In April, recent graduate Jason Young took first place at the annual French competition held by the Alliance Francaise of Santa Clara Valley, for which he received a prize of $400. The contest, open to high school senior non-native French speakers, was held at San Jose City College and tested participants on their written and oral abilities. During the timed written portion, students wrote an essay about a novel of their choice. The oral portion had the students hold a 10-minute conversation with two of the contest’s judges.
Rising junior Vincent Yao appeared at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on June 14 to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” prior to the Dodgers’ game against the Cincinnati Reds, and also to perform “God Bless America” during the seventh inning stretch.
James Seifert ’11 placed an exclamation point on his remarkable season in June in Dallas, Texas, reaching finals in Dramatic Interpretation of Literature at the National Forensic League National Championship Tournament. Having already made history as the first Harker student to qualify for NFL Nationals in a speech event, he advanced through all 13 rounds of competition to claim fourth place among the 236 students competing in Dramatic Interpretation.
Since last September Seifert has been on a competitive trajectory that suggested such an accomplishment was possible. He began his season by winning the Wake Forest University tournament, then followed that result with third place honors at Stanford University and another championship at the UC Berkeley tournament, the largest invitational in the nation. He also qualified for the National Catholic Forensic League Grand National Tournament, reaching the octafinal round (top 56) at that tournament in Washington, D.C., over Memorial Day weekend.
Competition is always fierce at NFL Nationals. Seifert traveled with his coach, Jonathan Peele, to the tournament on June 12. He progressed through six preliminary rounds and six elimination rounds before reaching the final round, held on stage before an audience of 3,400 attendees and several thousand more watching the streaming broadcast on the NFL’s website. All 236 of the competitors Seifert faced were already champions in their own right, having qualified for NFL Nationals by being among the top finishers in the NFL’s 107 district qualifying tournaments.
His finish represented the school’s best showing at NFL Nationals since 2008, when Carol Green coached Stephanie Benedict ’08 to sixth place in the Congressional Debate Senate chamber and the team of Kaavya Gowda ’08 and Kelsey Hilbrich ’09 to seventh place in Public Forum Debate. “Our NFL district has such stiff competition from programs like Bellarmine and Leland that even qualifying for NFL Nationals is a tremendous accomplishment. I am proud that James was my first qualifier at Harker and converted his opportunity into such a tremendous finish,” said Peele, who has now coached 31 students to the tournament in his 11-year career.
Seifert performed selections from “I Am My Own Wife” by Doug Wright this season for competition. “Next year as a Stanford freshman he will likely remain involved with our team as a coach and judge, so James can put his expertise to use for our growing group of young forensics students,” added Peele. “We’ll use the experience of this past week in Dallas to motivate our team for years to come.”
James Seifert and coach Jonathan Peele with his NFL National fourth place trophy for Dramatic Interpretation
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On May 8, 2003, the Harker history committee escorted Howard Nichols, president, and his former secretary and current board member Phyllis Carley on a walking tour of Harker’s roots to identify the sites of the original campuses of Palo Alto Military Academy (PAMA) and Miss Harker’s/Harker Day School.
The tour, organized by history committee chair Enid Davis, began at the Palo Alto Children’s Library, which was frequented by the neighboring PAMA cadets in the 1940s and ’50s. From the library, the group walked the neighborhood, strolling around what would have been the perimeter of the grounds of PAMA and Miss Harker’s/Harker Day School. Nichols pointed out where the original Manzanita Hall was located and identified the locations of where open fields, band cabins, rifle sheds, school buildings, admission buildings and dorms had been. Nichols reminisced about bike drills, formations, sports and, most importantly, friendships made during the years he attended PAMA between 1949 and 1956.
Major Donald Nichols, Howard’s father and owner of PAMA, lived directly across the street from the PAMA campus on Parkinson Street from 1950 to 1966. The house looks the same, as do several other houses that PAMA owned at the time. Many of the houses that stand along the perimeter of the campus can be seen in the photos in our archives. One of the highlights was identifying a stately palm tree that graced the front lawn of the Academy as far back as the 1920s and is still standing in what is now a residential neighborhood that was developed by the famous architect Joseph Eichler when the school property was sold in 1972.
In 1966 the Major moved from Parkinson to a home he built on the Harker school property on the corner of Harker and Melville. He lived there until the schools were moved to San Jose in 1972. At that time he sold the home at 814 Melville and then re-purchased it a few years later after he moved back to Palo Alto. That house still stands today surrounded by the same fence and yellow rose bushes that Nichols remembers were his dad’s favorites.
On the corner of Harriet and Harker Streets, diagonally across from PAMA, stood the Miss Harker’s School/Harker Day school campus. Carley, who was employed there in 1952, described the location of the main building at 1050 Greenwood Street, whose lovely grounds were the scene of many annual Maypole celebrations. Carley recalled how Major Nichols, after purchasing the school, would change out of his military uniform into a business suit before coming over to Miss Harker’s! Major Nichols transformed the school from a girls’ boarding school to a coed day school in the mid-1950s and eventually combined Harker Day School with PAMA and moved the school to the present site on Saratoga Avenue in San Jose in 1972.
For a few hours on this cloudy May afternoon, you could almost hear the cadets of PAMA marching and see the Miss Harker girls trimming the Maypole. As time has marched on, so too has the tradition of educational excellence that has come to mean The Harker School.
Did you know that the great, great, great, great grandniece of George Washington attended Miss Harker’s School?
According to the 1952 yearbook, “The Echo,” fourth grader Margot Washington was descended from George Washington’s oldest brother, Samuel Washington. George Washington had no children of his own, so the article states that, “All of the Washingtons of today are descended from George Washington’s brothers and sisters. Except for her father, Lawrence Washington, Margot is the closest living relative of George Washington, who bears the name of Washington.”
Source: “The Echo.” Miss Harker’s School, 1952. (Palo Alto, CA) p. 12.
Sarah Ellen Polk Harker
Sarah Ellen was the mother of Catherine and Sara D. Harker, the women who founded and ran Miss Harker’s School for Girls in Palo Alto.
Mrs. Harker was born in Indiana on October 28, 1845. That would have made her two years old when the family joined the Oregon Trail and she suffered the loss of her father. He died of pneumonia, after being exposed to bad weather while crossing a raging river.
Sarah’s father’s name was Adam Polk. He was a cousin of President Polk. He came from Kentucky with his three sons to La Porte, Ind., and served (it is believed) as foreman for her grandfather, Nathaniel Winchell. Sarah’s parents married in 1842 and had two children together, Sarah and her sister Caroline.
Years later Sarah married James Bartlett Harker, a native of New Jersey. He died the same year Catherine Harker opened her school. Sarah and James had three daughters: Catherine, Sara and Caroline. Tragedy struck the family on June 18, 1893, when Caroline, the youngest daughter, committed suicide by drowning during a state of depression at age 22.
Sarah Harker eventually left Portland, Ore., where the family had settled, to work at Miss Harker’s School. In 1902, Sarah’s sister Mrs. Caroline Wellman joined her. Together, the Harker women put all their energies into Miss Harker’s School.
Sarah’s daughters never married, but their much-loved students became their legacy.
With summer fast approaching we thought it would be fun to share some Harker summer memories with you from our archives!
A summer program brochure from 1920 describes a schedule of morning academics, military drills, calisthenics, swimming, baseball and hikes. In the late ’20s and into the ’40s, brochures touted an academic “Coaching Program” in Palo Alto with morning classes in arithmetic, spelling, composition, reading and penmanship, followed by an 11:30 – 12 military drill and an afternoon of exercise and daily swimming. Harker also hosted a recreational camp at Camp Eldorado at Lake Alpine in the Sierra where the boys slept in tent cabins and ate in a log cabin mess hall. Fishing, archery, swimming and campfire programs were offered, and popular activities included bike and horseback riding, bugling, rifle practice and boating at the Palo Alto Yacht Harbor and at Lake Alpine.
We have few summer program records from the early decades of Miss Harker’s School. However, by the 1950s the summer program featured Puppet Pantomime, an original variety show presented by the children, Aquacade in the school pool, arts, crafts and woodworking. By the 1960s – after Major Nichols purchased the school – the Harker Day School featured a six-week program of “Academics, Recreation, and Just Plain Fun!”
After the move to the Saratoga campus in 1972 and into the 1980s, Harker’s summer school continued to offer academic enrichment, recreation and sports for boys and girls in both boarding and day programs. Activities included archery, dance, drama, martial arts and weight training, and an ESL program was added with boarding students coming from around the world.
In the ’90s Harker began offering extended trips such as Fields of Dreams – A Midwest Baseball Tour and Excellent Adventure in San Diego. Non-academic classes such as Hands on Science, Friendly French and performing arts workshops were offered in the morning. A three-week Club Harker session was added at the end of the original five-week camp offering families even more options, providing a more relaxed format of the regular program, as well as offering World Camp, an intensive English instruction that ended with a California Caravan Tour.
Today, Harker continues to offer fun and famous summer programs, including the newly formed Summer Institute and Summer Conservatory. Years from now we’ll reminisce about our climbing wall, Ray (the summer camp cartoon mascot), Kindercamp and the infamous Dan Gelineau and Miss Kelly – stay tuned!
Sara D. Harker will forever be known as the younger sister of Catherine, who founded a private girls’ school in Palo Alto, Calif., in 1902. Catherine was, no doubt, the intellectual of the three sisters born to Sarah E. and James Harker of Portland, Ore. She graduated from Vassar College in 1889 and taught Latin at Mills College before opening her school.
Sara arrived in Palo Alto in 1907, along with her mother and aunt, to help Catherine. Since she was a trained musician (she played the violin and piano), her first job was director of the music program. Sara expanded this music program and her own interests to the Palo Alto community, becoming a champion of the Fortnightly Music Club, which brought great artists to the community.
Sara’s other main interests were business, humanitarian works and traveling. During World War I, she was in charge of the California state office for the Commission of Relief of Belgium. Later, she traveled in Australia and studied in Boston at the Prince School, affiliated with the graduate school of education at Harvard. After further studying business, she traveled to Europe in 1931 and upon her return became principal of the lower school at Miss Harker’s.
In one newspaper account, Sara is about to embark for a European tour with four girls from the school. The item includes a charming detail of the trip: “There will be motor trips out from Nice and Rome, an excursion to Capri and Pompeii, swimming and tea at the Lido, a lake trip to the castle of Chillon, attendance at plays in Interlaken, and Munich trips to the Isle of Marken and its famous cheese market, a day on the Rhine and an airplane journey from Heidelberg to Paris.” (The article is undated, but this trip took place when a “5 room modern bungalow” rented in Palo Alto for $60 a month.)
In an undated brochure published after Catherine Harker’s death in 1938 showing Sara as headmistress, the first aim of the school is thus stated: “The first objective is to inspire every pupil with high ideals, not only of scholarship, but of character, and to awaken the desire to make the greatest possible use of life and talents.”
According to her pupils and colleagues, she succeeded in this endeavor. During the 50th celebration of the opening of the Harker School for Girls, an associate wrote of Sara: “Her leadership is one of enthusiasm, sincerity, and high ideals. Always she is interested in the individual, with her talents and potentials … She places strong emphasis upon high academic standards, but above all, she values the building of character.”
Sara Harker might always be known as Catherine’s younger sister, but she stands just as tall in the history of our school. Upon Catherine’s death in 1938, Sara took on the responsibility of running the school until her retirement at the age of 84 in 1951.
Miss Harker died in a Mountain View rest home. Hospitalized after a series of strokes for nearly three years, she was 89 years old when she died.
Gloria Brown, a 1945 Harker high school graduate, has called Sara Harker “the most influential person in my life.” She was a dedicated educator who filled her students’ heads with the love of music, learning and good works. Not bad for a little sister!
Sources: “Miss Harker’s School.” Brochure. No date, but after 1938; Newspaper item, n.d.; “Palo Alto Times,” 4/24/56; “Palo Alto Times,” 1951; “San Jose Mercury News,” 12/31/76.
Frank Cramer founded what is now The Harker School under the influence of David Starr Jordan, the first president of Stanford University. The school was a feeder school for the new university that opened in 1891.
The school was first and briefly called the Palo Alto Preparatory School for Boys. It was both a day and boarding school located in the home of Rev. W.D. Bishop on Waverley Street in Palo Alto. It was renamed Manzanita Hall in 1892.
Some years later, Cramer moved the school out to the town’s Alba Park “fringe area” of the late 1890s. The illustration above shows two buildings on the small campus. The second building was named Madrono Hall. Hopkins Avenue now follows the photo’s fence line.
A Mr. J. Leroy Dixon purchased the school from its founder in 1902, sold it, then bought it back it for a brief time. In a Palo Alto newspaper interview dated July 21, 1949, Dixon’s career is detailed. He was a well known educator and a one-time owner of Manzanita Hall.
Dixon owned Manzanita Hall for seven years. During his time of ownership, Dixon states that “Manzanita Hall had students from all over the country and sent more boys to Stanford than any other school in the state.” (Go Harker!)
He recalls the time that one boy actually turned down Stanford, because his father and grandfather had gone to CAL, and he had to go there, too, in order to maintain family harmony. According to the reporter, Rosa Jensen, Manzanita Hall was not a military academy under Dixon’s ownership. Rather, the school “stressed cultural subjects, which he [Dixon] still feels make a good background for any career.”
In June 1919 Col. Richard P. Kelly purchased the school. According to the Palo Alto Community Book, “Kelly revised the curriculum, moved the school to Parkinson Avenue, operated a boys’ camp in conjunction with the school and changed its name in 1925 to the Palo Alto Military Academy.”
The word “Manzanita” sounds like the name of a mighty Native American chief, but it is actually the word for a native American berry-bearing shrub of the genus Arctostaphylos found in the Western United States. The shrub has “leathery leaves and clusters of white to pink flowers.” The word for apple in Spanish is manzana. Manzanita is a little apple. The fruit is edible.
We do not know too much about Manzanita Hall at this time, but we can say that the little apple plant that Frank Cramer planted in 1892 is beautifully flourishing in 2002.
I had the honor of interviewing Gloria Brown on Saturday evening, March 23, at the gala event at The Harker School. Brown, a Palo Alto resident, graduated from Miss Harker’s School as a high school senior in 1945. The interview was held in honor of the 100th anniversary of the founding of Miss Harker’s School in 1902.
The stage setting was perfect. Two large burgundy arm chairs, book shelves stocked with texts from Miss Harker’s School and the Palo Alto Military Academy (both of our founding schools), and an iron coat rack that displayed two dresses once belonging to Sara Harker set the scene.
I asked Mrs. Brown questions concerning life in the Palo Alto boarding school during World War II. She described how Miss Sara went shopping armed with over 50 ration books. There was little help in the kitchen and on the grounds, but the small, devoted staff worked very hard to make life comfortable for the students. We learned about the war efforts of Miss Sara and the students. I read a letter sent to Miss Harker by General Douglas MacArthur thanking the headmistress for her efforts to improve the life for underprivileged children of Japanese leper parents.
Gloria went on to describe the delightful Sunday dinners and the parties with boys from schools approved by Miss Sara. She spoke about her admiration for Sara Harker, calling her the “most influential person” in her life. This, in spite of her near expulsion for tossing her Latin book out of the bus window as she left for summer vacation. Unluckily for Gloria, the book had been recovered by Miss Sara.
Mrs. Brown closed the interview with an explanation of the school’s motto: “To serve, not to be served,” and the recital of the school’s anthem. She also told the appreciative audience that she “will always be a Harker girl.”
Bay Area-based film director Pari Mathur held auditions at Harker in late May for his first feature film. Recent graduate Adi Parige helped set up the casting call, having been an intern at Mathur’s production company in 2009. Mathur had also been in the audience at several Harker performing arts productions and was impressed with the talent the students offered. Details on the project are scarce, but the film’s story will follow the life of a family of Indian-American immigrants.
