| Interviewer |
Tony Bautista |
| What is your name? |
My name is Tony Bautista, Junior. |
| Where were you born? |
I was born in Los Angeles, California. |
| How was your childhood? |
My childhood was, I guess an interesting one because I come from a very large family. Fourteen. |
| Where did you grow up? |
I grew up in, I grew up in Los Angeles but most of my life was spent in El Sereno, California, which is the Wilson High School area. |
| Do you have any good memories about your childhood? |
Well, I think the good memories I have of my childhood is coming from a large family where you had to share with each other and help each other because, you know, again you come from a large family, we were very poor. |
| What high school did you attend? |
I went to Woodrow Wilson High School. |
| What year did you graduate? |
In 1967. |
| Was it an interesting year? |
It was an interesting year because it was the time of the Vietnam War and a lot of things were happening as far as, you know, whether I was going to be drafted or whether I was going to be able to go to college, Rose (?) College. |
| Were you involved in any activities in high school? |
Yeah, I was involved in gymnastics. Like I said, that was basically my interest, in gymnastics and also I was a yell leader when I was in school. |
| Did you have any achievements in high school? |
I think my biggest achievement in high school was I was the All City champion in gymnastics, on the floor exercise. My wish after that was to become an Olympic champion. |
| Were you in any, kinda like crews, party crews? |
No. At that time we didn’t have party crews. I think... |
| Or gangsters, or in any gangs? |
I hung around with gang members. We would play with the Happy Valley gang, which is a gang which is by Lincoln High School, but I never was initiated in because my brother didn’t allow me to be part of it although he was a gang member himself. |
| Did you have any girl friends during your high school years? |
I had one girlfriend. I was really a late starter. I didn’t have a girlfriend until I was seventeen years of age. |
| Did you really really love her, like was she your first love? |
No, it was more of a, it was actually more of an acquaintance. What happened was that she was actually a friend of mine’s girlfriend and I happened to meet her during the summertime when he went on vacation and her and I kind of liked each other and then when he came back he tried to separate us but... It was an interesting relationship because I never talked to her. The whole time I was in school. I only knew her during the summertime and we used to see each other in school and my friends used to say, “There she, there’s your girlfriend right there.” It wasn’t...She came up to me and said, “I think we should break up because, you know, we’re not talking to each other.” Which was true, we never talked to each other. My friends were more important at that time. |
| What was the name of your first love? (? first part of question not on tape; might have been How did you lose your first love?) |
Her name, I remember her name was Yolanda Redes. That’s the girl I was talking about, that I had met during the summertime. How I lost her was I introduced her to a friend of mine and he liked her also and so I guess that was the end of our relationship. But it wasn’t a close relationship, it was just a, more of an acquaintance but it was not until later on that I ran across her, that I knew that she would have been the love of my life if I’d of stayed with her. |
| What was your hardest choice that you had to make during your life? |
Okay, I think maybe the hardest choice that I had to make in high school was coming from a large family was I going to work and help my family or was I going to go on to better myself by going to college. And my choice was to go on to college and get an education. |
| What was your most amazing thing that happened to you while...in your lifetime? |
I think probably the most amazing thing that happened to me was when I won $10,000 in Las Vegas. |
| How old were you? |
I was forty years old and that winning was something that really changed my life. You know, what was I going to do with the money because it was burning a hole in my pocket. And it was at that time, I guess, I was saving for a house anyhow so that money went towards the down payment. |
| What did you do during your free time? |
Well, I guess by my free time, I used to like to be with my friends. I liked to play pool. I like water-skiing. And travelling. I did a lot of travelling in my younger years. I’ve been to Europe. I’ve been to Hawaii five times. I’ve been to the Phillipines. I’ve been to Alaska. I’ve travelled all the states. And I just love travelling. My next wish would be to go to Mexico. |
| Did you attend college? |
Yeah, I went to a lot of colleges. I went to...I first went to Pasadena City College. I went to Cal State, the University of Los Angeles, and then I graduated from UCLA, went back to Cal State University Los Angeles to work on my masters, work on my special education credential. I went back 10 years again to finish up my administrative credential. So I’ve had a lot of college experience, of total about maybe 16 years. |
| .... having anything different than what you are now in college? |
Yeah, when I first started college I wanted to be a business major, an accountant. But after in college I found out there was a lot of competition in the business area so I didn’t like it because there was too much competition. But I always worked with youth. Going through college I worked for the YMCA, the Boys Club. I used to be a director after school, coach, one of the coaches. So then I thought my interest would be working with kids so that’s when I decided I would go into teaching. And when I graduated from UCLA in kinesology which was a new major there, I wanted to become a teacher and that’s when I switched my interest towards teaching and got into the teaching profession. I’ve been teaching for 18 years but I’ve always worked with kids. I still coach kids today. I coach football. I coached 10 years here at Roosevelt High School. But I coach my son now in football and baseball. So my interest has always been working with young kids. |
| Have you made a difference in kids, like have you helped out or something? |
I feel like I’ve helped a lot of individuals. I guess maybe coming from a large family again it was, you see a need for assisting people. My family members are, you look at me, you know, I’m not a gang member but all my family members are gang affiliated. I was the only one in my family that’s ever gone to college, the only one that’s ever graduated from high school. So I felt that yeah, there is a need to help the young kids out there. So I...in my years of coaching especially I think I’ve changed a lot of lives of children, at least give them some kind of guidance as to what would be accepted in society today. |
| You have, you are, you think kids admire you? |
I think I’ve got the respect of a lot of the kids. I think they respect me because I listen to them. I think this is a lot that is not given in the home. I do a lot more counseling than I ever thought that I would do because students come with various problems whether they come from the homes or whether they come from themselves. I think this is one of my biggest assets helping children is to listen to them. I know they have problems. I think a lot of the problems when they enter the Dean’s office is because they have home problems or no one has really sat down to try to listen to them and they don’t have no one to listen to. At one time it used to be if you had a problem go talk to your teachers or a priest or somebody that you knew, your parents. Kids can’t do that nowadays. I think that they really have nobody to really listen to them because they have major, major problems and I’m open, I feel I’m open to everyone and I see a lot more students coming to me too because I listen to them and try to give them proper guidance. |
| Do you think that coming from a big family has helped you reaching all your goals that you’ve achieved? |
Definitely. I always consider myself the black sheep of the family. You know, at one time when people used to talk about black sheep of the family it was usually the person who was the bad person in the family. I’m the opposite because I know sometimes when I get in arguments with my brothers, they look at me, because of my education, that I’m better than they are. And I’m not, it’s just that I went after what was there. You know, I went after the education. And, you know, to try to teach your own family members is very, very hard. I can teach anybody, I can teach anybody anything but it’s very hard to teach family members. And this is why I thought, I was...I’m the black sheep of the family in a good way because I’ve gone after what was there and they look down on me because they say, “You’re better than us, you make more money than us, you’re more educated.” And it’s not true. It’s just that, it’s something I went after. So, you know, you’ve had your ups and downs as you’re growing up but I think I’ve benefitted, making that decision to better myself. |
| Do you consider yourself a good parent? |
Yeah, I do. I’m a single parent. I’ve, I had two sons. I have one now. I lost my one son two years ago from an auto accident. He never got to see his 21st birthday but my remaining son who is thirteen is getting the full benefits of....I guess I gave him everything that I never had before. Which is, I think it makes me a better parent. Yet people say that I spoil him but I don’t think so. I think that I just give him everything that I never had before and I appreciate it because I can see it in his academic achievements that he appreciates everything I’ve done for him. I don’t think he’s spoiled. I just think he respects everything I’ve done for him. I’ve never hit my child but he gives me the respect that I want, you know, he’s a straight A student and that’s all you expect from your children. |
| Do you have any ghost stories? |
Yeah, I have a story, I guess at Wilson High School, which is...I went....the new Wilson, I didn’t attend the new Wilson, I went to the old Wilson, which is Elsinore Junior High School now but the old Wilson, there used to be a big mansion up on top of the hill that we used to call the White House. And that was, that was built way back in the 1930’s for movie stars and a lot of movie stars used to go up there and they, because if you...A long time ago when you’d go up there, it was like a lot of tunnels and dungeons and swimming pools. We used to go up there during the school time and go through the tunnels and you’d see all kinds of bottles and old mattresses and things of that sort but there were a lot of ghost stories because there’d just be a lot of fights up there. The students used to fight, when they’d ever want to fight they’d go up to the White House and I remember when I was young we used to walk through there, we used to see what we thought were ghosts running around in the dark hallways and we’d run and scream and yell. That’s a story, a ghost story that we felt was from high school but if it’s true or not we don’t know but I remember going through the dark tunnels, we used to see...we’d feel the cold wind and people running by and people would scream and start running. But how true it is, but....It used to be a ghost house, it used to be called the old White House. |
| Do you have any Roosevelt stories or any other ghost stories? |
No, not Roosevelt stories. I know Roosevelt is known...the auditorium...I’ve talked to students who said there’s a lot of the creaking of the chairs and the auditorium, up on the stage, there’s this eerie feeling, the cold wind, the doors clanking when they’re performing so there’s some history here at Roosevelt about ghosts but not that I know of. You know, there’s, I guess maybe a local story which a lot of the East Los Angeles kids know about. It’s called different things, Lady of Lorena, Lady of Fatima, whatever they want to call it. But this was a story about during the wars when a man came back from war and went to a dance and met this girl and it was cold and when he walked her home he gave her his army jacket and the next day he went back to pick up his jacket and the lady answered the door and said that girl is not here, she had died ten years ago, as a matter of fact, ten years ago yesterday. And he goes, “Well, that can’t be true because I just gave her my jacket last night.” And they walk across the street, this is on Lorena, walked across the street to the cemetery and there was the jacket laying across the grave of her. So it’s a story that’s been around the East Los Angeles area...I’ve heard it from different students and my mother told me that years ago. It’s a ghost story that’s in the East Los Angeles area. |
| Do you have any family stories? |
Well, being Native American, my mother has a lot of stories, a lot of stories. If one is to ever listen to Indian stories, you know, very, very scary. There’s one comes to mind my mother always talks about, a friend of hers that they used live with, lived in the same house as them and she had passed away and one time she was laying in the bedroom with the three sisters and she heard the back door open up and she saw the shadow walk past and go into the bathroom and then come back and leave and then she woke up the sisters and said, “You know, Valma was here, Valma was here.” She said, “Valma was here, yeah, Valma came by just now. She went to the bathroom.” And so they woke up and they went to the bathroom and sure enough, that Valma’s toothbrush was gone, which had always been there forever, it was missing and this is just an Indian story really but we believe and my mother still believes to this day that Valma came in to pick up her toothbrush. So Indian stories...again Indians have a lot of stories and that one always scared us when I was small and I remembered today. |
| How has Roosevelt changed since you started working here ’til now? |
I think the most tremendous change I’ve seen since I started working here at Roosevelt is in the change from identity. I’ve seen the students go away from the traditional Roosevelt spirit into more of a gang affiliated type of action. I can walk around campus today and not know who the athletes are. When I started in 1979, I could identify who the athletes were because everyone was proud to be a Roosevelt person. You had a Roosevelt, maybe, track sweatshirt on, swim outfit, cheerleaders. Everyone was flying the colors. Now, you go out there and you see everybody bald, big pants, all looking the same, coming out of one mold. So Roosevelt has lost their pride. You don’t know who the athletes are, you don’t know who the scholar people are, you don’t know who the cheerleaders are. Everyone has got a lot of peer pressure, I think, and that’s what I, a tremendous change that I’ve seen. I’ve seen people getting more and more grouped, going away from being individualism than anything else, they’re in groups more than anything now and they want to be identified as a group, where as before people used to be identified as separate and that’s the big change that I’ve seen. I feel a lot of lack of respect for each other. |
| How has the community changed? |
What I’ve seen, the tremendous change that I’ve seen in the community, from my days in high school to present was, at one time, there used to be known gangs. For example, when I went to Wilson there was Happy Valley, Rose Hill, and then we used to hear about the East Los Angeles gangs, which were White Fence and Monta Via. Now what has happened over time is everyone has gotten down. Now they’ve broken it down from bigger gangs to smaller gangs to crews. Now you have streets. You have Michigan Street, you have Pickett Street, you have Clarence Street. Everybody’s getting smaller and smaller. You have the crews, the tagging crews that’re now saying they’re not violent but become gangs themselves and they’re tagging crews. You have party crews that are now being identified. Everyone is getting smaller and smaller and everyone is getting more and more against each other. You know, you can live across the street from a person you’ve grown up with all your life but because they’re from a different gang you don’t get along with each other. This is a tremendous change that I’ve seen, is there’s no respect for each other anymore, it’s more gang turf affiliated identity. They identify themselves with a particular street or a particular gang and everyone says that it’s their street, their gang, you know, and it’s not theirs. We’re all here living in the same area, in the same community, same color, same everything but everyone is separating and, you know, you’re getting, everyone’s getting smaller and smaller and trying to be more powerful than the other. |
| Do you have any more goals that you would like to achieve? |
I guess that my goal is to become an administrator or assistant principal. I wouldn’t want to become a principal because of the pressure that you get from the community. I would be happy being a principal at the middle school or the high school level. I felt I’ve paid my dues, I’ve gone to college, I’ve been with the district for 18 years, I’ve had a lot of experiences in the office, downtown, in the dean’s office, being a coach, being a teacher, being a special ed teacher. I would now like to just think about being an administrator where I could hopefully support all these programs that are out there for the students. |
