David Morgan:
CLASS OF 1972
El Cerrito High SchoolClass of 1972
El cerrito, CA
David's Story
My story starts with a family that arrived in Berkeley in August 1968 after several days of driving across the country from Indiana. We were excited, but Our excitement turn to dismay when we pulled up to the house we were supposed to live in and it was already occupied. It’s set up a chain of events, flying back to Indiana and returning several months later to a small house 2 blocks west of ECHS. And so it was that I (and brother Daryle ‘76, sister Debi ‘84) became a Gaucho and not a Yellowjacket!
My experience at the ECHS is foundational to almost all things that have happened to me since. I have always said that I had a storybook child hood in Indiana. Save a few challenges, ECHS continued that storyline.
During my time at ECHS I was blessed with great mentors (Sandy & Cathy Berman, Eleanor Young), coaches who brought out the best in me (John Nules, Dick Jones, Larry Quirico) loyal teammates and good friends, especially Ricky Thompson and Mackey Williams.
Sports has always been an important part of the mix. My parents were both athletes who pushed excellence on the field and in the classroom. To this day I get a surge of excitement and a twinge of regret and I see the lights on the field from my parents house 2 blks above ECHS.
My senior year started wit my football teammates and I determined to win the league championship. And why not? We had achieved great success as 10th and 11th graders. We had witnessed some tremendous highs and lows of the preceding classes, including snapping the nations longest high school football winning streak, 60 games by Alameda HS.
By all measures, we had done our homework as we opened the season at Vallejo HS, the #1 ranked team in NorCal. We pounded them 42-21! Injuries are the nemesis of every team that seeks a crown. And so it was on an inconsequential play near the end of the game that I sustained a knee injury that impacted our efforts and would hamper me well into my college years.
Whatever his other shortcomings as a coach, no one can say that John Nules didn’t care about his players. He came to visit my parents the day after the game and offered to keep me at his house for the next week or so to help me rehabilitate my leg. He had a Jacuzzi at his home that would allow me to get treatment every day. This was just one of many kindnesses that he extended to me during my years as his player.
My injury wasn’t the only setback for us as in the next game we beat the hated Yellowjackets but we lost one of our best players for the balance of the year.
I loved playing QB for this team and regret not being at full strength for some really critical games. And while there were some disappointments, I wouldn’t trade a moment of the time I spent playing with the marvelous 3 M’s - Michael’s Burns, Robinson and Willis, Melvin Watson, Ken Price, Dale Bell, Don Canestro (who showed up at my dorm door at Dartmouth one spring!) Brad Bates(?) and others whom I cannot recall at this moment.
There is no such thing as growing up in Indiana and not loving basketball. And I carried that with me to ECHS. As in football, we have our best against some of the best, breaking BHS’s home court win streak (junior year) and knocking off the #1 Richmond Oilers at the Spartan Holiday Classic as seniors. But, things didn’t quite bounce my way as I sustained an injury to the same knee right after the tournament and before league play. Ken Brown, whose sweet corner jumper had earned him MVP on the tournament carried us along with Rick Vier and Anthony Gray. We had some great young talent too - Jon Stratford, Hillary Conner and Clarence Ruffin, who would go on to play at Long Beach State for my uncle, who was an assistant coach there.
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of the things I enjoyed most about being an athlete at EC was the support of teammates from/in other sports. Part of that was because unlike in todays world where students are almost forced to play one sport, you had the chance to participate in multiple sports. So your teammates crossed many spectrums. My football teammates seemed to be at every hoop contest, and they let you know they were in the house! And there were not many more fun spring days than attending an EC track meet! And there we had the best of both worlds in sprints, distances and field events As a 10th grader I loved weekend trips to the relay events. There was lots of time between events, to take it all in and to maybe slide in and get a ribbon or medal on a rely team. I tried to give it a serous run but there is no future running in an event where your teammates were Dale Scott and Richard Sproul! And I just didn’t understand why anyone would want to run in a race with as many laps as Clark Bailey ran!😂
Commitment, leadership and toughness/perseverance became more deeply ingrained in me from my athletic experiences as a Gaucho.
Before moving to California I had attended a lab school run by Indiana University. They were on the cutting edge of secondary school curriculum. In seventh and eighth grade I took French from a teacher who gave us handouts because she was writing the textbook that would be used by future classes. I social studies class was integrated with our English class - one of the first multidisciplinary classes taught at that level. There was a heavy emphasis on outlines and presentations.
In 10th grade at ECHS, Annie Soo began to instill in me what became a lifelong love for writing. She reserved the last 15 minutes of every class for writing. Most of the time there was not a specific topic, Through her I began to discover my voice as a writer. Mrs. Young took that one step further and added some discipline and structure to what I wrote. This foundation made a lot of my writing in college less arduous. My mentor from my 1st year in college until his death a few years ago, Dr. Berkey Nelson, took what they started, worked it and refined it. To this day it is a skill that has served me extremely well.
Though she won’t remember me, Risha Willams ‘70, was the first person to really make an impression on me about a selective college. She was gorgeous, smart and a leader - student body president as I recall. My first “secret” high school crush! Her acceptance and attendance at Stanford got my attention. And my mentors talked about their selective school experiences - Sandy Berman about Cornell and Eleanor Young about Mt. Holyoke - though not so much until my junior year.
Brunetta Wolfman, whose daughter Andrea was the yearbook editor, really pushed me on several levels. She saw leadership potential in me in ways that I didn’t. For instance, she very specifically told me to run for governor at Boy’s State. I didn’t, but my speech as a candidate for Lt. Governor caused enough of a stir to be seriously approached as a write-in candidate for governor - glad I didn’t take that advice!
I did manage to be selected to represent California at Boy’s Nation as a senator. I’m still trying to find the negative of the picture we (the 2 CA senators) took with Richard “I Am Not A Crook” Nixon. I figured if I ever ran for office that picture would pop up somewhere so politics were out!
Mrs. Wolfman ran an intern program for Dartmouth in the Oakland and Richmond public schools. For 2 years I met all the participating interns, including several basketball players. The camaraderie among them and the variety of experiences (study abroad, HBCU exchange programs) had a real impact on me.
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