first known African-American surfer, and later lost his life while surfing in Malibu.
Gabaldon remembered on film BY ELYENA DE GOGUEL Special to the Daily Press
On June 5, 1951, time stopped for Nick Gabaldon. The first documented AfricanAmerican surfer had attempted to pass underneath the Malibu Pier in high surf. “He surfed into the pier,” recalls surfing legend Ricky Grigg. “And then he disappeared.” More than 60 years after his death that summer day in Malibu, Nick Gabaldon is back, in a new film called “12 Miles North:
The Nick Gabaldon Story.” The stylish halfhour documentary directed by Richard Yelland and funded by Nike premiered in February at Hollywood’s Montalban Theatre. It features cameos from several surfing legends, including local Allen Sarlo, as well as African-American surfers and athletes inspired by Gabaldon’s story. Gabaldon was an accomplished body surfer whose love for the water pushed him into surfing. His quest for respect in the merit-based culture of the surfing community led him to go even further: paddling 12
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