A Series of What-If and My-Best-Guess Suppositions
By Jerry Flanagan
What-If the Los Angeles Examiner headline on July 18, 1955, read:
The Day Magic Became Real: Disneyland Opens in Canoga Park
Walt Disney, founder of the animation studio bearing his name, opened the gates to Disneyland in San Fernando Valley’s Canoga Park yesterday. The theme park welcomed 33,000 visitors on this first day.
Have you ever wondered where we would be today if Disneyland had opened in the San Fernando Valley instead of Anaheim?
Before Opening Day
It was September 1953 when Walt Disney announced plans for a
new Disneyland Park in Southern California. Canoga Park, on the west end of the
San Fernando Valley (SFV), was a strong candidate for the park’s site because
it was within reasonable proximity to the Disney Studios in Burbank. At the
time of the actual announcement, my Dad was in the navy working as an airplane
mechanic on Coronado Island, and we were living in naval housing where UC San
Diego is today. Just 5 months earlier, my Mom gave birth to twins—me and my
sister Janice—and my sister Judy would follow soon thereafter. After his discharge in 1954, Dad and Mom moved back to Los Angeles (LA), where they grew
up, and Dad worked in construction while attending college to get his degree in
police science. My parents were 24 years old and expecting a fourth kid when, seeking
a path to a suburban Promised Land, they identified their future home in a new
subdivision in West Anaheim about four miles from what would become known as
“the happiest place on earth." The house was under construction when they somehow
scraped together the down payment for their $10,000 dream home with 1100 square feet
and three bedrooms and two baths.
We moved to Anaheim in 1956, and the LAPD accepted my father into the ranks of law enforcement, where he worked and retired as a detective in Robbery and Homicide after 25 years. During those years, they stayed in the same home, and Dad, as a DIY carpenter (with some help from me), doubled its size to accommodate our growing family that would soon become nine. Oh, and he did this and paid for Catholic school educations for all the kids by working a side gig as a bouncer on weekends at the “World Famous” Pantry Café in LA. They never refinanced the house and proudly paid off the original mortgage after 30 years. My father died in that house in 1999.
Opening Day in Canoga Park
So that is our history in Anaheim, but What-if Canoga
Park was chosen as the site for Disneyland? The Stanford Research Institute
(SRI) produced an extensive report for Disney to study the options for the
park’s best location and delivered it to him in 1953. Multiple San Fernando
Valley locations were strong candidates, with Canoga Park being the strongest.
If Disney selected Canoga Park, then My-Best-Guess is my parents would
have settled down in SFV with their burgeoning new family because the
commute to work for my Dad would have been more manageable. Besides, both
of their families still resided in the city and SFV was a short
drive through the Hollywood Hills.
If they wanted to keep that four-mile distance from
Disneyland-Canoga Park, My-Best-Guess is we would have
ended up in one of the local communities like Chatsworth or Reseda. And instead
of our parish being St. Justin in Anaheim, then My-Best-Guess is it would
have been St. Catherine of Siena in Reseda or Our Lady of Grace in Encino. But
then there was high school.
Servite High School?
The Baby Boom was in full force in the early 1950s, and the population
in Southern California was exploding. Cardinal James McIntyre headed the archdiocese,
and he invited the Chicago province of the Servants of Mary to assist with
Catholic education in the region. Servite High School opened in 1959 in Anaheim,
but What-If my parents wanted to maintain a proximate distance to LA after Disneyland-Canoga Park opened? Then My-Best-Guess
is I would have attended Notre Dame High School in my freshman year in 1967. The
Servants of Mary would have discovered that the market for Catholic boys' high
schools in the San Fernando Valley was saturated, since Notre Dame High
School had been established in Sherman Oaks in 1947 by the same religious order
that also founded the university in South Bend, Indiana.
Instead of Friars as our mascot, we would be the Knights.
Instead of a costumed monk, it would be a leprechaun roaming
the stands at football games.
Instead of school colors being black and white, they would
be green and gold.
Instead of Friar Writers (as labeled on our current website),
we would be known as Knight Writers.
Instead of our archrival being the Mater Dei Monarchs, it
would be the Crespi Celtics of Encino.
My high school classmates would have hailed from far-flung
communities like Burbank, Glendale, Van Nuys, and Encino instead of Fullerton,
Whittier, Newport Beach, and the Mojave Desert.
College and Beyond
And then there is college. What-if I had not met my
Servite and Cypress College friend, Andy Prendiville, who suggested I join him
in transferring to UC Santa Barbara and rooming with him, Tony Passante, and
Ron Briggs (class of 1970) in Isla Vista? If that hadn’t happened, then My-Best-Guess
is I would have attended Pierce Community College and then transferred to
either CSU Northridge or UCLA and missed out on an adventurous coming-of-age
experience that, as Mark Twain describes, “is just before the 'inevitable
tragedy' of responsible life begins.”
I was always a geeky nerd and wore glasses since the third
grade because I was very nearsighted. But What-if I had normal vision
and I had not majored in chemistry but instead majored in the humanities or
social sciences? My-Best-Guess is I would have followed the same path as
all my college roommates! Law School! No offense to attorneys reading this,
but…Gag-Me-With-A-Spoon!
Since I used a Valley girl reference, What-if I had
not met my wife Mindy at UCSB? My-Best-Guess is I would have met and
“totally” married a Valley Girl. “Oh my God," life would have been so
different!
What-if Mindy had not hailed from San Diego, where I
followed and married her and raised our family? My-Best-Guess is I would
have found a career in science or engineering in SFV and worked at a firm like
Rocketdyne. Who knows, I may have become a rocket scientist!
Disneyland Again
Back to Disneyland. It was 1953, and after reading
the SRI report and seeing Anaheim as the top site recommendation, What-If
Walt Disney had not hopped in his car, bounded south on Interstate 5, broken
through Los Angeles’ smog-shrouded downtown, and entered the flat, peaceful valley
of farmland with blue skies and clean air that was covered with orange groves
and walnut trees? SRI consultants called the area around Ball Road and
the I-5 freeway “the amoeba" because it was a
broad, freeway‑centered zone for projected population growth.
This German-founded town had ample land for growth, and it
was reasonably priced. He discovered a city eager to create something distinctive,
free from bureaucratic obstacles, and featuring a user-friendly municipal
electric grid. A small town that reminded him of his hometown of
Marceline, Missouri, that he could replicate; in the entry, a magical, serene
downtown Main Street that would fit his vision of welcoming visitors that took them
back to the turn of the century and buffered them from the complexities of modern
life.
My parents dreamed of a brighter future for their children
and embraced the Disney vision, which revolved around this place, "Where Magic Gets Real."
Although I never got to ask them how much the Magic Kingdom influenced their choice
to live in the shadow of the Matterhorn, I am grateful they moved to Anaheim to
escape the stifling city life of LA.
A Place and a Time
I have read the accounts of those on this blog who had
brushes with the Viet Nam War draft after our 1971 graduation. My lottery
number was in the high 100s, but What-If if my father served in WWII vs.
the Korean War, and we ended up in Reseda in 1951 instead of Anaheim in 1956? By
broadening the focus from solely place—Disneyland and Anaheim—to include time,
the concept of place itself would necessarily be redefined. There was no
lure of Disneyland as the suburban Promised Land; instead, it would have been
to maintain proximity to the city of LA that had widespread appeal with growth fueled
by the GI Bill, Hollywood glamour, and ample jobs. What-If our family’s
parish was St. Catherine of Siena in Reseda? I would have attended grade
school there, memorized the same Baltimore catechism, and become a dedicated altar
boy. My-Best-Guess is I would have attended Notre Dame High School,
graduating in 1966. The cultural orientation would have been conformity, social
norms, and respect for authority, accompanied by John Glenn, John Wayne, and Sandy Koufax as our high school heroes. My-Best-Guess is that my musical heroes would have
been Elvis, Ricky Nelson, and Frankie Avalon. And let us not
forget the Viet Nam War; the reality of seeing combat in Southeast Asia out of high school would
have been very real.
What-We-Got
But then in 1963, the Kennedy assassination shifted consciousness
in ways that had significant downstream consequences. I would have been a
freshman at Notre Dame in 1963, but just five years later, in 1968, our
freshman year, What-We-Got were two assassinations, MLK and RFK, the
Chicago riots at the Democratic convention, and Richard Nixon’s election. Technology
advances gave us the Apollo 11 mission, and we watched Neil Armstrong walk on
the moon on our TV sets during the summer of 1969.
Our heroes changed too: Jerry West, Tom Wolfe and Jack Nicholson became the cultural figures we looked up to. And let us not forget the music. What-We -Got was The Beatles' release of Sergeant Pepper and The Doors' first album in 1967. Followed by the Stones, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Creedence, Grateful Dead, and the Who, who would release landmark albums later. The new emerging LA sound with the Eagles and Byrds defined our high school experience, and Iron Butterfly would play the Servite homecoming dance.
What-If Walt Disney had not taken that drive down I-5 on that fateful day and these events had not happened? I do not think I would be posting this essay to the 71WAnon site and planning for the next Zoom call here in 2026. And now we have notifications in our inbox of a 55-year reunion party that I do not believe other classes typically celebrate. We are fortunate to have these moments, and those afforded by telling our stories and reading these essays from our Friar brothers at this stage when our lights are inexorably dimming.
Overall, I would not trade the place and the time where and
when we grew up in Orange County. We managed to avoid a draft for a war we did not
want, we survived political upheaval, and most of us transitioned
into a normal college experience and career path. For my part, I am pleased
that the headline in the July 18, 1955, Los Angeles Herald read something like:
The Day Magic Became Real: Disneyland Opens in Anaheim
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