Junipero Serra High School begins its 75th year in San Mateo
With the first day of 2018-19 classes scheduled for next week, Junipero Serra High School is preparing to observe its 75th year of educating boys on the Peninsula.
It began rather inauspiciously. When Serra made its debut in San Mateo on Sept. 11, 1944, there was little fanfare, no hoopla, no muss, no fuss.
The new, all-male Catholic school, a product of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, began life with 86 students, all freshmen and sophomores, and five faculty members in the former Country School, a two-story facility, located on the northern tip of Alameda de las Pulgas in the town’s budding Baywood neighborhood. Tuition was a princely $125 that year.
The debut was low-key. In a six-paragraph Sept. 19 item buried on Page
5 of the Burlingame Advance, a long-gone daily newspaper, Principal Rev. Vincent Breen noted that his infant institution was the first Catholic high school west of the Mississippi to be staffed entirely by archdiocesan priests. It was something new.
Father Breen indicated that he anticipated a “great increase in enrollment after the war.” He turned out to be quite prescient.
When Serra opened, World War II was in full, horrific cry. The Allies had accomplished their historic landings in Normandy on the coast of northern France just months before and were in the process of rolling back the Axis powers, both in Europe and Asia.
Everyone on the American home front was riveted on momentous events overseas. So it’s understandable that the arrival of a new Catholic secondary school in San Mateo merited scant attention.
In September 1944, the suburban Peninsula was a very different place. A modest, two-bedroom home in San Mateo sold for $6,500. Two pounds of Maxwell House coffee cost 57, cents and a sumptuous lunchtime smorgasbord at Dinah’s Shack in Palo Alto set you back a whopping 85 cents. San Francisco Airport (the “international” part would come later) had one small terminal.
The operating budget for San Mateo County government was listed at $1.5 million. There were no freeways, no sprawling shopping centers, no Foster City, no Redwood Shores.
Serra’s initial school year was not a walk in the park. Years ago, prior to his passing away, Father John Zoph, who spent two full generations at the school, recalled those early days in an interview:
“There was a manpower shortage. Every able-bodied male was in the military. It was hard even to find a janitor. Some of the Fathers did latrine duty. Building materials were hard to come by. And yet we had to expand.
“In January 1945, we were conducting classes in rooms with no heat, no doors, no windows. … We scrounged a coal stove and huddled around it for warmth, all of us dressed in long johns, parkas and woolen hats purchased from Army surplus.”
The original Serra dress code was tougher than it is today. According to Father Zoph, “Every student had to wear a tie, even with a sport shirt. I used to carry a dozen spare ties in my valise for emergencies. Tennis shoes were forbidden.”
He added that discipline was straight-forward and, frequently, administered right on the spot. As Father Zoph put it, “The maintenance of discipline was a never-ending battle. I once removed a student from class by picking his desk up with him in it and literally throwing them both out the door.”
As the years passed by, things began to change, albeit slowly and with more than a few ups and downs along the way.
Since 1955, Serra has been located on West 20th Avenue. According to Serra President Lars Lund, his current student body embraces 836 boys; 236 are freshmen. Employees number just under 90. Serra’s worldwide alumni exceed 12,000 men. Current tuition is $21,750.
The school, renovated, modernized and expanded over time, has produced physicians, lawyers, novelists, teachers, scientists, military men, professional athletes (Tom Brady, Barry Bonds and Lynn Swann among them), artists, law enforcement officials, judges, musicians, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, journalists, clergymen, politicians, actors and more.