Glen Avon School

The first school in what is now known as Glen Avon was on Tyrolite Street. School was held in a little building that was more a shed than a school. When that was deemed inadequate, a man by the name of John R. Johnston donated two acres on Pyrite Street for a new school, the same site where Glen Avon School is located today. A one room schoolhouse was built on the site in 1895. It was a wooden building that faced Pyrite Street. By 1909 the student population at the school was a respectable 57 students in grades first through eighth.  The school was not originally called Glen Avon. The entire area at that time was called West Riverside and so the new school was called by that name. Today's West Riverside School was called Jurupa School. Confused yet? In the 1908-09 school year the community around the West Riverside School decided to rename itself Glen Avon and the following school year the school and school district changed its name to Glen Avon as well.        

My Mom Worked at AeroJet

Around the time my mother brought me into this world (1961) she worked at AeroJet. It was located in the Glen Avon area of Jurupa and made munitions. That's right, like in "KABOOM!" AreoJet still exists but has been long gone from Glen Avon. I called the company headquarters up in the nothern part of our state and they had no record of ever having had a plant in the Glen Avon area.

My mother's friend Lila worked there as well and I asked her one time about it. This was back in the days before OSHA and the ladies who worked there filling shells with explosive powder (or what ever they used) woked in a little booth so if a shell exploded it wouldn't take out everyone around them. They especially feared the days when the Santa Ana condition rolled in because it got so dry and static electricty could cause an explosion. Lila said they would drape wet paper towels around their work stations to reduce the chance of static electricity.

At my mother's memorial service her best friend Emma Jane spoke about first meeting my mother on a Santa Ana day. My mom popped across the street to meet the new neighbors, breezely telling Emma Jane that she wasn't at work that day because of the wind and the danger it posed. Lila said that one of the reasons the plant was shut down and moved (or maybe it was combined with an existing plant, I don't recall) was because of danger on windy days.

My mom eventually quit AreoJet due to the danger posed by working with explosives. I do remember going to visit some ladies my mom used to work with at AreoJet.  At least one was missing part of a finger due to her employment there. Obviously this made a very vivid impression on me!

Considering the fact that my mom worked in a munitions factory the whole time she was pregnant with me, I am grateful I wasn't born with two heads or extra arms.

I would love to hear from others who worked at AreoJet or who had a family member who worked there.