Special Feature
MV Eagles 1975 Football Team Monument Proposal
Editor’s Note: Special newsletter contributor Susan
Metcalf is part of a group working to install a monument
to the 1975 Mountain View High Eagles football team at
Eagle Park. Read on to learn the story of this special team
and how they united the community of Mountain View.
By Susan Cloughley Metcalf
Special Contributor
downtown was a ghost town on weekends. The
main drag sported a number of Chinese restaurants
and a Wienerschnitzel on the corner of Castro
and California. My parents would let me go to the
Mountain View High School, located in the 600
block of Castro Street, was built in 1922. It opened Mountain View Movie Theater, on Castro Street,
its doors in the fall of 1924 and closed in 1981. The only if I was with a group of friends. (The theater
building was demolished in 1987. Today, the site is closed in 1987 and has since taken on numerous
home to apartments, businesses, and Eagle Park—a con igurations.)
popular community hub. The park stands on what
Mountain View High School was a mixture of
used to be Mountain View’s football ield.
students from all walks of life and interests. It
To Navy personnel newly assigned to Moffett Field, was culturally divided with prominent groups of
Filipinos, Blacks, Hispanics, Whites, and Asians. It
the school was advertised as a “cultural melting
was socially divided with groups of jocks, stoners,
pot.” That was the Navy’s “spin” and, perhaps, a
nerds, bookworms, band kids, theater kids, Navy
more acceptable way of saying it was home to a
brats, and student government reps. I don’t recall
diverse student population. In the fall of 1975, the
trouble between any of the groups although a few
senior class was made up of 55% Hispanic, Asian,
students set the band room on ire in 1974.
and Black students and a handful of students of
Indian-origin. It was 45% white. According to the
The one area where students really came together
Bay Area Census, the median household income
was on the Eagles football team. The 1975 varsity
was nearly half that of its neighboring cities,
team had seniors, juniors and a few sophomores.
like Los Altos. The median household income in
The team was small and its players were not
Mountain View was about $20,000 per annum.
particularly impressive in size. There were few
players over six feet tall. Many didn’t have much
In the 1970s, Mountain View was not the home
meat on their bones either. Like the school, the
of global high-tech companies and the upscale
team was a melting pot of ethnicities. The team had
shopping and dining district that it is today.
According to comments on the Mountain View Voice heart, though. Its motto was “You Gotta Believe,”
and they did.
and my personal experience, Castro Street didn’t
offer much and wasn’t the safest place at night. The
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