That’s a deer in the end zone!

Barry Bartlett (L) and Buddy Cudd look through the first yearbook at Yosemite High School. The book brought back lots of memories of students and staff members, evoking comments about various people. They laughed as they looked at a picture of Curt Campbell, one of the original staff members who typified the 1970s: “Campbell looks like a dude off the Sonny and Cher show,” Mr. Cudd said.

The Yosemite High School mascot could have been a beaver, rattlesnake, deer or woodpecker, for they all abounded on the property before the school was built, but a student committee chose the badger.

Today, the beavers are gone and, thankfully, so are the rattlesnakes, but the woodpeckers still are abundant and deer are occasionally seen. And the Badgers are stronger than ever, though none of the four-legged kind is found on the school site.

Barry Bartlett, one of the first people hired by the newly-formed Yosemite Union High School District in 1975, and Buddy Cudd, the first person to actually start work in the new district, on May 1, 1975, remember well the days when the 95-acre site was just bare ground at the end of a narrow dirt road that started where Oakhurst Elementary School is located.

The land had been purchased in 1960 by the Sierra Joint Union High School District when all of the communities in Eastern Madera County were part of that district. It was to be the site of a second campus, but that never came to pass.

Instead, residents broke away from SJUHSD and formed a brand new district. The new district was given the land.

Mr. Bartlett remembers the first time he walked the site with Ken Savage, who had been hired as district superintendent. All that was on the site was a wagon-wheel well that Sierra had drilled (Mr. Cudd recalls that it produced 409 gallons per minute).

“There was nothing past Oakhurst Elementary School,” Mr. Bartlett recalls. “There were no bridges on the property, you drove through the creek. There was a dirt road, just two tracks like a ranch road from OES, and there was barbed wire along the property.”

The first people hired by the district in 1975 were Mr. Savage, superintendent; Susie Rodgers, receptionist (now Susie Dooman); Kay McDonald, secretary; Jerry Livesey, community-school relations; Mr. Bartlett, counselor and Mr. Cudd, maintenance supervisor.

Mr. Cudd was able to start right away, May 1, but the other people had contracts in other school districts until July 1.

Mr. Bartlett, Mr. Cudd and Mr. Livesey were located in a double-wide mobile along Pierce Drive when they first came on the job. They recall that there were three separate offices and a reception area.

For recreation, they built a horseshoe pit and would spend their lunch break pitching horseshoes.

Mr. Cudd chuckles as he recalls a person who stopped at the office to sell them furniture, dressed in a suit. It was lunchtime, so they asked if he played horseshoes. He did not. But on that day, he did. “We told him to take off his coat and join us, we needed that fourth person. After our game of horseshoes, we could talk business.”

Mr. Bartlett walked to the school site every day, and every day the beavers would have more trees gnawed down.

Groundbreaking

The official groundbreaking for Yosemite High was June 8, 1975. Construction started in earnest and continued even after school opened.

Each open space building, called “pods,” included six large laminated beams. A pipe in the middle of the building supported these beams until they were secured.

Mr. Bartlett recalls the concern some of the people had about what would happen when that pipe was removed. He and Mr. Cudd remember watching as the pipe came down, wondering all the while if those huge beams would stay in place. They did.

However, this part of the project was not without problems. Mr. Cudd recalls that the beams turned out to be too long on one building and Mr. Bartlett adds that the beams were covered with three-inches of snow. Still, one of the workers grabbed a chainsaw and walked out on the beams to saw off the extra length.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Mr. Cudd says.

Lots of ‘drains’

What is now the football field was just a big wet meadow when construction started. French drains were put in all over the area to make it useable. Deep trenches were dug to accommodate the drains. “If anyone ever digs up that field, they will be surprised at all the pipes they find,” he says.

When school first opened there was not a gymnasium, so the volleyball team, coached by Valinda Clevenger, practiced under the oak trees, dodging acorns and the deer that wandered through.

Mr. Cudd and Mr. Bartlett remember that “we just didn’t lose in volleyball. Valinda had an incredible record as a coach.”

The unique mountain qualities at YHS were distracting to athletes from the valley who came here for contests.

Mr. Bartlett remembers the students from places such as Firebaugh who would come to Oakhurst for basketball games when it was snowing. “They couldn’t concentrate on the game,” he remembers, because they were so fascinated by the snow.

Don’t tackle that deer!

Also, when the school opened, there was not lighting on the football field, so all games had to be played during the day. “The other teams would get so distracted because deer would run across the end zone,” Mr. Bartlett says.

After a couple of years, lights were added but that project, too, takes an interesting twist. They heard about a college in Southern California that was replacing its incandescent lights, so they made arrangements to get them. They took a trailer and drove down to get them, brought them back and put them in storage until they were ready to be installed.

With help from Joe Giebel, then local manager of Pacific Gas and Electric Company, the poles were installed and everything was made ready to install the lights. Before that happened though, the district received a grant for more energy efficient lighting so the ones they retrieved from Los Angeles were never installed.

Lights were an interesting feature of the classroom buildings as well. Mr. Cudd recalls that they were “big bulbs that buzzed all the time,” adding to the already-confusing atmosphere because there were no walls in the buildings.

He remembers they checked the amperage being used by these bulbs before they were replaced and it took 50 amps to operate them. Florescent bulbs were installed and they took 13 amps. “That made a big change in our light bill,” Mr. Cudd recalls, noting that was the first of many things he has done through the years to make the campus more energy efficient.

Loggers-in-learning

Yet another adventure for the original employees was their trip to get a redwood log the US Forest Service had given them for a sign. They went in Mr. Bartlett’s pickup to Nelder Grove where the log was located. It was so heavy it bent the tailgate of his pickup, which, he recalls, was a big, heavy-duty vehicle.

Once they got it back to the site, Mr. Livesey carved the school’s name and made it into a large, attractive sign.

While all of these projects kept the first staff members plenty busy, there was an equally daunting task at hand — hiring all of the rest of the employees needed to open a school.

“As long as I live, I’ll remember those stacks of applications,” Mr. Bartlett says. “For one English job, there were more than 200 applicants.”

Five of them — Mr. Savage, Mr. Livesey, Mrs. McDonald, Mr. Bartlett and Mr. Cudd —went through every application and graded it. “We worked more than eight hours a day for months going through applications,” Mr. Cudd recalls.

Potential employees were also given a battery of tests, suggested by Board President Harry Baker Jr. These tests were to determine their ability, personality and interests. “We wanted to be sure they really wanted to teach,” Mr. Cudd says.

When they narrowed the pool down to about five people per job, they would go visit the people where they were living and/or working at the time. Through this process, they hired the first 25 teachers and the support staff.

Food test proves tasty

Visiting the applicants could be rewarding. They remember that Ed Dent had applied for the job as food service teacher and, at the time, he was working at Camp Green Meadows in Fish Camp. They went up for a visit and the memory of the meal he prepared for them still brings a smile to their faces and comments about how good it was. Mr. Cudd laughs, “We hired him on the spot.”

Mr. Bartlett says two applicants will always stay in his mind. Ellen Jackson (now Peterson) drove to Oakdale instead of Oakhurst to pick up an application the last day. She was crushed when she arrived there about 5 p.m. on deadline day and found out she was in the wrong town.

A cooperative spirit existed at Oakdale and at Oakhurst. A call from the secretary in Oakdale to the secretary in Oakhurst made it possible for her to pick up an application that they tacked to the door, fill it out and have it under the door the next morning.

Despite the trauma, it all worked and the interview committee, on hearing the story, decided Ms. Jackson had the determination and resourcefulness they wanted in their teachers. She was hired and remains on the staff 25 years later.

The other applicant Mr. Bartlett will never forget is Dan Walker (now owner of Dan’s Auto in Oakhurst). He was applying for the position of auto shop teacher and he showed up at for the interview late, smeared with grease. He had stopped on his way to help a woman change a tire on Highway 41.

“The teachers we hired were blue-chippers, just outstanding,” Mr. Cudd says. “They were truly outstanding,” Mr. Bartlett adds.

Community bonding

Besides overseeing the construction of the entire facility and hiring staff, this original group also spent a lot of time in the community and at parents’ homes explaining the school’s mission and program.

“We met in small groups with all parents and students to tell them about the school,” Mr. Cudd says. “Everyone knew what the program would be.”

However, the plan turned out to be too ambitious and after the first year it was clear that the teachers and other staff members could not physically do all that was expected. Teachers were each assigned students for whom they were responsible and they were expected to make visits to their home, as well as teach and do all of the other work required.

There was also a tremendous amount of planning required for this new undertaking. Mr. Cudd and Mr. Bartlett remember that Mr. Savage had a cabin at Mineral King and they would go up there for two or three days at a time to plan the school. “He was a workaholic,” they say of Mr. Savage.

September 9, 1976 rolled around with the staff expecting 273 students. “We had counted them,” Mr. Bartlett says, “we knew how many we would have.” However, he says, 340 showed up that first day.

That first day, hot asphalt was being poured, carpeting was being put in buildings and there were open trenches all over campus. Only one building was ready to be used. All of the students jammed into that building and the educational process at YHS started. Newspaper photos from those days show some classes meeting on the football bleachers.

The first year the school was open, before the football goal posts were put up, a plane landed on the football field. The pilot was headed for Mariposa but ran out of gas, he saw a level area that seemed large enough to land on, so he came down. This happened on a weekend, so there were no students on campus. The pilot was not injured.

Mr. Bartlett and Mr. Cudd both want people to realize how important Dr. Paul and Martha Pitman were to the formation of YHS. “They were the movers and shakers,” Mr. Cudd says, recalling that Dr. Pitman decided there was going to be a high school in Oakhurst and then set out, with his wife, to gather support from the senior citizens. They also spent a lot of time in Sacramento, taking care of all of the political issues.

“They were critical” to the process, Mr. Bartlett says.

Now, more than 26 years after they were hired to shepherd the new school through its infancy, Mr. Cudd and Mr. Bartlett are both semi-retired. Mr. Cudd, who retired in September as director of maintenance, operations and transportation, works two days a week as a facilities consultant. Mr. Bartlett retired several years ago as head counselor. He is now the district’s home and hospital teacher, going to the hospital or student’s home when they are ill or injured.

They both look back with fond memories over their years at YHS. Mr. Cudd says “the job completely changed my life.”

They are pleased to know, also, that they changed students lives through their years of work at Yosemite High School.