Fresno Tech took first high school’s home

Question: What is the history of Fresno Technical High School?

– Darlene Lockwood, Clovis

Answer: Fresno Technical High School was organized about 1921 and held classes in the original Fresno High School, which was built in 1895, at Stanislaus and O streets.

A three-story brick gymnasium and classroom wing was added to the campus in 1911. Fresno High School classes moved to the new campus on Echo Avenue in 1922.

In a story published Oct. 17, 1922, in The Bee, Principal F.H. Sutton said Fresno Technical would “prepare boys for university entrance and … offer opportunities for the learning of a trade.”

“Fresno Tech,” as students called it, offered regular education classes, but also a wide variety of shop classes: automotive, machining, forging, woodworking, pattern-making, electrical, architectural and mechanical drafting, plumbing, plastering, farm mechanics, painting, wood finishing and brick and tile laying. Home economics also was offered.

The campus also briefly housed the state’s first junior college in 1910. In June 1948, the Fresno City Board of Education voted to hold Fresno Junior College classes on the campus and moved the vocational classes to Roosevelt and Edison high schools.

The building was damaged in a 1952 earthquake and was partly demolished in 1953. The rest of the campus was torn down in 1963. Frontier Chevrolet was built on the property in the early 1960s. The Cesar Chavez Adult Education Center stands on the site today.

Q: I remember seeing a tall statue of the Texaco Man at a service station in the late 1960s or early 1970s, but my older siblings don’t recall it. Was it there or am I wrong?

– Mark Wright, Fresno

A: “The statue did exist,” said Craig Munschy, who owned a Texaco station at Blackstone and Dakota avenues from the late 1970s to mid 1980s.

The 20-foot-tall fiberglass Texaco Man was at the station at Fresno Street and McKinley Avenue that was owned by Don Ostergard, Munschy recalled. He’s not certain when the statue was installed, but remembers it “at least from the late 1970s.” The station was torn down about 1984, Munschy said.

Chevron-Texaco officials could not be reached to comment on the history of the fiberglass mascots, but an Internet search turned up references to other statues in Nevada, Arkansas and Oregon.

More on Quacky the Duck

After the answer about Quacky the Duck ran on July 12, Phil Roman, who drew the cartoon, sent an e-mail about how the drawing came to be.

“The article about Jack Wagner and Quacky reawakened a very memorable time in my life,” wrote Roman, who met Wagner at Warner’s Theater in Fresno in 1950, where Roman worked as a doorman.

“Jack was a very popular radio personality on KMJ radio and had a nightly show called Acme Hop Time from 8 p.m. to midnight. His show featured a cranky duck named Quacky who was voiced by Jack,” Roman wrote.

“I mentioned to Jack that I was a cartoonist and had gone to art school in Los Angeles. He asked me if I would draw a cartoon of Quacky. I agreed and came up with the drawing” that appeared in The Bee.

Roman enlisted in the Air Force in 1951 and by the time he returned to Fresno four years later, Wagner and his wife, Maryalice, had moved to Los Angeles. Roman moved to Los Angeles in 1955 and was hired by the Walt Disney studio in Burbank. He kept in touch with the Wagners.

Wagner, who did voices of various Disney characters, “was known as the voice of Disneyland,” Roman recalled. “I believe they still use his voice on many of the rides and trains.

“I feel very fortunate to have known Jack because he was such a great influence in my life at a time I needed reassurance,” Roman wrote.

By Paula Lloyd / The Fresno Bee