As a continuing feature, The Accolade delves into the origins of Sunny Hills culture or landmarks. Alongside the feature on the journalism program’s 65th year of publishing, we take a look at our own program and how a street sign bearing the publication’s moniker ended up being featured in staff photos in the yearbook for nearly a decade in the 1990s. We send staff writer and social media team member Alice Chae to investigate how the tradition started and its purpose.
It made its first appearance in The Accolade staff photo in the 1992 Helios yearbook.
Then-sophomore Nate Barksdale – soon to become the school newspaper’s editor-in-chief his senior year in the 1993-1994 school year – wears a dress shirt while sitting in the front row, slightly left of center.
Barksdale raises his left knee, allowing his left elbow to rest on it so he can use his left fingertips to hold up a rectangular object above a bundle of Accolade issues.
Though the image appears in black and white, The Accolade staff photo seven years later in the 1999 annual – also the last time it ever shows up – reveals the sign as blue with white lettering that forms the words, “ACCOLADE” and “ST” (the former much larger in point size than the former). Its width looks broader than most students’ chests.
“The sign was part of the decorations in the journalism classroom and adjacent Accolade office,” recalled Barksdale in an email interview with The Accolade. “I think when the yearbook photographer came to take the staff photo, someone just thought to include it — I don’t think it was permanently mounted on the wall, so it would have been easy to grab.
“As to why I was the one holding it, I probably just volunteered because I was willing to be a bit goofy. … My guess is that for the following few years The Accolade staff members thought, ‘Hey, when the yearbook photographer comes, we should definitely pose with the sign.’ It did add a nice sense of continuity.”
Barksdale, who later graduated from Harvard University in 1998 as a history of science major, has remained in the publishing business and now works as an editor, writer and graphic designer based in Washington, D.C.
ORIGINS REST WITH LEGENDARY ADVISER
Although the Lancer alum did not know the origins of the sign, he offered the following inferences:
“For what it’s worth, based on the images and my memory, I don’t think the ACCOLADE ST sign was an official posted street sign that someone had stolen or somehow gotten their hands on,” Barksdale wrote. “I always assumed it was a plastic novelty sign of the sort that you can custom-order.
“If that’s the case, my guess is it was commissioned for The Accolade offices either by an enthusiastic staff member or by the long-time journalism adviser of my era, Carol Hallenbeck.”
So far, no Acco alum can solve the mystery of how that placard made its way into Acco lore. Was it a parent’s gift? Was it a student project from another class? A prop from a past theater performance?
When reached by phone, Barksdale’s editor-in-chief during the 1991-1992 school year, Jedidiah Yueh, said he didn’t even notice the sign in the image until The Accolade brought it up.
Like Barksdale, Class of 1997 then-Accolade editor-in-chief Janice Yoon also can be seen in possession of the object in her year’s Acco staff photo in the yearbook. The Acco alum said the sign was made of particle board instead of plastic – about 18 inches long and four inches high.
“I don’t remember why I held it,” said Yoon, who majored in social studies at Harvard University and currently works as the deputy director of Christian non-profit organization, Reah International. “When it was time for yearbook pictures, everyone was grabbing the trophies and the sign; I think anyone got to hold it.”
Perhaps Accolade staffs from the late 1980s could provide some clues as to how the object made its way into Room 16, where the journalism program was housed back then?
Sunny Hills English teacher David Wolf, who wrote for the school newspaper from the fall of 1985 to the spring of 1987, said he recalled the sign being a fixture in the classroom, but he doesn’t remember anyone ever knowing how it got there other than the adviser.
Unfortunately, no one knew how to reach Hallenbeck, who advised the publication from 1969-1993. And only on Saturday, Feb. 15, did The Accolade learn from a paid Orange County Register obituary notice that the former Sunny Hills instructor had died earlier this month.
SO WHERE’S THE SIGN NOW?
With the sign’s origin story most likely buried in the memory of the deceased adviser, its seven-year appearance in Accolade staff photos in the yearbook must mean it holds some value though it raises another question: How did it disappear?
1997 and 1999 would be the best starting points to tackle this next mystery.
Then-Accolade adviser Kimberley Harris, who had replaced Hallenbeck upon her retirement in 1993, was planning to take a break from the publication at the end of the 1996-1997 school year for personal reasons.
“I do remember the sign, but I did not care about it,” said Harris, who now advises the online news website at Fullerton Union High School. “I don’t remember any yearbook photoshoots [with it]; I certainly don’t remember saying, ‘Make sure you grab the Accolade sign for the yearbook photo.’”
Nevertheless, the placard must have held some value, especially since it showed up as a cut-out image on the first page of a photo album that Class of 1997 then-feature editor Christine Whang put together as a parting gift for Harris. That page also included the Accolade masthead for that school year and the staff box.
In the two years that Harris’ successor guided The Accolade program, the sign remained a part of Room 16. Current English teacher and Class of 1991 graduate Jennifer Kim was hired then to take over for Harris, and she recalled the object usually being placed at a window for students being summoned for interviews to find The Accolade room.
Other than that, Kim said she hardly remembers a thing about it even though two of her staffers are photographed in the 1998 yearbook holding the sign right in front of the teacher.
“These kids had an amazing adviser before me – Kimberley Harris – and I was just lucky enough to get the editors and reporters that she had trained on staff,” she said. “So, the traditions and stuff really were theirs.”
Who would have known that in the following year’s staff picture for Helios – the only colored version – that it would end up being the last sighting of ACCOLADE ST. For in the fall of the 1999-2000 school year, Harris was scheduled to return as journalism teacher/adviser with the program moving to its present location in Room 138.
“The tradition stopped in the year 2000, and it was something that we weren’t able to carry on,” said Kent Lam, Class of 2000 editor-in-chief who graduated from Harvard University and Georgetown University School of Medicine and now works at Eastern Virginia Medical School as an ear, nose and throat surgeon.
When Lam was a junior in the previous year’s yearbook photo, he stood farther away from the front row, where a Steve Rhoads can be seen presenting the logo with his right hand. He said no one ever explained to him the object’s origins.
“I’m not sure what happened to the street sign [after that photo],” Lam wrote in a Facebook messenger response to The Accolade. “We moved from the room in the English room of the school [Room 16] to the current location between the 1998-1999 and 1999-2000 school years. I wonder if that was when the sign got lost.”
Harris said the sign was the farthest from her thoughts when she took on the adviser role again.
“What we did in the journalism room was more important than the clutter that lived there with us,” she wrote in an email interview.
ACCOLADE ST’S NOSTALGIC VALUE
It wasn’t until October 2022 when current Accolade adviser Tommy Li noticed the recurrence of the sign in Accolade staff yearbook photos.
Li said he was looking at annuals from the mid-1990s trying to help then-News editor Susie Kim find any images of the breezeway mural for Kim’s “DID YOU KNOW?” assignment.
“Somehow, I decided to flip to The Accolade staff photos, and I started noticing the street sign show up,” he said. “I know when I took over in the fall of 2001, I didn’t recall seeing it, so it just sparked in me my journalistic curiosity to find out about its origins and what ever happened to it.”
The adviser said he then emailed Harris and Kim about it, and in their email responses, neither of them recalled much about it.
“I didn’t pursue it much then, but it had been in the back of my mind since, and when the student editors were willing to produce articles related to the 65th year of publishing for our journalism program here at the start of this semester, I thought it would be a good idea to ask a student reporter to work on a ‘Did You Know’ about this sign,” he said.
That led to The Accolade contacting several former staffers.
“And although we can conclude from speaking to them that it wasn’t the holy grail of the journalism program back then, ACCOLADE ST has ironically taken on a symbolic significance for them in the present day,” Li said. “It’s just too bad no one knows where it went. So hopefully this article will find its way to someone out there who took it.
“If you have it, please contact us and return it. We would love to resurrect that tradition again of taking yearbook staff photos with it.”
Class of 1995 graduate and then-Accolade managing editor Esther Yoon was among those who contacted Li via email about ACCOLADE ST.
“An old friend of mine contacted me last night to see if I might remember the origin story of the old ACCOLADE ST sign that we had in the office back in the day. … I wanted to reach out to say that I can’t remember or find anything unfortunately,” wrote Esther Yoon, who majored in communications at the University of California, San Diego, and is now the president of Giant Step Marketing. “I think the sign was there already when I started, and I assume our adviser at the time had something to do with it.
“That said, it was nice to revisit The Accolade after 30 years! I was prompted to check out the current Accolade website and read all the wonderful content your students are producing. It’s great to see the evolution of the publication. Accolade was an important part of my high school experience and gave me lifelong skills and led me down a rewarding career path in communications.”
Janice Yoon also shared similar sentiments in her email response to Li’s digital correspondence.
“What a fun surprise and delight to receive your email! … Your email and [yearbook] photos really took me on a fun trip down memory lane,” Janice Yoon wrote.
And Barksdale summarized the nostalgia best when he wrote:
“Before you reached out to me, I wouldn’t have thought that the sign was any more important than anything else from The Accolade room in that era, like copies of the printed newspaper, the computers we used or The Accolade sweatshirts we had that said, ‘Nobody ever got a Pulitzer for finishing early.’
But when you and Mr. Li reached out to me with the photos, it did spur me to reconnect with a few friends from that era to see what they remembered. I’m happy that the sign persisted for as long as it did, and I do wonder what happened to it. Did an enthusiastic editor take it home at the end of the year? Did it get lost in the shuffle during a transition of journalism advisers? Two weeks ago, the sign didn’t feel that special to me, but now, thanks to your reporting, it does.”
