The Fullerton Union High School’s Wall of Fame celebrates the success of the school’s exceptional graduates. Each year, the community nominates alumni who are worthy of special recognition—for making significant contributions to the alum’s specialized field, providing important community service, or both.

This year, Jesus “Jesse” Ayala (Class of 1998) and the late William “Bill” Gienapp (Class of 1962) will be honored on Oct. 25 at 5 p.m. at a ceremony before the school’s homecoming football game. Plaques with their portraits and names will be displayed in the school’s front office.

FUHS secretary Benigna Rodriguez is in charge of organizing the event. “I love that we showcase alumni who have made significant contributions to their field or communities,” she said. “It can inspire current students to set their goals. The recognition we give to past students also helps to bridge the gap between the past and future.”

Rodriguez says she enjoys reaching out to nominees and listening to their personal stories. “Some have generations of families that have attended from grandchildren to nieces or nephews or came back as a coach,” she said. “Just seeing them come back to celebrate is exciting.”

Jesus “Jesse” Ayala (Class of 1998)

When Jesse Ayala was applying to college, he couldn’t afford a typewriter to complete his applications. So he stayed after school for several weeks and borrowed the school secretary’s typewriter until he finished.

Ayala, now a CSU Long Beach professor, worked in journalism for over 20 years, earning 4 Emmy awards and 7 Edward R. Murrow awards. He never let poverty or prejudice get in his way.

Ayala’s parents immigrated to the US from Michoacán, Mexico, before he was born. 

He attended Fullerton High School where he was Model United Nations president, involved in speech and debate, and, at the time, among the few latinos to take Advanced Placement classes. Ayala—openly gay and sporting a lip ring—was surprised when he was elected senior class president.

“At a time when most people are trying to fit in, I was not about fitting in,” Ayala said. “I think that resonated with my classmates. I was unapologetic about it. I was not afraid to be me.” 

Ayala, FUHS class of ‘98, attended UC Berkeley as a double major in political science and ethnic studies. He planned to become a lawyer. By his third year of college, he’d changed his mind.

“When I realized I didn’t want to be a lawyer, I felt a little lost for the first time because, in high school, I was very focused, very determined, very ambitious,” he said. 

A required mass communications class pointed him in a new direction.

Prior to that class, “I wanted to be a lawyer to make a difference,” Ayala said. “It had never occurred to me that I could make a difference by shaping public opinion through journalism.” After an internship in Washington, DC, Ayala earned a master’s degree in journalism from USC and then returned to DC as a producer at ABC. Ayala said that having a degree in political science was a big help. He covered President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. “It was exhilarating to actually be on the road with the first African American president,” Ayala said. “And honestly, in those moments, what really saved me is understanding the electoral college.”

Cal State Fullerton communications professor Jason Shepard hired Ayala to teach there part time. One of his first classes was how to report on the entertainment industry.

“[Ayala] tried to go beyond the more superficial aspects of covering a story,” Shepard said. “He used his background as a producer to teach students how to find story angles that would be relevant to a wider audience but also tailored to each student’s interests.”

Ayala taught a special class on border reporting and took students on trips to the border, navigating the mountain of red tape to do so alongside his students.

“He was so passionate about giving students frontline fieldwork and real-world experiences,” Shepard said. “They’ll remember that forever.”

Shepard said that Ayala’s students love being in his class because he finds a way to connect with each person as an individual. Ayala agrees that connections matter: “I feel everyone’s superpower is their authenticity. People can always tell when you’re faking it. Once you’re just yourself, unapologetically, students respect that.”

Jesse Ayala and Marcela Luna were voted Most Spirited in Fullerton’s 1998 yearbook. Photo courtesy of The Pleiades.

Bill Gienapp (Class of 1962)

Harvard University history professor William “Bill” Gienapp was one of the country’s most distinguished Civil War scholars.

Gienapp was born in Texas but lived in Iowa until his early teens when his family moved to Fullerton. He attended Fullerton High School where his father taught math. Gienapp was in German Club, on the Math Team, and played french horn in the marching band. He loved baseball.

After graduation, Gienapp attended UC Berkeley, where he was studying astrophysics. Yet it was In a history course taught by Civil War specialist Kenneth Stampp that Gienapp met Erica Kilian, whom he would marry in 1968.

“Outside of class one day, we spoke to each other in the library, and the question you always asked people at Berkeley was, ‘Where are you from?’” Erica said. “We were both shocked to find out that the two of us were both from Fullerton.” 

Although they didn’t know each other, they both attended Wilshire Junior High. Erica graduated from Sunny Hills High School in 1967.

“I always look back on that as a very lucky thing,” Erica said. “The odds are amazing that out of 27,500 students, we’d found each other and discovered we were from the same place.”

In addition to meeting his wife in Professor Stampp’s class, Bill became friends with classmate Irene Strauss.

“He was a really humble person and a great guy,” Strauss said. “He had what I would describe as a very dry but excellent sense of humor.”

“One day, I said to Bill, ‘You know, I’m so tired of taking notes,’” Strauss said. “It was a class I had at the end of a really long day, and Bill agreed to do it for me. As I studied for finals, I read the notes and found they had funny comments and Bill’s oppositional points of view from what the lecturer was presenting.”

Bill’s humor and character influenced Strauss, who is originally from the Bay Area, in a big way. “My husband and I chose Fullerton to live in because we knew that Bill had, at least the last part of his high school years, grown up in Fullerton, and I felt if Bill could turn out that way, then Fullerton was the place, and so that’s why we moved here,” said Strauss who would go on to teach middle and high school history. 

 Bill was so enthralled with the Civil War course that he switched his major to history. Gienapp would go on to earn a PhD in history from Yale (1980). Afterward, he took an assistant professor position at the University of Wyoming. 

“It was very difficult to get a job when he finished his dissertation,” Erica said. “He got one of the only jobs available in the country, and it was in Laramie.”

Gienapp was invited in 1989 to teach at Harvard, where he taught undergraduate US history courses.

Gienapp “developed the course Baseball and American Society at Harvard,” Erica said. “It was designed to show what an incredible impact baseball has had on American society. It was a way to study American history through baseball. It became one of the most popular courses on campus.”

According to his son Jonathan, the course was open to about 15 students, but 120 students tried to enroll. “Devoted teacher that he was, my dad individually interviewed all 120 students to try to sort out which students would be admitted and which would not. After that, he taught it as a lecture course so everybody who was interested could attend,” Jonathan said. “He took teaching and mentoring very seriously. He’d go with grad students and undergrads to Fenway Park to watch the Red Sox.”

Jonathan, himself an associate professor at Stanford and author of 2024’s Against Constitutional Originalism, said his father inspired him to follow a similar path. 

“I’m a historian and a scholar, and I write books that really look at the past because of him,” Jonathan said. “He nurtured that curiosity and spirit.”

That same enthusiasm for teaching his students, Bill showed to Jonathan and his older brother Bill. “There were few things that he seemed to like more in the world than watching our baseball games,” Jonathan said. 

Bill lost his battle with blood cancer on Oct. 29, 2003. He was 59.

Strauss said: “He was an outstanding scholar, and his death over 20 years ago really was a loss for historians everywhere,” said Strauss, who nominated Bill for this year’s Wall of Fame honor. His accomplishments will be celebrated during an inductee ceremony on Oct. 25.

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