Special Interest Group: West Valley class of 1955 get a dose of Darcy’s every other month

The orange and black napkins in the water glasses at Darcy’s Restaurant in Spokane Valley marked the table of a special group of regulars.

Every other month, members of the West Valley High School Class of 1955 meet for lunch.

“We started with four people meeting for lunch in 2016,” Carol Mueller said. “Three gals and one guy. All of us had lost a son. “

The group grew as more classmates joined them.

These folks are some of the last graduates from the original 1924 school located at Trent and Argonne. A new school was built in 1957.

“It was a beautiful brick building with a beautiful entrance,” Mueller said. “We all walked to school. I was so sad when they tore it down.”

The old school’s two-story granite archway sat in storage for years, but was reassembled in the new glassed-in entryway in 2007.

Mueller hasn’t visited the new school, but classmate Frank Wagstaff has.

“One of my daughters-in-law taught music at West Valley,” he said. “I celebrated my 80th birthday there and toured the hallways.”

He enjoys lunching with his former classmates.

“After COVID, our meetings took on more meaning than they had in the past,” Wagstaff said. “We value these relationships more as we get older.”

Wagstaff, the class salutatorian, went on to earn a Ph.D. in engineering before returning home to work in the family business, Wagstaff Inc.

In high school, he enjoyed band and played baseball for two years. His freshman coach also coached basketball for 14 seasons at West Valley and went on to have a successful career as a college coach.

“Jud Heathcote coached Magic Johnson at Michigan State when they won the NCAA championship,” Wagstaff said.

Kay Cook remembers Heathcote well.

“I was a cheerleader,” she said. “He wore argyle socks, and he’d pull the top of his socks up when things weren’t going well.”

In addition to cheerleading, Cook played tennis, volleyball and badminton.

She didn’t let a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis in her junior year slow her down.

“I was a carhop at the A&W stand on Trent,” Cook said. “I served a lot of root beer. We had to work for what we had.”

Kent Rudeen echoed that sentiment.

He played basketball under coach Heathcote.

“Basketball was a luxury a lot of kids took for granted,” Rudeen said. “I didn’t. I didn’t play football or run track. I worked hard.”

He reflected on the differences between the Class of ’55 and the class of 2025.

“We didn’t have school counselors,” he said. “The only counselor we had was the principal, and he had a paddle. You didn’t want to go to his office.”

The coursework differed, too.

“Reading, writing, arithmetic and science were a big deal. All the sociology stuff going on in schools now, we’d never heard of.”

Rudeen is confident that the Class of ’55’s education is equal to, or excels, the class of 2025.

“If they matched our test scores against the tests today, we’d beat them,” he said. “Sometimes the old ways are better.”

He’s proud of how his classmates have stayed in touch.

“Other classes fade away,” Rudeen said. “Ours hasn’t.”

Ayako Tanaka agreed.

“It’s good to see our classmates, even if we’re getting older,” she said.

Her journey to West Valley came via Heart Mountain Relocation Center, an internment camp where she and her family were held during World War II.

“Our family lived in Seattle, and we were put on a train. We had to close all the blinds because they didn’t want anyone to know who was on it,” she said. “We were sent to Tule Lake, California, and then to Heart Mountain, Wyoming.”

Tanaka, just 6 or 7 at the time, remembers the fear.

“It was so cold,” she said. “The camp (Heart Mountain) had guard towers with soldiers with guns and was surrounded by barbed wire. It was scary!”

Her parents, two brothers and her sister waited in long lines for food in the mess hall, and the only toilets were outhouses without doors.

“Some of the women put up cardboard for privacy.”

Tanaka’s father got a job with the railroad, and that’s what brought them to Spokane.

“We were the only Japanese students in the whole school,” she said.

“The kids called us Japs. They didn’t know any better.”

Despite the hardship, she thrived at West Valley and made many friends.

“Hard stuff teaches you to appreciate things when you’re older,” Tanaka said. “I loved home ec, and I was in pep club and choir. Our choir was the first large group to sing on KHQ-TV.”

She looks forward to the bimonthly lunches.

“It’s nice to see everyone and catch up and talk about old times,” she said.

The original West Valley High School is gone. The surrounding landscape, once filled with orchards and farms, has changed, but the lifelong connections forged by the Class of ’55 remain.

“Our last official reunion was our 67th in 2022,” Mueller said.

“About 65 attended, including spouses. The official reunions are winding down as the class shrinks, but our lunches at Darcy’s will continue. It’s a wonderful group.”