Eighth in a series
Re “When Chabolas Were Younger, Sometimes They Had to Scramble”
[img]1372|left|Jerry Chabola||no_popup[/img] Once Jerry and Janet Chabola bought a home in Escondido in the mid-1970s, not only were they a hundred miles from their Westside roots, where both had grown up, they had strayed into separate –and foreign – career universes, he pumping gas, she working for the state.
“I kept persisting, though,” says the 63-year-old Mr. Chabola, who retired last month after two decades of teaching at Culver City High School, and nearly that long as popular Athletic Director.
“Finally, Poway Unified opened a new high school. I kept on top of the athletic director and the football coach. Eventually, they hired me as a driver’s training teacher. So I was in the car, which I had done over at Imperial High School, as part of my teaching assignment there.
“I was in the car with kids all day long. In the afternoon, I would transition into coaching football at first, and ultimately baseball.
“What I did to make myself as martketable as possible and because I enjoyed being in the classroom, one of the football coaches had a low-level, introductory math class. I would go in and help him. The one period I was not in the car, I was going to help him.
“At the end of the year,” Mr. Chabola recalled, “they hired me fulltime as a social studies teacher.”
The Chabolas’ commitment to Escondido blossomed into a happy six-year relationship, but there did come a time to try and go home.
“Janet’s parents lived in Mar Vista, my parents in Venice, and so we moved back here” in the early 1980s, he said.
When the childhood sweethearts were in their childhood but not yet sweethearts, around 1961, Mrs. Chabola’s father and five others founded Tower Insurance.
Therein lies the next chapter of the Chabola family drama.
(To be continued)
