El Paisano will be celebrating its 50th year of publishing this semester, according to Adviser John Francis, who has been around for all 50 of those years.

“It’s really something,” said Francis.  ” I was on the very first staff back in the fall of 1964 when Ted Snyder was adviser to the paper.  That was the main reason I came to Rio Hondo so as to be with Snyder again.”

Francis said that Snyder was his high school adviser at Santa Fe High and that when he was hired to teach journalism at Rio Hondo he immediately enrolled in the very first day classes on the Little Lake Elementary School campus in Santa Fe Springs.

Francis also said that he was on the naming committee for Rio Hondo’s first newspaper.

“I was one of five guys on the naming committee,”  he said.

Also on the committee were Bob Poole, the first editor-in-chief,  Phil Petrillo, photo editor, Bob Benson, sports editor, and Dick Haslam, news editor.  That group came up with the name, El Paisano, and it has stood up for 50 years.

Francis has been adviser to El Paisano for 27 years, the longest tenure of any adviser to the paper. Besides Snyder and Francis, other advisers were Neil Sokolowski, Bob Fennerty and Larry Knuth.  Jay Loughrin advised the newspaper in an interim basis for one year.

Some of the events planned for the El Paisano celebration will be an end of the semester picnic, an end of the year banquet and feature stories from those people who have been a part of the paper’s history.

“There are several stories out there from people who have been a part of our history,” Francis said.  “The staff is going to go and get them.