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Tag: Jerome Hickman McGaugh

  • May 23rd in Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1954, a story ran in the Los Angeles Times announcing that a second school would soon be built in Seal Beach.

    Seal Beach Superintendent of Schools Jerry H. McGaugh had been planning the new school since 1948 to accommodate rising student enrollment. It took some strong arm tactics and behind the scenes wheeling and dealing, but ultimately land bordering between Bolsa Avenue and Bay Boulevard (later renamed Seal Beach Boulevard) was purchased in 1952 for an new intermediate school.

    This was the second time McGaugh had spearheaded the building of a Seal Beach school. When the original 1913 Seal Beach elementary school at Twelfth Street and Pacific Coast Highway was severely damaged in the 1933 Long Beach Earthquake, he guided the construction of a new school on the same grounds to completion in 1935.

    The new school must have been a dream project for McGaugh. Beyond adding twelve new classrooms for grades six to eight, the layout and facilities seemed more appropriate for a high school with a spacious gymnasium, auditorium, music room, cafeteria shop building, and spacious playground.

    When McGaugh retired in June 1955 a few months before the new school opened, the school board surprised him by naming it “J. H. McGaugh Intermediate School,” a fitting honor for a gentleman who guided Seal Beach’s education for nearly three decades and whose influence continues to be felt today in the form of the first-class school he gave the community.

    – Michael Dobkins

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  • May 10th in Seal Beach History

    On this date in 1940, District Superintendent of Schools Jerry Hickman McGaugh gave Seal Beach schoolchildren extra cause to celebrate. Since the Memorial Day holiday fell on Thursday, May 29th that year,  McGaugh announced that the school district would make Friday a day off and thus giving students a four-day weekend. Surely they must have spent the extra free time studying for their upcoming end-of-the-school-year final exams.

    – Michael Dobkins

    Have you enjoyed this and other This Date in Seal Beach History posts?

    If so, please consider making a small donation of a dollar or more to help defray the online subscriptions and other research costs that make this blog possible.

    Donations can be made securely with most major credit cards directly through PayPal. Just click on paypal.me/MichaelDobkins to go to PayPal. Thank you.

    This Date in Seal Beach History also has an online store hosted at Cafepress where you can order shirts, tote bags, stationery, and other gift items imprinted with vintage Seal Beach images. Visit the online store by clicking here.

  • Now They’re Just More Bricks in The Wall

    Images of The Week

    Seal Beach Elementary School – March 11, 1933

    Thus far, March has brought Seal Beach tsunami warnings, flooding, destroyed piers, and now earthquakes.

    77 years ago this Wednesday, a 6.4 magnitude earthquake shook Southern California at 5:54 P.M., killing 115 people and bringing an estimated 40 million dollars of damages and destruction to homes, businesses, buildings and roads.

    The heaviest damage was in Long Beach, but Seal Beach was also hit hard on Main Street and, as you can see below in these photographs taken the day after the earthquake, at Seal Beach Elementary School, later renamed Mary E. Zoeter School.

     

     

    One of the gentlemen surveying the damage in the third picture is Seal Beach school district superintendent, Jerome Hickman McGaugh, one of the truly great personages of Seal Beach history.

    McGaugh went to Sacramento and successfully lobbied for funds to rebuild Zoeter school.  Bricks from the damaged buildings were used to build a brick wall around the rebuilt school, and it still stands around the Zoeter property today.

    Blowing up a portion of a 1931 aerial photo doesn’t give us many details, but it does offer a glimpse of the pre-earthquake layout of Zoeter school.

    Shifting tectonic plates couldn’t shut down Zoeter School, but dwindling student enrollment in the 1990s lead to the grades being consolidated at J. H McGaugh School (named after you know who), and Zoeter’s administrative offices were then converted to retail use, leaving the playground for recreational use.  In 2007, the remaining empty Zoeter classrooms were razed due to asbestos concerns.  The asbestos-free Sun-N-Fun Preschool classroom at 12th Street and Landing Avenue is now the only part of the property still used for education.

    Time permitting, I’ll share some more photos of earthquake destruction in Seal Beach (and perhaps an ironic tale of Seal Beach’s sinful past) later this week.

    We’ll share more historical pictures and photos of Seal Beach as the year progresses.   Be sure to check back every Monday for a new Seal Beach image.

    – Michael Dobkins

    Have you enjoyed this and other This Date in Seal Beach History posts?

    If so, please consider making a small donation of a dollar or more to help defray the online subscriptions and other research costs that make this blog possible.

    Donations can be made securely with most major credit cards directly through PayPal. Just click on paypal.me/MichaelDobkins to go to PayPal. Thank you. 

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