Michael Brayer:  

Life I attended St. Joseph of Cupertino School from 1956-1958 and was an altar boy at the church. I remember my friends Richard Morris, Lars Olavson, Paul Pelosi, Peggy Pon, Maureen Cooley, Jimmy Schmidt, Kenny Hermsmeyer, Kathy Forbes, and Claudia. It was difficult leaving Cupertino, where I had many friends, but my father wanted to move to Fontana, where my Grandfather had a friend, who had an acre and a half of land. It was a nice place with an old Spanish house and a lot of room to play. I attended St. Joseph Academy from 1958 to 1962. I attended Fontana High School from 1962-1966, where I was fortunate to have Klair Bybee, Jack Pylant, and Miss Donna Barrick, who directed me in a number of plays and musicals. One of the best actor/singers at FOHI was Kenny Prymus, who sang the song "Suicide is Painless" in the movie M*A*S*H*. I began my college career at Chaffey College, then moved and attended San Bernardino City College. Then, I left Fontana in 1968, when I enrolled at San Diego State. I lived in Ocean Beach with Rich Daversa and Bill Burke, worked five years at Kaiser Permanente Hospital. I went back to Fontana when my mom died, then moved back to San Diego, and graduated from San Diego State University. I then received a teaching job in the San Diego City School District and taught English at Gompers Secondary School for fifteen years and just recently retired-at least for now. I have hiked down into the Grand Canyon twice at Havasupai, splashing in the Beaver, Havasu and Mooney FalIs. I enjoy riding my bike for fun and exercise and have rode the Trans Am with three other Gompers teachers from Florence, OR to Anapolis, MD in 2000. The past three summers (2002, 2003, 2004), I biked the Pacific Coast from Vancouver, Canada to San Diego and this summer(2005) I rode the TransAm again, but rode only 1900 miles this time from Portland, Oregon, through Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Yelowstone, and Colorado, ending at Hoosier Pass and Fairplay. I still like playing guitar and occasionally write a song or two-when the muse inspires me. I am also crazy about hiking, bowling, photography, and the San Diego Padres. School Miss Donna Barrick was my favorite teacher. You couldn't have a better teacher than her. Not that I didn't have many more, like Klair Bybee, who first got me into Drama, Jack Pylant, my Science teacher who single handedly brought me from a C- student to a B+/A student, and Mr. Berard, my math teacher, who could make Math seem easy by his method of calming students down and talking to them like young adults, not wild animals, which we were. But Miss Barrick was the Drama teacher at Fontana High School and was the funniest, craziest, and best. She worked hard every day and would always help you when you needed it the most. I was a Thespian, which is a person who worked in plays at Fontana High School. When we were goofing off, she would bring us back to earth. Miss B, we called her, when we were working on plays. She would get the very best performances out of us. I remember playing the part of Dr. Einstein in "Arsenic and Old Lace" and during the dress rehearsal, I just couldn't get my part right. She took me aside, and worked with me for over an hour on getting me to walk bent over like an old man, to speak like a a crafty German, and to keep my eyes wide and weird like Peter Lorre. She rarely got upset with any of us. She respected us, and never talked down to us. She directed us in "Carousel", "The Crucible", "The Music Man", and "Blithe Spirit", as well as "Arsenic and Old Lace". Her class was always way out there, and I mean in an interesting way. She would make you work hard because we students knew that to give a good performance we had to be our best, or we couldn't be in her class. I remember Cliff Olson, as Teddy Roosevelt in "Arsenic and Old Lace", yelling "Charge!" running down the aisle and then blowing his trumpet that blew out many a person's tympanic membrane. She was a large, beautiful woman with a huge hear...Expand for more