Have you ever seen such a gang of toughs? And you wonder why the school burned down in 1939?

K-8 Newhall School, Eighth Grade graduating class, 1938. Last graduating class before the fire.

Photo contributor Patricia Bennett (nee Patricia Pearl Cook) is in the third row, fourth from left.

She has identified the following:

Allen McGrew, front row, left.

Bill Vanesen, second row, second from right. (Perhaps a misspelling of Vanasen, of Vanasen's Auto Electric in Newhall; we don't know.)

Berta Mae Howe, third row, fifth from left (between Patricia and the man).

Margaret Moore-Warmuth, third row, third from right. (Patricia may be indicating a married name here, as she did with her own name.)

Pierce (no futher info), top row, the girl sixth from left.

Millie Story-Wambol (sp?), top row, seventh from left. (Again, possibly a married name.)

There is (at least) one anachronism here. Patricia Cook appears in the eighth grade class of 1938; yet she graduated in June of 1939. Perhaps she repeated the eighth grade. In a note of April 2, 2003, accompanying her photographs, she writes: "Dad said they had to burn the school down to get me out! It burned that year of 1939."

Indeed, shown here is the fourth iteration of the K-8 Newhall School, built in 1928 at what is now 24607 Walnut Street. It burned down Valentine's Day, 1939. Patricia graduated four months later.