Three Harker students were honored for their fine volleyball season this past year. Chad Gordon, a rising senior, was named to the All-Mercury Second Team as outside hitter, while alumnus Matthew Gehm ’09, middle blocker and Eugene Huang, also a rising senior, setter, received honorable mentions. In addition, for his leadership and inspiration, boys volleyball coach and athletic director Dan Molin was named Santa Clara Valley Athletic League Co-Coach of the Year.
Annie Zhou ’07 was one of 23 national finalists in the 24th annual Miss Asian America pageant (MAAP) held in San Francisco Aug. 8 at the Palace of Fine Arts. Harker sponsored Zhou and school representatives were on hand at the pageant to cheer her on.
Zhou said she was honored to have been a part of the pageant. “MAAP helped me build more self-confidence, I experienced first-hand networking and marketing strategies in the business world and met life-long friends. It was definitely a very enriching experience.” Previous titleholders include Mona Lee, First Lady of the state of Washington and Julie Luck, news reporter in the San Francisco Bay Area. Many contestants have gone on to win other national and international pageant titles.
In the spring, Harker rising seniors Roslyn Li and Sarah Wang, along with Kevin Wang ’09 earned the top spots at the National Japan Bowl in Washington, D.C., in the Level IV category. For their accomplishment, the team and US Japanese teacher Masako Onakado was awarded a 13-day trip to Japan to see the country and meet Her Imperial Highness Princess Takamado.
The group arrived in Japan on July 17 and the next day headed to Kawasaki City, where they visited the Toshiba Science Museum. “Toshiba was one of the sponsors of Japan Bowl, and they gave us a guided tour,” Onakado said. “We were fascinated to see their wide variety of cutting-edge technologies such as superconductivity, robotic technology and digital image processing.”
For the next few days, the group was given free time to explore Tokyo and its many wards. On July 21, they visited the historic town of Takayama, famous for its old houses and streets reminiscent of Japan’s Edo period. They also trekked to the Hida Folk Village, a window to the past marked by several buildings hundreds of years old.
After their stay at a traditional-style inn, it was off to Hiroshima on July 22 to visit the city’s government offices. “We visited the Hiroshima Prefectural Government Office and were greeted by Mr. Hashimoto, the division director of international affairs,” Onakado said. “He and his staff explained to us the general overview of Hiroshima as well as its communications with other states and provinces abroad.” One of the staff members was an American who studied Japanese in the U.S. and then traveled to Japan in the Japan Exchange and Teaching program.
“Since we tend to immediately associate Hiroshima with the atomic bomb, it was informative and interesting to learn about different sides of Hiroshima,” Onakado recalled.
Later, the students went to a small island known as Naoshima. Onakado made sure to visit this island because it was one of the subjects the students studied when practicing for the Japan Bowl. One side of the island contains two museums, while on the other side sits a village with several art displays. The group received a guided tour of the various art sites and “learned how beautifully their art, architecture, history and nature merge together,” Onakado said.
The next day the group went to Kyoto to meet a teacher and four students from Kobe’s Canadian Academy. “Canadian Academy is a school known as the best international college-prep school in the Osaka/Kobe area,” noted Onakado. The Harker and Canadian Academy students visited a series of UNESCO World Heritage sites and shared information about each other’s schools.
Next on the agenda was a visit to Tsushima, located just outside the major city of Nagoya. “The town is known for its summer festival, which is one of the three biggest river festivals and that has been held annually over the last 500 years,” Onakado said. They stayed at the house of a taiko drum maker and were treated to the festival, which lasted from the evening until the next morning. “The festival included floating boats decorated with hundreds of paper lanterns, traditional flute and taiko music, dynamic fireworks, a procession of feudal lords and Shinto rituals,” the teacher said. “At the festival, we enjoyed the fantastic scenes in the river as well as the traditional music and attires of warriors from the Edo period.” They concluded their stay in Tsushima with performance by a famous taiko performer.
With their trip almost over, the final two days were spent in Tokyo, where they visited the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and met the director of the General Public Diplomacy Department, who explained how Japan is promoting its culture to young overseas audiences. They then visited Mita High School, one of Tokyo’s most prestigious public college-prep schools, and attended a tea ceremony. The Harker students also wore yukatas (a summer kimono) and socialized with their new friends at Mita.
Soon after, it was time for the students to meet Princess Takamodo at the Imperial Palace. “We were very nervous about going to meet with an imperial family, but she was very friendly to us, spending almost two hours, sharing her episodes about her daily life and her three daughters who are currently college students,” recalled Onakado.
Onakado said the trip gave the students the “once-in-a-lifetime chance” to experience first-hand the things they had studied when preparing for the Japan Bowl. “It was also very valuable that we met with so many people who treated the students as ‘little ambassadors’ and gave them encouragement and advice for continuing to study Japanese.”
After their visit, Tokyo Embassy Deputy Chief Mission James P. Zumwalt wrote a blog entry about the students’ visit to the embassy, saying he found them to be “extremely impressive.” An error in the blog entry states that Wang will be attending Princeton in the fall. Wang will in fact be studying at Dartmouth.
In June, seven upper school students visited Japan along with US Japanese teacher Masako Onakado and nurse Clare Elchert to experience the country’s rich culture first-hand.
Students on the trip were Tiffany Chang, Ashley Hejtmanek, Katie Liang, Victoria Liang and David Wu, all rising juniors, and rising seniors Jonathan Lau and Kelly Chen.
The group’s first stop was the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima on June 8, where they visited the Atomic Bomb Dome and the Peace Memorial Museum. Before leaving Hiroshima, the group met a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing who volunteered at the park as a storyteller, and who shared his experience in Hiroshima and his opinions on the bombing.
That evening, everyone went to Miyajima Island and had fun playing with fireworks before retiring for the night in a traditional-style inn. The next morning, the group visited Itsukushima shrine.
After leaving Miyajima Island the next day, the group headed to Kyoto via bullet train and stayed the night in a temple. The following day was highlighted by a walk through Kyoto’s Arashiyama district and more temple visits.
Not ones to linger for very long, the students and chaperones boarded another bullet train for Yokohama on June 11. This year marked the 150th anniversary of the city opening its port to Western countries, and to commemorate the milestone a celebration known as the Y150 Expo was taking place. There, they saw a performance by a giant robotic spider and checked out several interactive exhibits.
The next day the group checked in with Harker’s sister school, Tamagawa Academy. The students got to meet with their buddies for the first time. “We took a tour of the campus and were amazed by the facilities and wide range of classes offered at Tamagawa,” Onakado said. “Students also enjoyed eating the lunch made by their buddies’ moms in the buddies’ homeroom.” Following the tour, the Harker students went home with their buddies to stay with their host families for the weekend.
Harker’s students returned to school with their buddies the following Monday and took part in a Japanese class and learned how to make some Japanese snacks. Later, the group met with school president Yoshiaki Obara.
The group’s final day was spent sightseeing in Tokyo, visiting the famous Sensoji Temple and the Akihabara district, famous for its multitude of electronics stores. As a final surprise, Onakado took the students to a karaoke parlor for some last-minute fun before heading back home.
One of the dancing-est Harker families made the Web site header art for Evergreen Valley College. The photo shows Tommy Holford ’06 and sister Laura ’08, in their Irish dance outfits. The pair was also the subject of a March article in the Almaden Times as both are still very active dancers on a national and international level.
On May 8, 2003, the Harker history committee escorted then president Howard Nichols and former secretary and 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/The 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/The Harker Day School. Nichols pointed out where the original Manzanita Hall was located and identified the locations where open fields, band cabins, rifle sheds, school buildings, admission buildings and dorms had previously stood. 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 the owner of PAMA, lived directly across the street from the PAMA campus on Parkinson Street from 1950 to 1966. Howard noted that the house looks the same as it did during the PAMA years, as do several other houses the school owned at the time. Many of the houses that stand along the perimeter of the campus can be seen in the photos in Harker’s 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 Major Nichols 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 returning to Palo Alto. That house still stands today surrounded by the same fence and yellow rose bushes that Howard Nichols remembered were his dad’s favorites.
On the corner of Harriet and Harker Streets, diagonally across from PAMA, stood Miss Harker’s School/The Harker Day school campus. Carley, who was employed there in 1952, described the location of the main building at 1050 Greenwood Street, whose 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 going 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 merged Harker Day School with PAMA, moving the school to the present site on Saratoga Avenue in San Jose in 1972.
Sara D. Harker arrived in Palo Alto in 1907, along with her mother and aunt, to help her sister Catherine run the school she had just opened. A trained musician who played violin and piano, Sara Harker’s first job was director of the music program. She expanded the program and her own interests to the Palo Alto community, becoming a champion of the Fortnightly Music Club, which exists to this day and regularly performs free concerts in Palo Alto.
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 to 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.
One newspaper article featured Sara as she was about to embark on a European tour with four girls from the school. “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 story reads. The article is undated, but the 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.”
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 ran the school until her retirement in 1951, at the age of 84. Hospitalized after a series of strokes for nearly three years, she was 89 years old at the time of her death.
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, which opened in 1891.
The school was first and briefly known as 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. In 1892, the school was renamed Manzanita Hall.
Some years later, Cramer moved the school out to the town’s Alba Park “fringe area” of the late 1890s. By this time, the tiny campus was comprised of two buildings, Manzanita Hall and Madrone Hall.
J. Leroy Dixon, a well-known educator in the area, purchased the school from its founder in 1902, sold it, then bought it back it for a brief time. Dixon owned Manzanita Hall for a total of seven years. He once stated that while the school was under his ownership, “Manzanita Hall had students from all over the country and sent more boys to Stanford than any other school in the state.”
According to newspaper 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, ownership of Manzanita Hall once again changed hands, this time to Col. Richard P. Kelly. Under his leadership, the school altered its curriculum and was later moved to Parkinson Avenue. A boys’ camp was also established. In 1925, Manzanita Hall became known as the Palo Alto Military Academy.
Sarah Ellen Polk Harker 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 Oct. 28, 1845. She was two years old when her family embarked on the Oregon Trail. While on the trail her father, Adam, died of pneumonia after being exposed to bad weather while crossing a raging river.
Adam was a cousin of President James K. 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 again on June 18, 1893, when Caroline, the youngest daughter, committed suicide by drowning during a state of depression at age 22.
Sara D. 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 energy into Miss Harker’s School.
Sarah Ellen’s daughters never married, but their much-loved students became their legacy.
The foundations of what would eventually become The Harker School were laid by Frank Cramer, one of the earliest residents of Palo Alto. After graduating from Lawrence College in Appleton, Wis., in 1886, Cramer worked as a teacher in his home state before moving to Palo Alto to attend Stanford University. A biologist and lifelong lover of the sciences, Cramer earned his master’s degree in zoology from Stanford in 1893.
In 1891, Stanford president David Starr Jordan influenced Cramer to open the Palo Alto Preparatory School for Boys. The school was renamed Manzanita Hall in 1892, and by September of 1894 the school had enrolled 24 students.
Palo Alto was a young but growing community at the time Cramer founded the school. In 1890, the city boasted only six buildings and 12 residents. Four years later, the number of buildings had jumped to 165 and the city had a population of 700.