Debora Curry
English Dept - Administrative Assistant
Email: debora.curry@gcccd.edu
Office Hours: Monday-Friday 8am to 10am and 2pm to 4pm - email Debora for link for her Zoom Office hours
Source: The G (Grossmont Junior College, El Cajon, CA) 26 October 1966: p4.
Source: Praeterita (Yearbook) 65. Arvin, CA: Arvin High School, 1965. p16. Image copyright, Arvin High School; used in accordance with fair use doctrine for educational and non-commercial archival research, as set forth in 17 U.S.C. § 107, the fair use section of the Copyright Act of 1976.
After returning from his service in the Korean War, New Yorker Harold J. Loumeau (better known by "Harry"), enrolled in St. John’s University Teaching College in Queens, New York, teaching part-time in a Catholic school until earning his degree in May, 1958. He subsequently undertook graduate work at Columbia Teaching College in Brooklyn, New York, the following year. Then, in 1960, Loumeau and his wife moved to Bakersfield, California, where he was hired by Arvin High School (Arvin, California, Kern County) to teach English and Dramatics. He was also active off-campus in Bakersfield’s community theater: in 1962, he played the role of George Kimball in the Bakersfield Theater's 1962 production of Norman Barasch and Carroll Moore’s play, Send Me No Flowers.
In July, 1965, Loumeau was one of a select number of California secondary educators to participate in a six week Fresno Summer institute at Fresno State College. The following year, Loumeau and his wife moved to San Diego, where he had accepted George Kirazian’s offer of a tenure-track position in the Grossmont English Department. Loumeau's love for drama continued while at Grossmont, and he earned himself favorable reviews for his role as Willie Metcalfe in the Old Globe’s October 1966 Charles Aidman production of Spoon River Anthology. Unfortunately, it was the on-campus political drama of 1967 that would end Harold Loumeau's Grossmont tenure.
In 1967, he and English Department colleague George H. Peranteau resigned from their tenured positions to preempt college trustees from firing them; Loumeau, Peranteau, and two other Grossmont College instructors were held responsible for allowing under-age students to drink beer and wine at an academic retreat. San Diego media at the time showed little interest in the incident, and only two Los Angeles County newspapers gave the scandal one or two column inches. At Grossmont, however, the scandal banded together the faculty, students, and the American Federation of Teachers against trustees and administrators accused of using the scandal for political showboating. Trustees, however, were unswayed, and the California teaching careers of George Paranteaus and Harry Loumeau came to a swift end with their mutual resignations from the District.
The Loumeaus moved to Tucson, Arizona the next year. Over the next decade, Loumeau became a fierce advocate for the poverty-stricken community of Arizona, and in 1972 he was hired by the Tucson Committee for Economic Opportunity as a resource specialist for a federal grant to aid Arizona’s poor. The next year, he served as coordinator for a CEO awards honoring Tucson citizens who, like himself, deserved recognition for their dedicated volunteerism to fight poverty.
In his life of retirement, Loumeau worked as a library page for Tucson Public Library. He is also a Veteran for Peace and has earned some notoriety in Arizona for his avid peak bagging. In 2009, the Loumeaus’ 50th Wedding Anniversary was a feature story in St. John’s University Magazine, the alumni journal of the teaching college that graduated Harry Loumeau in 1958.
Debora Curry
English Dept - Administrative Assistant
Email: debora.curry@gcccd.edu
Office Hours: Monday-Friday 8am to 10am and 2pm to 4pm - email Debora for link for her Zoom Office hours
8800 Grossmont College Drive
El Cajon, California 92020
619-644-7000
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