Growing the Wall of Fame

A soccer visionary, a retired lawyer, a fabled guardian of the Chumash language, a junior high school teacher of 35 years, and the once-upon-a-time anchor of Saturday Night Live’s (SNL) Weekend Update all walk into a theater. No, this isn’t the start of some cheesy joke, it is simply what happened last Friday afternoon when the guests of honor turned up for the annual Santa Barbara High School (SBHS) Wall of Fame induction ceremony.

Honored by SBHS’s Alumni Association, which, in conjunction with the school’s current student government, select five distinguished alumni each year for Wall of Fame immortalization, this year’s inductees run the gamut from a member of the class of 1902 all the way to the class of 1975.

Specifically, they are (in the photo above, from left) longtime Santa Barbara Junior High teacher and local high school sports official Neill Wright (1952); celebrated Smithsonian historian and student of Chumash heritage John Harrington (the photo is actually of the Natural History Museum’s John Johnson who accepted the award posthumously for Harrington, class of 1902); chief agitator responsible for Santa Barbara High’s soccer program and former collegiate All-American Alfonso Guzman (1972); retired lawyer, musician extraordinaire, and founder of bands such as the Rincon Ramblers and Marley’s Ghost, Jon Wilcox (1961); and writer, actor, ardent defender of the environment, and early-’80s SNL star Brad Hall (1975).