OCEANSIDE -- Gertrude Masthay was a resident celebrity at Heritage Park on Sunday afternoon.

Clad in a bright kelly-green school sweat shirt and seated under a shady canopy, Masthay snacked on Doritos and reminisced with other Oceanside Carlsbad High School graduates and their families.

Each year, hundreds of graduates of Oceanside Carlsbad Union High School gather at Heritage Park for an all-class reunion.

On Sunday, booths for many of the classes -- several from the 1930s, most from the '40s and '50s -- were scattered throughout the park grounds as alumni congregated near handmade signs designating their graduation class year.

Still a bright and lively 101 years old, Masthay graduated with only a handful of other seniors in 1926.

She will be 102 years old in October.

"Oh yes, a lot has changed (in Oceanside) since then," Masthay said. "A lot more people, all these houses and roads now. Really, I guess, only the ocean is the same."

Opened in 1906, Oceanside High School, or as it was called then, Oceanside Carlsbad High, served not only Oceanside, Carlsbad, Encinitas and Vista, but families living along the coastline as south as Del Mar.

Oceanside Carlsbad High School's first graduating class had only five students -- all girls.

Then, in 1958, with the opening of Carlsbad High School, the campus became Oceanside High School.

Particularly well represented at Sunday's reunion was the class of 1949, which this year is celebrating its 60th anniversary.

Joyce Cox Ames said she flew out from her home in Oklahoma City especially for the reunion weekend.

"I wasn't at the 50th, so I didn't want to miss this," Ames said. "I was so excited to see my classmates. It's been wonderful to reconnect with them."

One of Ames' classmates, Gail Whitley, flew out from Utah, where she has lived for the last six years.

Whitley said she had seven brothers who all went to Oceanside Carlsbad High School, too.

"Oh, yes, all the teachers knew us. They knew the name," Whitley said, adding that she was probably the first newspaper girl in San Diego. "I pedaled all over Carlsbad."

The youngest graduating class represented Sunday at the reunion was from 1969.

"We're probably the last class before apathy set in," joked Dannie McDaniel Haemig, who along with her classmate Roni Ulmer Elsberry, are planning their class' 40-year reunion at the Flying Bridge Restaurant on Oct. 17.

Haemig said that with 444 students in their graduating class, they are hoping for a good turnout.

Haemig's father was in the military, and she said she was part of a group in high school that called itself "the social outcasts."

"No, I wouldn't say that high school was the best time of my life," Haemig said with a chuckle. "But I live in the same neighborhood I grew up in and there is still a lot of charm here in Oceanside."