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Ron Hoshi with students at John F. Kennedy High School. (photo: hoshi4auhsd Instagram page)

When most people retire in their late 60s, they look forward to a life of leisure, travel, and recreation.

Not San Pedro native Ron Hoshi. After 32 years in education, the 67-year-old decided to enter politics. When one of its members died in June 2024, he was appointed to the Anaheim Union High School District Board of Trustees. He then ran for election to fill the remaining two years of the term and won handily in November.

The district covering parts of Anaheim, Buena Park, La Palma, Stanton, and Cypress, where Hoshi lives, encompasses 22 schools with nearly 30,000 students. That includes eight high schools, eight junior highs, and the college prep Oxford Academy, where Hoshi worked for 18 years as a teacher, assistant principal, and principal until his retirement. 

Ron Hoshi.

He was the choir director at Oxford, creating the OA Singers, and the activities director. He also developed and led the district’s Student Ambassador program, giving students a voice in running the district.

Before Oxford, Hoshi taught at Cypress and Kennedy high schools. There, he coached the swim and water polo teams, founded the Kennedy Singers, and developed one of the district’s most extensive show programs. The program became so extensive that Kennedy had to hire a second director. 

As Hoshi told me, “I was doing Glee stuff before that stuff came out,” referring to the popular high school musical comedy series that aired on Fox. Not surprisingly, many of his former students have careers as professional musicians.

Hoshi is the son of the late Masaki and Dorothy Hoshi, who came to San Pedro in 1949 from Chicago. Masaki worked for the post office and at McCowan’s on weekends; Dorothy worked at the cafeteria at 15th Street Elementary School and the Bandini Pharmacy. Hoshi said he learned his work ethic from them. 

The youngest of five children and the only boy, he and his sisters—Patti, Susie, Terri, and Nancy—all graduated from San Pedro High.  

Hoshi graduated in 1975 and earned his bachelor’s in music education at Cal State Long Beach, where he was “very fortunate” to study under Frank Pooler, who mentored the Carpenters. Hoshi also credits the late Jack Neal, an “incredible band director” who taught at Dana Junior High for 33 years, for his own musical prowess. He got his master’s in educational administration from Alliant University in San Diego.

I can personally attest to Hoshi’s musical prowess from my recollections of him when we attended First Baptist Church in San Pedro together in the late ’70s. The young Hoshi regularly performed “special” music during worship, singing and playing the piano. To anyone who heard him then, his future success was no surprise. 

Among his many honors, he has been named Orange County Arts Administrator of the Year, was a Disneyland Creativity Teacher of the Year, and received the Cypress College Foundation Americana Award.

Far from retiring, Hoshi remains co-owner of Classics Flowers and Confections in Cypress, where he specializes in event planning. He plans to run for re-election in two years for a full four-year term. If only his former students vote, he should win easily again.

REFINERY CLOSING

While technically part of Wilmington, the Phillips 66 refinery, which was Union 76 during my childhood, has been a San Pedro landmark for decades. So its pending closure, devastating to its workforce, also marks the end of an era for generations of San Pedrans.  

I wrote here years ago about how, after an out-of-town journey, the sight of that giant blue-lighted Union sign symbolized we were home. There was the enormous spherical tank that was painted like a baseball to celebrate Dodgers’ championships. And we’ll all miss the bright orange smiling jack-o’-lantern every Halloween and the free bags of caramel corn handed out by a good-neighbor corporation. I went to sleep for years with the flare-ups lighting up my room.

Even worse is what the closure portends. The dismantling will take years, and making the site environmentally safe will take even longer. But when all is said and done, you know developers are already lining up to turn the location into another Ponte Vista housing project, only bigger. Ugh. spt

photo of san pedro today author Steve Marconi

Steve Marconi

San Pedro native Steve Marconi began writing about his hometown after graduating from high school in 1969. After a career as a sportswriter, he was a copy editor and columnist for the News-Pilot and Daily Breeze for 20 years before joining the L.A. Times. He has been writing monthly for San Pedro magazines since 2005, and in 2018 became a registered longshoreman. Marconi can be reached at spmarconi@yahoo.com.