WATER WORLD: Bonita Spectacular Brings Famous Battles to the High Seas

It was sort of Halloween come early. If you happened by the Las Flores pool on Tuesday night, you felt as if you stumbled into the middle of a Mardi Gras parade or a Cecil B. DeMille spectacular (the guy who made The Ten Commandments, starring Charlton Heston as Moses).

It was a cast of thousands. Well, maybe not that many, but there were dozens of smart freshman students from Bonita High School, floating their boats and everyone else’s as they reenacted famous historic battles, a timeline from the battle of Salamis in 480 BCE (before the common era) all the way to the surrender of the English at Yorktown in the Revolutionary War.

On one night, you saw Athenians, Spartans, Byzantines, Samurai warriors, Elizabethans, French, Spaniards and other sailors and seafarers. The students relived history, and proved for one night anyway, that the subject can actually be made interesting.

While DeMille (1881 – 1959) couldn’t make it after enjoying more than his 15 minutes of fame (he’s buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery) a new generation of producers could, including Bonita teachers Skip Clague, Lauren Clark, Larry Thompson and Bob Turner.

No disrespect to Mr. DeMIlle, but they staged “The Greatest Show on Earth!”