Jan Mongoven:
CLASS OF 1968
Vista High SchoolClass of 1968
Vista, CA
Vista High SchoolClass of 1968
Vista, CA
Jan's Story
I've lost a lot of hair, plus a chunk of my right ear to skin cancer, since 1968. I really don't care anymore. I'm happy to be alive and functional in my early 70s. VHS grads from the 1950s through the 1990s (over 40 years!) will remember my mom, Carol Mongoven, who died October 19, 2018 (at 90), and my dad, Coach Pat Mongoven who died May 15, 2021 (at 97).
I've had two very fulfilling careers - 32 years as a San Marcos High School teacher and 16 years in the Carlsbad Library Genealogy/Carlsbad History Division. I retired from SMHS in December 2005, and I've worked in the Genealogy/Carlsbad History Division at the Georgina Cole Library in Carlsbad since July 2006.
I have an amazingly artistic, smart, witty and beautiful wife, Danna. We married on June 15, 1974, and have two wonderful sons, Cory and Casey. We have an adorable grandson, Miguel Gabriel Mongoven, Cory's son. Our family, like all of yours, has had its shares of ups and downs. Still, we're alive and we love one another.
Best wishes to my VHS classmates - the Class of 1968. We've been through so much, right? The five years before our graduation night were marked by turmoil. On November 22, 1963, most of us were 8th graders at Washington and Lincoln Junior High Schools. I sat in Mr. Olsen's science class at Washington, when our lesson was interrupted by a message on a tiny loudspeaker perched high above us on the front wall. Our principal, Dudley Hancher, announced that something important had happened. He then piped into our classrooms a live radio feed from one of our national broadcasts (CBS or ABC or NBC, because that's all America had at the time!). I'm sure that my VHS classmates at our cross-town rival, Lincoln Jr. High, heard the same from their principal. JFK had been shot. At first, nobody knew if the president was dead or alive. The bell soon rang and lunchtime began, as we filtered outside to our tables. At this moment, tacos, spaghetti, macaroni and cheese were the last thing we thought about. Some joked, some cried. But most of us, as I remember, were simply lost emo...Expand for more
tionally. We were just kids, with little life experience to understand the gravity of it all.
Within an hour, we learned that President Kennedy was dead. We hung around the outside lunch tables. School was dismissed early. I walked, as I often did, from Washington Junior High to Vista High, where Dad taught P.E. One of the high school kids, John Adams, and I shot basketballs at the chain-link hoops on the outdoor courts. He said, "Boy, you'll never forget this." True, John, none of us will. As for John Joel Adams, I think of him and remember his incredible smile. Sadly, you died in a car accident in 1976. To his sister, Judy, know that there are lots of us who remember fondly.
On April 4, 1968, my buddy Dennis Melton and I drove home from VHS baseball practice with the car's AM radio on. A voice interrupted the music. Martin Luther King had been shot. We were stunned. Next, on June 6, 1968, just days before we were to graduate, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. I lay in bed that night, safe at our home at 234 Mar Vista Drive, with tears in my eyes.
Not long afterward in Vietnam, we lost Harry Kim, Kirk Rauch and Dave Kelkner - my VHS wrestling teammates. We miss them. My hope will always be that they served our country, so that America would be united as one. Sadly, unity seems impossible today.
Please don't use my Classmates site as a political bludgeon. I'd rather that you not know of my political leaning. But, if you must, I'm right-of-center and libertarian. If that taints me in your eyes, then you don't have to respond to my site. I loved seeing my classmates at our 50th reunion in August of 2018. Thanks to all the women (plus my over-half-century buddy, Steve Lane!) who prepared the way for that! It was wonderful connecting with people that I hadn't seen in decades. Amazing! My hope is that our parents, all of them gone now, somehow know that most of their kids have grown to be amazing people, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents! I'm so proud to have been a part of the VHS Class of '68. Go, Panthers!
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