Expand<\/a><\/p>\nBrief \u2014 who has been in more than 80 television shows including \u201cBaywatch,\u201d \u201cThe Big Bang Theory,\u201d \u201cThe Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,\u201d \u201cFriends,\u201d \u201cThe Golden Girls,\u201d and \u201cGrey\u2019s Anatomy\u201d \u2014 is just one of the almost 900 grads from that year.<\/p>\n
But he\u2019s not the only one of our class who ended up as a success story. Here is a sampling of some of our classmates that will be attending the reunion.<\/p>\n
David Washburn, who played reveille every morning at Will Rogers Middle School, is today the principal trumpet of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s recorded more than 500 film soundtracks over the years, (mostly with John Williams) including \u201cWar for the Planet of the Apes,\u201d \u201cSpiderman: Homecoming,\u201d \u201cThe Legend of Zorro,\u201d \u201cTroy,\u201d \u201cA Beautiful Mind,\u201d \u201cThe Perfect Storm,\u201d \u201cTitanic\u201d and \u201cDeep Impact,\u201d to name a few.<\/p>\n
Another classmate, Teresa O\u2019Neill, was the first female writer on the sitcom \u201cNight Court.\u201d She has written, produced and developed shows for ABC, CBS, NBC, Twentieth Century Fox TV, Paramount TV, Lifetime and the Disney Channel.<\/p>\n
Dr. Mario Molina, in 2005, was recognized by Time magazine as one of the 25 most influential Hispanics in America.<\/p>\n
Dr. John Kirkpatrick was our head drummer. Many of the drum routines and cadences used at Wilson High to this day were written by him. These days he\u2019s volunteering for Samaritan\u2019s Purse, using his talent as an orthopedic surgeon to help people in Venezuela.<\/p>\n
Recently, he has been carrying a pair of drumsticks with him so he can practice prior to performing with the Wilson drummers on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
On the day of our graduation, our principal Dr. Robert Ellis said what set our class apart was that we \u201cstopped to smell the flowers.\u201d<\/p>\n
I hope our reunion weekend will carry that same spirit, and we pause to appreciate one another. We were so blessed to grow up here and celebrate our enduring friendships.<\/p>\n
Bruin historian dies<\/p>\n
Betty Jo \u201cBJ\u201d Wells, known as Wilson High\u2019s unofficial historian for the past three decades, has died.<\/p>\n
Wells was a proud member of the Wilson class of 1948 \u2014 where she was a cheerleader and very active in other campus activities.<\/p>\n
For the last at least three decades, she\u2019s been the unofficial historian of Wilson and worked to establish a complete set of\u00a0 school annuals, which are named \u201cCampanile\u201d in honor of the same-named bell tower that was removed from the school after the 1933 earthquake, for fear that is would collapse in an aftershock.<\/p>\n
Wells volunteered in the library, organized all of the historical files for the school including old Loudspeakers and Campaniles, and would often give tours of the school for class reunions and for others according to Wilson alum Jeff Hoffman.<\/p>\n
Wells\u2019s son, Larry (class of 1979) shared that his mom would go to garage sales with a mission in mind to find missing yearbooks. Her collection filled a bookcase, and she also created a three-ring binder for each graduating class where she collected newspaper clippings from the Long Beach Press-Telegram and the Grunion Gazette.<\/p>\n
Her massive archive is now part of the reference collection in the media center at Wilson High.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s no business like show business, and this week, Biz Beat is going to the movies. That\u2019s because…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[7,8132,3739,131,133,132,137,3738],"class_list":["post-431819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-california","tag-grunion-business-beat","tag-grunion-news","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-los-angeles-county","tag-the-grunion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.presstelegram.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GRG-L-BIZBEAT-COL-0813-03.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.presstelegram.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GRG-L-BIZBEAT-COL-0813-04-1.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.presstelegram.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GRG-L-BIZBEAT-COL-0813-05.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.presstelegram.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GRG-L-BIZBEAT-COL-0813-02.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.presstelegram.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GRG-L-BIZBEAT-COL-0813-01.jpg?w=620\")
<\/p>\n