STORIES FROM THE PAST

50 years ago

Old soldiers may face away, but former classmates of El Centro’s Union High School over the weekend showed they have no intentions of fading away.

It was 50 years ago that 44 young people graduated in the class of 1918, and 11 members plus 29 graduates from the classes of 1915-1922 showed up in El Centro to renew old acquaintances.

“It just didn’t seem like 50 years had passed,” said Mrs. Lucy J. Deaton, who held a Sunday breakfast for her classmates at the Casa del Valle Motel. “We just started talking where we left off a half century ago.”

Mrs. Deaton said it was reassuring to see how well everyone had weathered the years, “some had not changed much at all.”

However, they did have to admit they are no longer in the Pepsi generation — at least age wise, “Now that we have reached the time where we are finding greener pastures,” Mrs. Deaton remarked at a dinner in the Ember Glo Restaurant Saturday, “we are too old to vault to fence.”

40 years ago

Julie Casey and Diane Thomas of the Brawley Wildcats have been selected among the top-girls basketball players in Southern California by the SCIF.

The Desert Valleys League standouts have been placed on the 1978 All-SCIF Class AA teams. Casey earned a first-team berth.

Thomas placed on the second team.

Casey, a 5-9 forward averaged 14 rebounds per game in 1978 for coach Nadine Grass.

She is a repeat All-SCIF star, voted to the AllState team a year ago.

Brawley depended on Casey for an 18-point average.

She shot 45 percent from the field during her senior year and was able to make 55 percent of her free throw chances.

Thomas has been a thorn in the side of enemy defenses for years. She was on All-SCIF a year ago and coaches in Southern California put her there again in 1978.

Diane, a 6-0 center, finished with a 13-point average taking down 13 rebounds per game.

She averaged four blocked shots and hit 48 percent of her shots from the floor.