This article courtesy of the Glendale News-Press


Tuesday, May 15, 2001


THE HUNDRED-YEAR SCOOP
Special edition of student newspaper Explosion will feature 40 pages on school's centennial.
By ALECIA FOSTER


     SOUTHWEST GLENDALE -- Student Gabriela Galvan thumbed through copies of old Glendale High School yearbooks looking for pictures of the school's annual Oratorical competition.
     "Do you like that one? Should I save it?" she asked fellow student Edit Danilian.
     The students were two of more than 20 putting the final touches Monday on the student newspaper's special edition celebrating Glendale High's 100th anniversary.
     Copies of the school's Explosion newspaper -- all 40 pages of it -- will be handed out during the anniversary celebration on Saturday.
     Among the highlights: a tribute to John Wayne, the school's most famous graduate; a tribute to the winners of the Pat Navolanic Memorial Award, named after a student who died in an accident in 1966; and the school's top 25 athletes.
     Putting it all together has been quite a task, said co-editor-in-chief Sheri Guerami.
     "This is the biggest paper we've had in the history of Glendale High School," Guerami said.
     Researching the history was one of the toughest areas in putting it all together, said Tania Chatila, co-editor-in-chief.
     "The yearbooks have only surface information," she said.
     But those books did give the student journalists a starting point. They also relied on the school's alumni association and past editions of the Explosion, which has been around since 1912.
     Information from each of the sources had to be double-checked too, said student Veronica Varriga.
     "Some of the yearbooks had the wrong information," she said.
     Students Sharon Oh, Amy Jue and Andrea Friedman said they learned a lot about the school's history from the project. One topic they worked on was the affect of World War II on the school.
     Five teachers from the school were drafted or enlisted in the Armed Forces during the war, said Andrea Friedman.
     The three teens tried to compile a list of the school's students who also enlisted, referring to past Explosions, which had published the names of those students occasionally, she said.
     They were only able to come up with 40 names, Friedman said. The students had seen figures as high as 250 students that were drafted or enlisted, she said.
     Saturday's edition of the paper is an expansion of the original edition published May 4 for Glendale High students. Additional advertising sold by the school's alumni association allowed the expansion.
     Overall, the students were pleased with their work.
     "When we saw the final project, it was a great feeling," Chatila said. "We knew the amount of time and effort we put into it."