Art through the Generations
...from teacher to students
Deborah Joy Martin
Ann Taylor Carpenter demonstrated a talent for drawing and art at an early age, so her parents encouraged that by providing private lessons. When she was only nine years old, a family friend, Hamilton Luske, took Ann to the Disney Studios in Burbank. Luske, a pioneer of film production, introduced her not only to animators and artists, but also to Walt Disney himself.
Ann’s senior year at Coronado High School coincided with the untimely death of her favorite teacher, Esther Painter Hagstrom, in January 1951. “It was a terrible shock for all of her students and the student body in general,” Anne recalled. "She (Mrs. Hagstrom) gave us such wonderful ideas and also the inspiration to interpret them.”
Ann served as an art editor for the 1951 yearbook, which was dedicated to Mrs. Hagstrom. A photograph of the Art Club, which Mrs. Hagstrom started in 1947, shows the teacher with several dozen students, including Ann.
Debby Joy Martin
at the Coronado Senior Center
Known to nearly everyone as “Debby,” Deborah Joy Martin remembers Esther Painter Hagstrom more as a family friend than as the art teacher of Coronado High School. Many times when Debby visited her great aunt and great uncle, Bessie and Henry Hurst, on I Street, she would see Mrs. Hagstrom there. “She would be at Aunt Bessie’s. They were very close.”
Deborah Lucy Joy
Coronado High School class of 1950
At 200 I Street, where Mrs. Hagstrom lived from the late 1930s until her death in1951, there are several homes clustered on a triangle of land. The Hurst and Styer families lived in what Debby calls “the triangle.” “The buildings haven’t changed much since then,” Debby said. Near “the triangle” was a large community vegetable garden. The adults occasionally paid Debby and her friends to work in the garden. “It was fun.”
A member of the Coronado High School class of 1950, not only was Debby included in the academic Honor Society, but she also participated in numerous clubs and extracurricular activities. “I don’t remember taking an art class at the high school,” Debby said and laughed. “I don’t think I would have passed.”
Nonetheless, Debby was a member of Coronado High School’s art club and she served as business manager of the 1950 Beachcomber year book. She appears in group photographs of both organizations. Art teacher Esther Painter Hagstrom, who served as an advisor to those clubs, also appears in the same photographs.
Both of these group photographs are from Coronado High School's 1950 yearbook, The Beachcomber. In the photo of the Art Club above, Deborah Lucy Joy is sitting in the second row, the third student from the left. Mrs. Hagstrom stands at the very left in the back row. In the photo of The Beachcomber staff below, Deborah Lucy Joy is sitting in the first row, the third student from the left. Mrs. Hagstrom is standing in the back row, the second from the right.
