In April of 1967 she was a senior in high school. What would turn out to be the last gas chamber execution at San Quentin was scheduled. Melanie was against capital punishment. So were most of the students she knew.

The kids at Redwood High felt an interest in that prison. Their back parking lot had a view of the complex, their school resembled the penitentiary, the way it was built around a (senior) quad, and the stretch of bay leading to the prison entrance was one of the popular parking spots for making out with a view.

The night before the execution, events started to brew. Melanie received three different phone calls about the vigil at the prison gates but her parents would not allow her out of the house on a school night.

When she got to her first class the next day she heard the vigil was still on and going stronger. The execution was scheduled for noon; she and her friends John and Don could make it if they left soon. They agreed to meet at John’s car between first and second periods.

His ride was a maroon Corvair convertible. He parked it in the front lot even though most kids used the rear parking area. Melanie spotted the car and the boys as she exited the school.

But there was a barrier in her way. The school administrators and most of the teachers had formed a chain of authority between the school doors and the parking lot.

Melanie proceeded with purpose. She attempted to attain the asphalt by wedging between the Dean of Boys and a PE teacher, but Mr. Bosque pushed her. She stumbled back three steps and then caught sight of John. He was striding from car to dean, and then he pushed Bosque, hard.

Suddenly John and Melanie were surrounded by adults. They didn’t see Don return to school. They were escorted to the main office, John was hauled into Bosque’s room, and Melanie took an impatient indignant twitchy seat in the reception area. She found a kitchen match in her pocket and chewed on the wood while she waited.

The Dean of Girls tried to send her back to class. Melanie stood up and let the woman have her perspective. She told Mrs. Wright that school isn’t about education – any fool can get that in a library – so much as it is about socialization: forming friendships and learning to support one another. No way was Melanie going to abandon her young hero.

Melanie could express herself forcefully when heated, and she was hot then. She harangued Mrs. Wright with a matchstick between her molars. She stood breast to breast with authority and yelled in her face. The Dean of Girls retreated. But John didn’t emerge from Bosque’s office. After half an hour Melanie reconsidered her intentions. She decided not to return to class – as far as she was concerned it would not be business as usual that day – but to circulate through the rectangular halls and recruit activists for the future.

She failed. The totality of her unsuccess was remarkable. Students listened to her. She remembers standing in each doorway and collecting the attentive faces, the open eyes, the body shift towards her voice. But no one rose to sign the paper Melanie held in her hand. Some nodded like they’d get to it later, but Melanie collected no signatures that day, and never sought them afterward.

The idea formed in her then, that most of her colleagues weren’t as sincere about hating executions as she was. It seemed like just about everyone was eager to attend the vigil the night before, if they could manage to obtain parental okay or enjoy parental inattention. And the students who didn’t get to hold candles and socialize with other vigilants in the romantic dark wanted to join the group that morning. There was excitement in gathering at the prison gates and there was group-shared and -fueled passion to float their boat. But no one was responding to what Melanie thought were her own articulate pleas. As far as she could determine, nobody was willing to put in the hard work but everyone wanted to reap the adrenaline rewards.

Melanie remained loyal to her friend John but she turned off political activism. She didn’t argue with John’s opinion that his suspension report kept him out of Stanford. It didn’t matter to either of them; they both crossed the bay to Cal that September. They became students at Berkeley in 1967, they enjoyed rock&roll and drugs and lots of sex together and with others, but neither of them were active politically.

Cal didn’t have big sports teams then. Fraternities and sororities were not in favor. What energy students would have put in to bonfires and keggers and hazing rituals they devoted to protests and flipping patrol cars. Everyone wore denim. The sex afterwards was excellent.