After 30 years at the Culver City Unified School District as a counselor, retirement has arrived for Steve Gyepes. During his time, he has provided wise, comprehensive counseling services for academic, vocational, and personal needs.
Reflecting on his years, Gyepes explains what he worked so hard for. He says, “seeing kids laughing, seeing kids find themselves, and seeing kids have the light bulb turned on to actualize their potential is probably the most gratifying part that I remember.”
Gyepes is always happy to hear about former students succeeding in life, but he is particularly moved when his input makes a lasting impression. “Not only thanking me, but saying that something I said – and I say a lot of stuff off the top of my head – something that I said resonated with them, some of them will even come up and quote me on things that I had said that stayed with them.”
Beyond his work with students, Gyepes always valued his colleagues, and he has worked hard to ensure recognition for staff members whose contributions were particularly meaningful to him. One of his proudest moments was helping to install a plaque at the base of the flagpole in honor of a Culver Police Department officer and former school resource officer who was tragically killed by a wrong-way driver while on his way to work one morning. Similarly, in the case of a fellow counselor whose career spanned 20 years, Gyepes helped secure a plaque commemorating him in the guidance office.
“These are people who had really good relationships with kids… and who did really good work here for extended periods of time. I feel good that I managed to get them commemorated here,” he says.
In retirement, Gyepes is excited to spend time with his wife, teacher Kendra Gyepes, whom he met on this very campus. At the beginning, students who were invested in their blooming relationship kept Mr. Gyepes informed. The couple’s first date was a running date, and from there it morphed and evolved. Now, their children have walked through the same halls in which their parents fell in love.
He also looks forward to traveling, from shorefront to ski slopes, and writing books to share his experiences with others.
“I want to write about my professional experiences and what it really means to sit in these chairs, because I don’t think people outside of this school world really understand what we do all day, every day. And the other one is just some personal reflection and story. I have a fairly unique upbringing and life. I have been cursed and blessed and I want to write about it.”
Whether it is giving counseling about relationships, academics, and sports, or his life outside his career at CCHS, Gyepes describes how his life is laced with crazy moments. In his words, moments which “leave sort of lifelong impressions.”
Gyepes gives an example: a devastating event, which still impacts him today. “We unfortunately had a drive-by shooting in the front of school by Robert Frost (Auditorium) in the late ’90s, and I was the first person to arrive on the scene as I heard the shots. They both happened to be two of my former students who were not students at the time, but were walking in front of school.”
In 30 years, things are bound to change, and according to Gyepes, what has changed most is the sense of community.
In earlier days, he feels all of Culver City had a small town feel and on campus “almost every teacher knew every other teacher. Everybody knew the administrators. Everybody knew the counselors. There was a shared vision and understanding about the direction we wanted school to go and what we were trying to accomplish.”
The COVID epidemic in 2020 changed so much of that. “With students on blended schedules, with teachers teaching part time, with a sort of change that we’ve seen in Culver City, some of that has been creating an environment that, to me, feels less community oriented.”
Still, in a profession based so much in emotion, Gyepes is proud that through hard work and perseverance, he found a way to maintain balance and consistency, and serve the community well.
