Monday Memories: Growing Up in the 1960s in San Diego

I was born in 1943, and the 1960’s were the years that I was aged 16 to 26, my formative years. Here are my top memories from the decade (in no particular order):

• I attended San Diego High School (“The Old Gray Castle”), and took Honors courses in English, Math and Science, plus the usual social studies, electives (two more years of Latin) and gym, graduating in June 1961. I took the city bus down 30th Street and west on Broadway to 12th Avenue downtown and walked the four blocks north to the school.

• I loved math (trig, geometry, calculus) and science (biology, chemistry, physics) and enrolled at San Diego State University as a Mathematics major, and changed to Aerospace Engineering after one semester. That was an excellent career move.

• I rode the bus from home on 30th Street to San Diego State every school day from September 1961 to January 1966 - up 30th Street, east on El Cajon Boulevard, and north on College Avenue. It was essentially all work and no play. I ate lunch in the cafeteria, and studied in the library between classes. I did attend some football games in the campus stadium.

• Coaching baseball became a summertime passion - I coached my brothers’ Little League teams with my father from 1964-1968, and then managed my own team in Little League from 1969 to 1973.

• My first paying job was in the summer of 1963 as a training camp boy with the AFL San Diego Chargers out in the San Diego County high desert. That was interesting, and I got free exhibition game tickets too. One of the football players, Frank Buncom, took several camp boys out hunting and hiking in the early morning. We invited Frank to dinner in early 1964 to meet the family - what a great, big, guy.

• My first aerospace paying job was in the summer of 1964, with Wagner Aircraft, a small aircraft startup in Point Loma (I rode the bus for an hour each way). I worked with experienced aerodynamicists and designers who helped me later in my career.

• The next two summers, I worked at Sunrise Aircraft in La Mesa, a successor to Wagner Aircraft still started by Fred Wagner, a World War II German emigre. The part-time job became full-time after I graduated from college in January, 1966. I got to travel to Boston on business to attend meetings with a contractor, and was tasked to write a NASA Contractor’s Report for the project.

• I took the bus to work in La Mesa (an hour each way plus a 10 minute walk) until I got a car in October 1966. That enabled me to move out into a series of apartments on my own in North Park and Pacific Beach. I also bowled in several leagues each week and started drinking and hanging out in bowling alley bars, which didn’t help my bowling average much, but added to my education.

• Sunrise Aircraft shut its doors in March 1967, and I was unemployed for six months. I finally got a job in October 1967 at Rohr Aircraft in Chula Vista, where two of my Wagner colleagues were working. This was fortuitous and stabilizing, and turned into a 35 year career.

• My first significant hobby during the 1960s was listening to the AM local radio, collecting radio station Top 40 surveys, and making my own Top 40 favorites list every week. My favorite artists in the decade were the Shirelles, Beach Boys, Neil Sedaka, Elvis Presley, Four Seasons, Righteous Brothers, Supremes, Herman’s Hermits, etc. I liked ballads, upbeat rhythm and blues, surf music, etc. My favorite all-time song is “I Love How You Love Me” by the Paris Sisters.

• I met a fellow named Randy Lee at my brother’s baseball game in 1961, and he was into DXing (listening for distant radio stations) and that became my all-consuming interest. I became a weekly DX club bulletin editor (blogging by mimeograph and postal mail!) for foreign reception for several years, and attended DX conventions in Milwaukee, Montreal, and Boston, plus several California meetings. Eventually, I became somewhat of an expert in radio wave propagation.

• I didn’t date at all until I met Randy Lee and he had a car and many female friends (I didn’t have any - too shy!), and then it was only once in awhile until I got a car in 1966. I had several girlfriends in the 1968-1969 time frame, and met Linda in early 1968 but we didn’t date steadily until August 1969. Then it was full-time until I proposed on Valentine’s Day, 1970. This was another great decision!

• San Diego sports (especially Chargers football, Aztecs football, Padres baseball) have always been of interest. The Chargers came to town in 1961 and I attended many games from 1963 into the 1970s, often with my bowling buddies and then with Linda. They won the AFL championship in 1963, and I was there. The Padres were a Pacific Coast League team until 1969 when they became a National League expansion team. The Aztecs became a regional college football power in the 1960s under Don Coryell. I’m still a diehard fan!

• National and world affairs have always interested me. President Kennedy’s assassination, the Space Race (Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Moon landing), the Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations, the Watts and other riots, and the Vietnam War (I got a draft deferment) were the big national stories and I avidly followed them all.

• The two trips to Boston introduced me to my father’s siblings and their families, my cousins, who lived in New England. With my aunt Gerry, I visited some of the Seaver family homes and did some sightseeing. Most of all, the aunt/uncle and cousin contacts started me thinking about family history.

Each one of those bullets is a family story! What story do you want to hear?  Onward!!

I wish I had more photographs from these years, but I don't!

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NOTE:  Some of my Monday Memories are from earlier blog posts and/or my MyHeritage MyStories book, edited and/or embellished. <G>

Copyright (c) 2025, Randall J. Seaver

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