Students and staffers who were supervised under Dr Brill from 1953 to 1977 remember him for one thing: a special seven-foot-long wooden board with twelve rows to display individual student pictures along with their names and grades in the alphabetical order.
Despite his ever-busy work schedule, Dr Brill made an effort to know students and staffers by name. If he saw or heard an unfamiliar student's name, he would get up and walk to the wall to match the student’s name with his face. He took care of his school family like his own.
Keeping the enrolled students in the prescribed order by last name was time-consuming, needless to say. If a student left or graduated or was expelled, his picture and name would be removed, and the other students' pictures would need to be rearranged.
Guess who assumed the tedious duty to keep 600 student pictures current and ordered? The task fell on Dr Brill’s long-time secretary, Virginia Firth.
I believe Firth was the only secretary Dr Brill ever hired during his 26-year tenure at CSDR. Virginia collected all new student pictures taken in the Social Hall every year in September. She threw out the photos from the previous year and placed the new ones on the board. The average enrollment during the Brill era was 550. The largest student enrollment was 615 recorded in 1969.
It is not known who built the wooden board. It could be a carpenter in the maintenance department to build one for him. Or, it could be a woodwork teacher named Evan Ellis or William Peters, both of whom were hired in 1955 for the Vocational Department.
In June 1977, Dr Brill retired with 26 years of service at CSDR and another five years of service as an high school English teacher at CSD at Berkeley for a total of 31 years with the State for his CalPERS pension.
Dr Bob Lennan came in as the school’s second superintendent. He was already familiar with his old boss’ board as he had worked at CSDR since 1957 first as a teacher and then an administrator. Len Gonzales, ‘91, affirmed that he visited Dr Lennan in his office and saw the board in the early 1980s. It is uncertain when he finally discontinued the student photos board.
With 17 years fast forward to 1994, when I first started salvaging efforts to collect old things from all departments plus dumpsters (I have made over 100 dumpster dives) on campus, I raised an important question to the whereabouts of Dr Brill’s famed pictures board. No one had a clue where did the board go once Dr Lennan stopped using it in his office.
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