The CSDR news broke out on Facebook that the likely last remaining graduate from the first graduating CSDR Class of 1956 has passed. Her name is Joni Macfadden. She was 88.
The Blonde Beach Girls: Intermediate School Principal Miss Alyce Thomas, Rae Etta Marquis, ‘57, Yvonne Gamache, ‘57, Joni McFadden, ‘57, at Balboa Beach in 1956.
The Class of 1956 remains the smallest graduation class with only 12 outgoing seniors. They came to CSDR in Fall 1953 as sophomores and stayed for three years in the Upper Department (old name for high school). There were only 12 students in the whole Upper School with no freshmen. In the early years, the Upper School contained only three grades from 10th through 12th. Taken from the Junior High School, the freshman class was added to the High School in 1972, making a four-year school.
Joni stood out from her 1956 classmates for her extraordinary scholastic aptitude. She arrived at CSDR from West Hollywood with a strong English foundation, thanks to having a younger deaf brother, Jim, and a fondness for leisure reading. In her 2018 Facebook remark, she said books soothed her mind and soul. She was well-liked and popular at CSDR.
Joni runs into the school’s history for being the first CSDR alumnus going straight to Gallaudet University for a degree. All of her classmates entered the workforce or became housewives upon graduation.
After her first year at Gallaudet in May 1957, Joni returned to CSDR and admired the newly constructed entrance sign on the Brill Loop. The three girls standing on the board are Pat Bull, Rae Etta Marquis and Lillian Quartermus, all of whom were seniors in the Class of 1957. They soon joined her at Gallaudet for college studies in September 1957.
Joni left college unfinished for marriage to a guy named Melvin she met at Gallaudet and settled in Los Angeles for a new life together. In the mid-1960s, Joni divorced her husband after six years. She went back to Gallaudet and finally finished her degree. Melvin married Pat Davis, ‘63, in 1971, and they stayed in unison for 28 years. Yes, the Deaf community is quite small where everybody seems to know one another.
Years later, Joni moved to Riverside and taught at the DMHU (an old department name for today’s Alternative Curriculum Education) at CSDR. Upon her retirement, she worked as an independent living skills trainer for deaf adult clients with mental disabilities in Riverside.
Around 2020 with the COVID pandemic, Joni resettled with her family at Rapid City in South Dakota with a drastic change in climate, landscape and lifestyle.
In September and October 2024, I had friends try to connect with Joni for my oral interviews with her. All VP and texts went unanswered, unfortunately,
A few weeks later in mid-November 2024, Joni passed away. She was 88. She was a chain smoker for decades. She fell prey to COPD from excessive smoking. The short name is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease which makes up a group of lung diseases that make it hard to breathe and get worse over time.
With her recent death, the CSDR Class of 1956 probably has no surviving classmates. From twelve to zero in the span of 68 years from 1956 to 2024.
Kevin Struxness, ‘76, MA
Editor, CSDR Old Times
25 November 2024
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