Bonita Now Has an Official Hometown Song Written by a Third-Generation Teen

Bonita, which was established in 1884 in the South Bay, just got its own hometown song.

The piece was composed by 16-year-old Ella Aldridge, and was unanimously chosen as the official Song of Bonita by a panel of 40 community leaders, including a former San Diego Symphony Orchestra conductor, Chula Vista mayor and former San Diego County supervisor.

It all happened after Aldridge, a junior at the San Diego School for the Creative and Performing Arts in Paradise Hills, was asked to write a song for a play she was starring in at the annual Bonitafest last fall. The musical comedy, “Thin Skins and Hayseeds,” inspired by Romeo and Juliet, was set in Bonita and revolved around a feud between a lemon farmer and a lima bean farmer and their star-crossed son and daughter.

But the final song didn’t work. So the director, Max Branscomb, asked Aldridge, a guitar player and musical theater major, if she would help write a new song. She came up with the song “Home in Bonita” on a picnic bench under a shady tree on her patio and played it there for Branscomb.

“I hope people take away a nostalgic and appreciative look at Bonita, seeing its beauty all around. I wanted this song to be a showcase of the warmth and love living in Bonita,” said Aldridge, a third-generation Bonita native whose grandparents settled there in 1966.

The lyrics include lines like, “How lucky we are to live in this place, Hills all around us, the trees and the breeze…”

“It was a beautiful waltz-time love song to our hometown, something Paul McCartney would be proud of had he composed it,” said Branscomb, a Bonita resident for 53 years and guitar player who has written and directed the Bonitafest Melodrama for 47 years.

On opening night, when Aldridge played “Home in Bonita” on her guitar and sang for an audience of several hundred, she got tremendous applause.

“It was a happy moment after such a rough week in our fire-threatened, smoke-choked community,” said Branscomb, professor of journalism at Southwestern College in Chula Vista.

Throughout the run of “Thin Skins and Hayseeds” and even after the show was over, people kept telling Branscomb how much they loved “Home in Bonita” and that it should be the town’s official song. So he got to thinking how to do that.

Branscomb brought together 40 panelists, including former San Diego Symphony Orchestra conductor Dr. Jahja Ling, Chula Vista Mayor John McCann and former San Diego County Supervisor Greg Cox, along with the Bonitafest Melodrama band, to vote on whether it should be Bonita’s official song. On the morning of the vote Jan. 25 at the Bonita Museum and Cultural Center, more than 110 folks packed into the museum.

“As Ella and the choir sang, I saw tears streaming down the faces of dozens of people in the audience. I still get chills thinking about it,” Branscomb said.

At one point, Ling was heard saying it was “a pretty song for a pretty town.”

McCann made the motion to name “Home in Bonita” the Official Song of Bonita. Dolly Engen of the Sunnyside Saddle Club seconded the motion.

“The song Ella Aldridge wrote represents the spectacular calming beauty of Bonita. Bonita is a tight-knit community, and I had the greatest honor to support Ella’s song to become the official song of Bonita,” said McCann, who attended Bonita Vista High School and served on the Bonitafest committee.

“When the vote came, every single person in the room thrust their hands into the air and enthusiastically shouted, ‘Aye,’ Branscomb said.

Aldridge started performing in the Bonitafest when she was 9, auditioning with adults and teens. She’s played a lead role every year since then and has performed in other local theater productions. She co-wrote the rhyming bilingual Christmas comedy “La Pastorela de los Transfronterizos” and played the archangel Gabriel on KNSJ radio broadcasts that aired across the country by the syndicated television news program “Border Report.”

“Her spot-on impersonations of Taylor Swift and Barbie earned critical acclaim in 67 U.S. cities, Mexico and India. She is a cerebral chameleon as an actor who can adapt to any character and a master with accents,” Branscomb said. Last year, she was named one of San Diego County’s 25 Most Remarkable Teenagers by the San Diego Public Defenders Office and was honored with “Ella Aldridge Day” by former county Supervisor Nora Vargas.

“Writing this song was a life-changing experience. It taught me not only about songwriting, but also how much the music can impact people,” Aldridge said.

Aldridge has agreed to play “Home in Bonita” at a community event April 12 to re-dedicate the Bonita glarf dinosaur statues on Bonita Road. Of course, she plans to play it at next year’s Bonitafest.

A public debut of Bonita’s official song is set for 10 a.m. Feb. 9 at the Sweetwater Community Church, 5305 Sweetwater Road.

Linda McIntosh | February 10, 2025 | San Diego Union-Tribune

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