Dolores Cantu: the reunion tour

Cut Dolores and Penny:

Hollywood actress/talent manager Dolores Cantu filmed videos with Record reporter Penny LeLeux while touring her hometown of West Orange. They are pictured in front of Cantu's childhood home.

Cut- Class reunion Class of 68:

Dolores Cantu is a member of the West Orange Chief's Class of 1968.

Cut- Dolores teepee:

Dolores Cantu poses in front of the Chiefs teepee at the multi-class reunion Saturday at Niblett's Bluff Park in Vinton.

Ten years ago, Dolores Cantu returned home from Hollywood for a West Orange Chiefs class reunion. Last weekend she returned for what she said would likely be the last time for such an event. Cantu turned 75 in August. She graduated in 1968 and joined a multi-class reunion last week hosted by the class of 1974.

Friday, she embarked on a tour of West Orange to see if her childhood home still stood, returned to the place she went to high school and stopped at Dairy Queen to share memories.

At each of the locations she shot videos for social media, reminiscing about her life growing up in West Orange.

Her home was still there, tucked away in a neighborhood behind Danny's grocery store. It was in great shape considering the devastation that area received in 2008, when Hurricane Ike pushed in so much water that fish were stuck in hurricane fences several feet off the ground. Though many houses in the area seemed to be in disrepair and some abandoned, her former home seems to have been well cared for.

"This is where I started," said Cantu in a video. "My mother would call the paper when I was coming home. She was my first PR person. People wondered how I got on the news...my mother," Cantu laughed. She said her mother wasn't happy when she left home at 17 after graduating, but she was when she became a flight attendant.

This house has been here since I was 13 and it's been here through every hurricane, every tornado, and everything that has been through here.

"I had a birthday party when I was 16 and that was the last birthday party I ever had. That's why I have birthday parties now," said Cantu. "My house was egged. My mother was so upset that her house got egged, she called the police department. She called every parent of every boy that egged our house and they had to come clean our house. I never had another birthday party after that."

"I wanted to see where my humble beginnings started and this is it." She remarked that the quietness of the street on Friday was about the same as it was when she lived there.

Cantu said her brother sold the house about 20 years ago when her mother went into a rehab hospital. He threw everything out of the house including pictures, so Cantu has no photographs of her early life, except school pictures from annuals.

Stopping by the old abandoned high school on Western Avenue, "This is where I learned everything I needed to know. People still pick at me that I don't know where my periods and commas go."

Cantu admitted she wasn't a particularly good student. She didn't speak English when the family moved to West Orange from Refugio, where she was born. "I always had a hard time with 'sh' and 'ch,'" she said. "But hey, I made it to 75 without any problems."

"Good memories, fun memories, crazy memories and eh, some not so good memories, but we graduated." She said she received the citizenship award. "I didn't get one for the smartest or most talented but look at me today."

She has always shown that drive and determination can overcome shortcomings to get you where you want to be.

The Strand theater, where Cantu got her bug to be an actress, no longer stands, so instead she visited Dairy Queen on Strickland, which is next to the open field where MacArthur Drive-In used to stand. She talked about her days at the Strand theater.

She started working at the theater at 14, for 75 cents an hour. "It took me three months to save up $100," she said. Cantu revealed that she bought contacts with that first $100.

"I was in charge of the popcorn, the cokes and you know, putting too much salt, too much oil or whatever. Flashing the light on people when they were kissing," she shook her finger, "Um uh, not in my theater." She said, "I became like the manager."

"I got to see all the movies and the trailers. I loved seeing everybody dress up and go to the parties," she said. "I wanted to go to Hollywood because I thought it was about going to parties, so here I am. Parties, that is my forte."

Saturday, she attended the West Orange Chiefs reunion that was held at Niblett's Bluff Park in Vinton, La. The community center was full of former classmates.

They reminisced, remembered and discussed days gone by. Cantu thanked David Kittrell for being her protector when she was younger. He said he should have asked her to prom, because neither of them had prom dates.

Individual class group photos were captured and Cantu even posed on the floor in front of a teepee.

She returned to Hollywood Sunday with gratitude for having shared the time with friends and family, but not before she shared a farewell video.

"I'm on my way back to California, but I wanted to say it was wonderful spending time with all of y'all. Everyone looks phenomenal, we are all aging really great! I just had the best time seeing everyone. I love you all. Have a blessed, blessed life and I hope to see you soon."