Happy Earth Day 2022 to everyone, and to my classmates Happy 50th!
Hi, Jerry Trust here, I just received my “50th Golden Reunion” flyer from Rubidoux High School, in Riverside, via our forever coordinator, Richard Molina. I instantly flashed back to all the good times and friends during those formative years. My best friend at the time was my football buddy Doug Stevens,
And as you can see in the football picture above, even Coach Ramirez loved me, and even enjoyed talking to me whenever he could (#44)- even in photo Ops, I can't imagine what he was saying:)
Dave Nichols and I took the Ivy League in doubles, and we would battle for hours to see who was going to be #1 that week in the league competitions. Robin Smith, Kelsey Strickland, Garvey Hoxey, and Kellough Price were special people. Lupe Hernandez and his family were our next door neighbors, and we played together almost every summer day growing up. Who can forget Jimmy Wright, with his infectious laugh, and Terri Barber, whose laugh you could hear across the cafeteria, and many, many more to recount at this moment. What I remember the most in high school was laughing all the time and getting into all sorts of mischief in class, heck nowadays I probably would be considered ADD with a couple more letters on there. I made one commitment to myself, never get above a B grade, if I did that meant I wasn’t having enough fun, wow have times changed for high school kids these days.
Although, after receiving this invitation to the reunion, I was conflicted, because I remembered when my parents were going to their 50th high school reunion, my dad was all decked out in a suit and necktie, and my mom dawned a flower based fluff dress, and I thought, oh my god, they're old! So now I guess it is my turn. The other day I took a long and hard look at myself in the mirror, and reflected on all that had happened in my life. After 51 years of leaving the Falcon’s nest, I wondered, would I change anything?…. absolutely not, well, maybe a few things:)
I figured this would be a good time to do a retrospect of my life and my passion... the planet Earth and its incredible wonders. I thought it was a perfect time to tie my life to Earth Day, which interestingly enough, parallels the first Earth Day that occurred in 1970. And since I am somewhat of a frustrated but always optimistic environmentalist, I asked the question? Do we have a measurable chance, as the most dominant species on the planet, to survive in a sustainable fashion? And what were my roots to continually fuel a need to ensure our next generation will have a fighting chance to enjoy what we sometimes take for granite.
THE RESERVOIR: For me it all started while growing up in a Tom Sawyer setting on a 20 acre ranch in Glen Avon, west Riverside, with my 2 older brothers, Ken and Phillip. As kids, we had it all, and didn’t even realize how lucky we were. My father, Don Trust, was an LA fireman, and from the WW11 generation that could fix or do anything. So one day, with the egging on of his 3 boys, he mounted his tractor and proceeded to dig out what would soon be the centerpiece of my childhood happiness. When the job was finished he had designed a 50’ by 100’ x 10’ deep swimming reservoir, fed by a local canal system. He followed this by climbing up a gigantic Eucalyptus tree 30 feet high, to shimmy out on the strongest limb to tie on a rope swing, and believe it or not the rope swing never broke in 20 years. Not quite finished, with the assistance of his boys, he built a raft out of wood pallets, which could float 2 or 3 but not 4 kids,
so “King of the raft” became the battleground. Everyday in the summer 10-20 friends would show up. Many times we had to move the irrigation pipe from one pasture to the next before we could swim. Once finished we had a lock on the 2-4 pm time slot for playing in the swimming hole. The favorite game was to fling an inner tube at the person on the swing to knock them off, or better yet do a “ringer” around the head, quite painful because the valve stem would leave a scar mark. And after that a good mud fight would ensue. One day my dad added a fiberglass diving board, and soon it became the new centerpiece for showing off.
But there was a troubling side to all this fun, I knew SOMETHING was not right. At four o’clock, everyone went home, and I couldn’t breathe…..what was it? Turns out it was a blanket of SMOG. By 4 o’clock the smoggy air had blown in from Los Angeles, sometimes as thick as fog, and on top of that your eyes would burn. The only thing I could do to take away the pain was to sit upright on my bed, put a wet washcloth over my nose, and try to breathe. The pain in my chest was so great I couldn’t even lie down. Big memories for a young boy who thought life was all about playing and working hard on the ranch. By the time I was 19, I just wanted to get out of town to San Diego, for fresh ocean air, and try my hand at surfing.
I attended San Diego State University, and graduated with a degree called Environmental Health, Environmental Science was not even a major back then. After college, Keith Coble, my life long friend/mentor who was also my 6th grade school teacher, and the 9th grade Ocelot Club advisor, suggested I try teaching.
So I did a summer of student teaching and fell instantly in love with the profession. As a high school biology teacher, and later as an APES (AP Environmental Science) teacher, I enjoyed the challenge of teaching kids to think and problem solve, while attempting to instill some environmental ethics into their lives. By the end of my first year of teaching in 1977, I started to have digestive problems, and ended up in Kaiser hospital. The condition turned out to be Ulcerative Colitis, and back then nobody knew what caused it and in some cases it could even be deadly. So they pumped me full of steroids and sent me on my way. At this very same time the community of Glen Avon, where I grew up, was going through a Class Action Lawsuit against the Stringfellow Acid pits, and as the crow flies it was directly above our ranch and the water we drank from our well, as well as Glen Avon Elementary School on Pyrite street. As the name implies, every imaginable poisonous chemical was dumped in these clay pits from major Los Angeles industries. The problem was these uncrackable clay based pits cracked! and leaked into every family’s drinking well in the community. After having my colon removed in 1991, I have often wondered if this had something to do with it.. The Stringfellow Acid Pits became one of the federal government’s Superfund sites for polluted water supplies throughout the US as designated by the Clean Water Act.
The 1960s was revolutionary in many ways:The Beatles, Martin Luther King, the Kennedy brothers, the Civil Rights movement,
and the ever present Vietnam war that was on the daily TV news.
And as unbelievable as this may seem to believe, the branches of
the U.S government were actually working together in a
bipartisan manner to solve some major ecological issues for air, water, and sewage contamination. Of course it took the Cuyahoga River, in Cleveland, to catch on fire for the 13th time in 1969 to ignite the signing of the Clean Water Act in 1977.
Our then Republican President, Richard Nixon, signed the Federal Water Pollution Control Act in 1972 (which was later amended in 1977 to be known as the Clean Water Act).
About this time the Clean Air Act was also set to be signed by President Nixon in 1970. Alright, no more smog, well not quite, although in many places in the country the air is definitely better off these days. As for me, following the passing of my first wife, Beverly, who died of Inflammatory Breast cancer in 2003, I developed a severe case of Bronchitis/ Asthma out of the blue. The pulmonologist said it was more than likely a leftover condition exacerbated by her death and the youthful days of playing in those smoggy conditions in Riverside. But nowadays, with a healthy dose of inhalers to start my day, I can do pretty much anything.
So 2 major Acts, the Clean Air and Clean Water Act, spurred on by the first Earth Day in 1970, what a major accomplishment by the American people and politicians. And along the way we have added many more State and National Parks, and Wilderness areas, not only on land but in the ocean, although many times these were an exit gesture by an outgoing President…but that was ok.
I have always had the travel gene, so travel became the center of my life over the years, along with my family. And being a teacher allowed me to explore the world. What I discovered during these various adventures in the past 50 years is how extraordinary and unique the planet earth is, probably,nothing like it in the galaxy. I felt an urgency in my teaching and my life to do something. So I thought it would be interesting
to share some of these adventures with you… and maybe, just maybe from my personal point of view, something may click inside you to help understand the bigger picture of what is happening worldwide these days. Besides the moulding effect of my ranch days, my first of several trips down to the Amazon back in the 1980s shaped my life. During my first trip in the deep jungles of Ecuador, I remember our truck ride into Jatun Sacha Reserve. I asked the driver where the jungle started, and he laughed and said it was right here 40 years ago, and I said how far do we have to go…he said another 50 miles… I remember tears rolling down my cheeks, because at that point it was farm after farm of monoculture crops, such as: tomatoes and grassland for the cattle. There were many houses along the bus trip with their front yards filled with plastic garbage, why? Because the chickens and the pigs don’t eat plastic, and they had no curbside garbage pickup.
After spending several weeks in the deep jungle, I had a chance to witness a Shaman from the Embera tribe help one of our group members with a massive swollen ankle sprain after stepping in an Armadillo hole. Using plants from the jungle she applied them to the ankle and believe it or not, the young injured lady was dancing a jig at a tribal celebration the next morning, and get this-with no swelling!
Being totally submersed in the Tropical Rainforest I began to appreciate the subtleties of all the incredible biodiversity of the jungle, especially at twilight, coupled with the sounds at night time, and the aromatic smells of orchids. After this I was never quite the same. Imagine watching an iridescent Morpho butterfly dancing 🦋 through the trees, It was like magic, kind of like the fireflies doing there thing.. but bigger. I felt a deep connection with the jungle. Upon returning home, I said to myself I need to do something for my children, so they too can have this experience one day. So I talked to my biology students and we worked together with the local junior high and raised $10,000 to send to Jatun Sacha Reserve. The founder of the Reserve, Mike McColm, was able to take that money and purchase and additional 200 acres to enlarge the Reserve to make it more like a corridor for wildlife. I even had a student and a teacher friend go down and visit it over the years…basically the place looked like a southern Yosemite with mountains, valleys, and rivers.
This porcelain sign has a picture of the section of the Amazon, saved by my students. They
did fundraisers for a year, raising $10,000 back in 1991. The sign was later transported by another teacher down to Jatun Sacha and placed on the land.
Climbing the iconic Mt Kilimanjaro in 2008 with my Kiwi friend Jay Goldsack gave me my first real encounter with climate change. The various glaciers at the crest of the tallest mountain (19,340’) in the tropical zone, were shrinking fast.
From 1989 to 2007 the glaciers shrank approximately by 2.5% per year = @ 45%-50%….Wow! So climate change became the focus in my travels after that, interviewing guides and local people to tell their stories. I would share these stories with my students and discuss what they could be doing to make a difference. After I retired in 2011, I started writing a travel blog which has now been viewed over 15,000 times in the past 14 years. Not bad for someone who barely squeaked out a B in Mrs. Lance's English class…past participles and all. Here is my travel blog site if you are interested: www.jerrytrust.blogspot.com
In 2009-2011 my APE students helped me launch the first Earth Day at La Costa Canyon high school. I guess if I were to think back on my life, clubs like the Interact Club at Rubidoux high school, helped shape my ideas for giving back to the community. On the first Earth day, we had the launching of the Chevy Volt, an electric hybrid car, along with some new electric bikes. We had 3 days of celebration and activities, involving professors giving lectures from UCSD to the various concept booths on conservation. We even had live band performances by the students, plus an art poster and video conteset. This was a great time!
In 2013 it was time to tackle Mt. Everest Base Camp at 17,600, and Mt. Kala Patthar 18,514’. But I wanted it to be something special, not just for me but other people in the world. I had previously met two high school principals from the UK in Uganda (while tracking the Mountain Gorillas), and they were running a program at the time for underprivileged school kids in Uganda. These students had no lunch at school and so by the end of the day they couldn’t concentrate on their studies, and their grades reflected this. So I decided I would do this climb for them. The program was called “Lunch for learning”, and we raised over $5,000 for the school.
What was interesting about this adventure was that I trained in the Rockies, consulted with my friends in the UK to raise funds for kids in Uganda, and did the final climb in Nepal in Asia. Nowadays, we are all connected and have accessibility to the internet and social media, making this all possible.
Russia was different from what it is going on today. Russia is a fascinating country with a rich history found in the cities of Saint Petersburg and Moscow. The Caucasus Mountains is where they held the Sochi Olympics, and contains one of the 7 summits called Mt. Elbrus, the highest peak in Europe at 18,510’. In 2016 a colleague of mine, Krista deboer, at La Costa high school, was sponsoring an African student, Moses, who was studying the transmission of a disease called Hepatitis E ( yes,I never heard of it either, but it kills a lot of pregnant women in Africa). He needed funding to get through medical school in Uganda. So I thought, what the heck, let’s climb for Moses! Wally Berg, our expedition leader, guided us to the top of one of the most spectacular views I have ever seen. Meanwhile we raised lots of money for Moses to get him through his medical training and his studies on Hepatitis E.
Loraine, my wife, and I decided to celebrate our honeymoon in Switzerland in 2019, where Climate Change is really taking its toll. More than 500 glaciers have been lost there since 1900-Wow! My own experience involved going back to a city called Grindelwald, Switzerland in the Alps, that I had visited in 1970. Now 50 years later in Grindelwald, the Little Grindelwald Glacier has all but disappeared. Another interesting sight was the Rhone Glacier, about a 5 hour bus ride from Bern. This glacier has been monitored closely since the late 1800s and a majority of it has disappeared. In the picture below we are at the entrance of the glacier where one can actually walk inside and get a feel for what is going on. Not solid at all, but full of chambers, and paths filled with the glow of blue sunlight.
I can’t not talk about the current state of the planet earth and not include the underpinning problem: overpopulation and our unsustainable effects on the planet. Here is a quick overview, although the overall world population reproductive rate has slowed down, we still add a net gain of 212,000 people a day to the earth, 1 million extra people every 5 days, which equals approximately 77,380,000 people every year, it is like adding a the country the size of Germany (83 million) to the planet. Wow, the human population will probably reach an equilibrium around 9-10 billion. But can we do it sustainably with the resources we have; without going to war, destroying biodiversity like our jungles, polluting rivers, groundwater and our oceans. Just to give you a bigger picture- it took all the way from the beginning of humankind to the year 1804 to add the first billion humans to the planet. We are now adding a billion people to the planet earth approximately every 12-13 years---scary numbers!
I think it's time to seriously look at male contraceptives, a topic discussed since the 1970s, and has not gone forward in scientific studies, or its availability to people.
So the question begs…what can we do to tap our potential as the most dominant species on the planet, because we are currently stuck in our evolutionary puberty. We have the ability to develop and use mass weaponry as well as be the stewards of our planet. But do we have to have a major catastrophe to prompt action, or do we have the ability to invest in our future, like an insurance policy. This would require forward thinking for our future generations: we need a political commardy for the greater good, peer reviewed fact checked science, marketing, funding, and a fundamental caring for our planet.
What I have come to understand is that nowadays with technology, social media, and passion anyone can make a difference. As Jane Goodall said, “the world is a puzzle, so I am concerned with my piece of the puzzle”. So what is your piece of the puzzle? Maybe it is buying an electric car, working with a community Victory garden, or……taking a hike and smelling the fresh air. It all starts at home and I am sure Reigniting our community spirit would be a great way to start.
So Nowadays, I have a blended family: with my wife Loraine, we have 3 daughters: Heather, Torrey and Shannon, and 4 grandkids- Ashlyn, Makenna, Leif, and Leo. I love volunteering, feels alot like teaching, and currently I am taking a sabbatical as a volunteer from the San Diego Zoo, until Covid blows over. In the meantime I am a docent at Torrey Pines State Reserve working with my good friend Mark Embree developing an activity on leaf structure adaptations, and referencing them with QR Codes…it is a big learning curve for sure. Maybe someday a little 4th grader may take this leaf challenge and it will spark their curiosity in the wonders of nature and it will grow into a life changing passion.
To all my old high school friends, family, and friends of today, some of you for
50+ years, it has been quite a chunk of time, but a great time to reflect on one’s life. I am looking forward to seeing and hearing stories about the lives of my fellow Rubidoux High Falcon friends at the reunion this fall in Riverside. 
Life friends, Bill and Gail (left)
Heather, Torrey and Shannon (middle)
Max and Leif (4)(middle right)
Makenna (4), Rolf, Loraine w/ Leo (1) (RT)
Ashlyn-she is (6) underwater somewhere
Trevor was in Massachusetts
I guess you can say “time flies”, especially if you are an old Falcon! P.S. Kellough, we are bringing our dancing shoes!
email: jtrust14@gmail.com
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