The school was small with 60 percent of the student body from military families, and because it was new, most of the teachers were student teachers, not much older than the freshmen and sophomores that made up the first students.

"It was a country school and everybody knew everybody," said Bermudez, 65. "You couldn't misbehave."

The students had their canteen dances, hay rides, sports and later Andy's Drive-Inn, he said. No one knew anything about drugs. "But smoking was rampant," he said.

This year it celebrates its 50th anniversary, beginning with an old fashioned Sock Hop tonight.

When the school was built in 1954, Kailua was a town in transition shedding its farming and dairy economy to become the bedroom community of Honolulu as new homes were developed in subdivisions like Coconut Grove and Kainalu Tract.

Back then, with a population of almost 8,000, students entering ninth grade had to attend Castle, Roosevelt or some other high school. With continuing growth projected, the town received its first high school.

The high school was first on the campus of the present site of Kailua Intermediate School on South Kainalu Drive. Farmland was vacated for the new campus, and the children in the community weeded and planted grass in the field next door to prepare it for sport activities, said Bermudez, who belonged to the first graduating class of 1957.

Developed in stages

When the school opened in 1954, cows, coconut trees and farms dominated the Kailua landscape. But the community had a movie theater, a bowling alley and a malt shop, setting the stage for the new generation that ushered in rock 'n' roll, bell bottom pants and poodle skirts.

Graduates from the 1950s return to the halls of Kailua Intermediate School, which, 50 years ago, was the first home of Kailua High School. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

Construction for the second campus in Pohakupu began in 1957, and some of the seventh-graders moved there in the spring of 1958. The Pohakupu campus would remain an intermediate school, adding a grade each year until 1962 when the high school was relocated there.

Shigeru Hotoke, who taught choir at the high school from its opening until 1986, said the beginning years were rough on the students and always required some adjustments for schedules.

"We had the largest high school in the state, around 3,000," said Hotoke, who created the Kailua Madrigals that toured the world each summer for 20 years.

"It was just bulging." said Hotoke, 76. "It was absolutely too large. Those were the rough days, but they were enjoyable too."

Past members of the Madrigals and choir, which was 500 strong for 15 years, will present a Christmas Concert in November, led by Hotoke.

The biggest difference between school now and then is the dress code, said Greg Sanchez, a 1957 graduate. He had to wear long pants, nice shirts and shoes, and the girls wore dresses or slacks. A student needed a pass to wear slippers.

"We never went to school with shorts, bermudas and sleeveless shirts," he said. "The girls now have short, short shorts. That was forbidden in our days. You couldn't show your knees."

Students respected teachers and were kept in line through a student patrol, Sanchez said.

Anyone who got into trouble was paddled or had to pull weeds, he said, adding that he knew the paddle well because he was a fighter.

Because the school was brand new, the students were able to choose the school colors, song and nickname, Sanchez said. However, the colors and the image representing the school changed.

The original colors were blue and gray. It's now blue and white. The Surfriders, the school's nickname, was first illustrated with a human. At some point a menehune replaced the surfrider, a change Sanchez said he does not like.

Thirty years out of high school, Harri Field Belluche, class of 1975, remembers a more turbulent era, with the Vietnam War winding down, gas shortages and class schedules in which students could sneak off to the beach.

There were lots of art programs in the classrooms, teachers were inspiring and you could tell which group a person belonged to by the cigarettes they smoked, Belluche said.

"It was a real time of innocence," she said.

Through the 'gauntlet'

During a visit to the original high school last week, alumni relived the days at school when boys would line the corridor and girls had to walk through the "gauntlet;" when 1959 graduate Susan Bushnell Nakama burned her class numbers into the grass in the courtyard; and when one 1975 graduate set off firecrackers during graduation ceremonies, resulting in the school being barred from holding graduation at Neal Blaisdell Center.

They recalled the friendships, the simple life, the fun and the pain. Celebrating the anniversary and the class reunions is a way to reconnect and remind each other of past events, said Dian Beckley Freitas, class of 1961.

"We're bringing back each other's memories," Freitas said. "If we didn't have this connection we wouldn't have all of that. We want to keep it alive."