This story was originally posted online in December 2007
In a tremendous run at the championship, our girls varsity volleyball team, supported by a huge number of students, family and friends, made it to the championship match, but were shut down Saturday afternoon by Santa Fe Valley Christian of Solana, in three straight games. The team repeatedly broke school records as they progressed from Central Coast Section (CCS) playoffs, taking second place, to the Northern California (NorCal) playoff series, where they won the NorCal championship against Christian Brothers of Sacramento. The girls then played in the Division IV State Championship, December 1 at San Jose State University. It was a historical first to make it to the finals to begin with and our fans were so supportive and positive throughout the season that Harker was awarded the prestigious Steve Stearns Sportsmanship Award from the CCS for our out-of-this-world fan representation. Coach Theresa Smith said, “This season has been the most incredible experience for our players, our coaches and our school. I am proud of all of us for what we’ve accomplished.”
The following story originally appeared in the June 2003 issue of Harker News.
The Archives learned of two noteworthy Miss Harker’s School alumnae as a result of inquiries from researchers!
Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher
In January an Illinois professor writing a biography of Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher, Miss Harker’s School Class of 1926, contacted us to confirm details of MFK Fisher’s schooling at Miss Harker’s. MFK Fisher (1908-1994) authored over 30 books about food and was a colleague of Julia Child’s. Harker archivist Sue Smith located Fisher’s transcripts, information about her younger sister who also attended Miss Harker’s, and general information about the curriculum at the time. In return, we received an 8×10 photo of Mary Frances (center student in photo above) with her graduating class taken on the lawn of Miss Harker’s School, which will be hung, along with a growing number of other historic photos, in the main conference room on the Saratoga campus.
Margaret Robertson Sperry
In February another inquiry came in a most unusual way. Marcie Gilbert’s fourth grade class completed a Web-based project on Armstrong Sperry, winning Newbery author (“Call it Courage,” 1941). His granddaughter, Margo Burns, who lives in Manchester, N.H., manages Sperry’s website. She noticed the “hits” from the Harker class and remembered that her grandmother, Margaret Robertson Sperry (Class of 1917), had attended Miss Harker’s School in California. She immediately went to our website and upon contacting the archives department, was thrilled that they could provide her with her grandmother’s transcripts and copies of the school brochures from that era. In return, the archives received a digital photo of Robertson and Sperry, together in Hawaii in the late 1920s.
This story was originally posted online in early 2009.
Students from fifth through eighth grades have qualified for world and national championships in two robotics contests. Congratulations to grade 8 students Sierra Lincoln, Pooja Shah and Sonia Gupta, who took the First Place Championship Award and the Judges Award at a regional VEX Robotics competition at Bellarmine College Preparatory in mid-January. The team will head to Dallas in May for the world championship competition. VEX robotics matches are played with robots made from VEX Robotics kits, designed for use in competitions by schools. Four robots work in two teams on a 12-foot square field to manage tasks, thwart opponents and hold dominant points on the field.
December was a great month for students participating in the First Lego League (FLL) robotics tournaments. In early December, a trio of Harker grade 8 boys won the special Community Award at the QuixSilver FIRST Lego League competition in early December as well as finishing second overall in the Robot Performance segment of the event. The team, Batteries Not Included, is Michael Cheng, Ravi Tadinada and Tyler Yeats. Their success allowed them to advance to the Northern California FLL Championship competition in late January.
In mid-December, Harker’s all-girl GEARs team – Eva Bruketa, Cristina Jerney, Cecilia Lang-Ree and Payal Modi, all grade 8 – participated in their final tournament at Valley Christian School, receiving the Judge’s Award for their efforts and successes in the years they competed. The GEARs were the only all-girl team to compete for all five years in the league, which is open to competitors from ages 9 to 14. And in the true spirit of Harker’s technologicial prowess, Bruketa, who left Harker last year for a new home in Ottawa, Canada, communicated with the rest of her team using Skype, the Webcam service that allows real-time conversations via computer. She had a mock Lego model set up in her home, and she and her teammates designed their project long-distance. Bruketa did come down for the final tournament to join in the fun with her friends.
The SAP elementals – Jeremy Binkley, Jeton Gutierrez-Bujari, Alexander Thomas and Harry Xu, all grade 6 – advanced to the Northern California State Championship after competing at a regional tournament at Hopkins Junior High School in Fremont in mid-December.
LS students also performed well at regional FLL tournaments in December. The RoboFerrets, grade 5 students John Nicolas Jerney, Alec Kiang, Ryan Lee and Robbie Underwood, received the Research Award at a regional tournament at California High School in San Ramon on Dec. 14, and advanced to the Northern California State Championship.
Elizabeth Siegel, grade 5, and her team, Claws2008 Robotics, were the winners of the Robot Design award and placed second overall at a regional tournament at Valley Christian High School on Dec. 13.
The cast and crew of last year’s spring musical attended the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August, and all expectations of the trip were met and exceeded. As members of the American High School Theatre Festival (AHSTF), the troupe was on a “working trip,” doing four performances in the beautiful Church Hill Theatre, and attending four performances by other high school participants. They also had one half-hour slot allotted to them on the Royal Mile, the main street of Edinburgh, to sell their show to the public, which they did in high spirits despite pouring rain. Director Laura Lang-Ree brought water bottles, in a bright yellow, to advertise the show, which the cast freely handed out to passersby during the first week. It was always a fun surprise to spot a “Urinetown” water bottle in the hand, basket or backpack of a tourist!
The high schools performing at the Fringe are advertised and billed exactly the same as all other professional and amateur groups, so schools hope to attract theatergoers, and not just other high school students. Thus it was especially gratifying that “Urinetown” had an audience of almost 150 for the first performance. In all, they had among the highest attendance of the high schools, performing for 430 people. “The Conservatory’s recognition by AHSTF was incredibly valuable to our program, ranking us among the best and brightest of high school musical theater,” said Lang-Ree. “Being able to take our students on a trip like this, one that demanded the best of them as performers, ‘sales-people’ and ambassadors of Harker was just magic.”
AHSTF sponsored a ceilidh (a traditional Scottish dance) for the students, where dancers in traditional attire demonstrated various dances and then pulled in the students and adults to give it a try. The students also attended the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, an annual celebration of the military history of the United Kingdom, and were taken on a day-long coach ride through the Trossachs (“Little Highlands”) to Stirling Castle.
When not rehearsing or performing “Urinetown,” the 31 Harker students were busy gaining valuable theater experience by attending as many professional shows as possible. They saw actor Alan Cumming in a very modern “The Bacchae,” two comedians summarizing the first six Harry Potter books in an hour, Cambridge University’s “Sweeney Todd” in the tiniest of venues, a hip hop version of “Into the Woods,” two tappers dancing to two classical guitars, and much, much more. Of course, some shopping was done, despite the prohibitive exchange rate, and much hot chocolate was drunk at the cafe; “Chocolate Soup,” a student (and chaperone) favorite.
Harker’s Conservatory attended the Fringe after being nominated by American Musical Theatre of San Jose and undergoing an intensive application process. Thirty-eight of the approximately 300 schools that applied were invited to attend the Fringe this year.
“I am so grateful to the administration and the Conservatory families for their constant support. I hope to be able to take another lucky cast to the Fringe sometime in the future!” added Lang-Ree.
This story originally appeared in the June 2003 issue of Harker News
Over forty boxes of documents, artifacts, memorabilia and framed photographs found a new home on the Bucknall campus with the official move of the Harker archives to the Bucknall library in April.
The Harker Archives Project began in the summer of 2002, but quickly outgrew the small space in the Saratoga Library office. Now located in the office area in the Bucknall Library, archivist Sue Smith continues to collect and organize items from the school’s past, as well as to write Finding Aids, the scholarly documents created to describe an archive’s holdings. Smith notes, “We have some wonderful treasures in the Harker Archives. Our holdings are unique, and many are irreplaceable. They are truly our windows into our past.”
In addition to compiling school history, the Archives catalogs the documents and memorabilia and produces articles for the Harker News and the history section of the Harker Web site. Smith asks that If you are willing to part with a piece of (or copy of!) your personal “Harker history,” the Archives would appreciate your yearbooks, uniforms, photos, student work or other memorabilia from Palo Alto Military Academy, Miss Harker’s School, The Harker Day School and Harker Academy. Contact Sue Smith, Harker archivist, at susans@harker.org to discuss sharing your treasures!
This story by Enid Davis, lower school librarian, originally appeared in the January and February 2002 issues of Harker News
Frank Cramer (1862-1948): Earliest Founder of The Harker School
Frank Cramer was born in Wausau, Wis. He was one of Palo Alto’s first residents and played a strong leadership role in both the city government and local public schools. I’m sure Diana Nichols would have found his company lively as Cramer had a lifelong interest in the natural sciences and was a biologist.
Frank Cramer graduated from Lawrence College, Appleton, Wis., in 1886, taught for a while and came to Palo Alto in 1891 to attend Stanford University. He studied zoology, earning a master’s degree in 1893.
What better training to open up a school? Under the influence of David Starr Jordan, president of Stanford University, Cramer opened Manzanita Hall, a college prep school for boys in 1893. Twenty-four boys were enrolled there in September 1894.
When Cramer opened the school, Palo Alto was not the bustling, expensive community it is today. But it was growing. According to Arthur Coffman’s history of Palo Alto: “From 1890 to 1894 the number of buildings in Palo Alto increased from 6 to 165. During the same four years, the population rose from 12 to 700.”
In terms of real estate prices, Coffman reports “a six-room cottage was built for $1,500; a ten-room house for $3,300; and a twelve-room house for $4,500.”
Sources:
Blitzer, Carol. http://www.service.com/paw/Centennial/1994 Apr 15. 1890SC.html
Coffman, Arthur. An Illustrated History of Palo Alto. Palo Alto: Osborne, 1969.
Palo Alto City Library. Obituary Files.
Frank and Archie – Harker Heroes from the Past
We all know about the Harker eagle, our school’s mascot, but have you heard the tale about Archie, the “knee-sprung horse,” who belonged to Frank Cramer, one of the founders of The Harker School?
Frank Cramer, who founded Manzanita Hall in 1893, was very much involved in Palo Alto’s relief effort for San Franciscans after the 1906 earthquake. He and his faithful Archie would go back and forth from the train station delivering yeast and flour from San Jose to bakers in the Palo Alto area, and back again to the station with the loaves.
In one incident Cramer heard that Duff & Doyles’ store in Menlo Park was offering lots of yeast for the cause. He hitched old Archie to a 600-pound wagon, imagining himself the hero of the day when he would deliver at least 50 pounds of yeast to cheering bakers. Instead, he received a tiny package from a worker, who insisted that they were dispersing one small box to each family.
“My dream of valiant service was shattered,” reported Cramer. “But I took the dainty box of yeast cakes. On the way back I wondered, if rumor can do that kind of thing traveling only a mile and a half, what could it do going once or twice around the world?”
According to reports, “Mr. Frank Cramer furnished his horse and express wagon and worked himself untiringly, or at least ceaselessly, from early morn till late at night, receiving, checking, counting, and delivering at the station the finished product, amounting to several loaves of bread daily. His good grey horse may well be counted among the earthquake sufferers.”
This story by Enid Davis, lower school librarian, originally appeared in the November 2002 issue of Harker News.
While going through our boxes of unsorted archive treasures, San Jose State University intern Sue Smith found a band of flashcards typed on small index cards. They contain names and facts about important people in the early history of The Harker School. Here are some founding fathers and mothers of Manzanita Hall, later to be called Palo Alto Military Academy (1919-1972), The Harker Academy (1972-1992) and finally, The Harker School (1992-present).
A Baker’s Dozen: Who are These People?
1. David Starr Jordan
2. Frank Cramer
3. Rev. W.D. Bishop
4. E.L. Rich
5. Dr. Ben Thomas
6. George B. Culver
7. J. Le Roy Dixon
Answers:
1. Jordan was the first president of Stanford University. He inspired Frank Cramer and Catherine Harker to open their two schools. Jordan was a botonist and an ichthyologist.
2. Cramer was a Palo Alto town trustee, trustee of the first Palo Alto public school, and founder, owner, and first principal of Manzanita Hall.
3. Bishop’s house on Waverley Street at University Avenue in Palo Alto was the first site of Cramer’s school.
4. Rich was one of the first teachers at Cramer’s school. He was a Presbyterian minister and husband of one of the two original
teachers in the Palo Alto School District, 1893.
5. Thomas was a dentist who taught at Manzanita Hall in 1896; he graduated from Stanford in 1897.
6. Culver taught at Manzanita Hall in 1896; he was dean of men at Stanford University, 1920-1928.
7. Dixon bought out Cramer in 1902 and ran the school for 10 years. He later sold the school to W.A. Shedd who later resold it to him.
8. Shedd was headmaster of Manzanita Hall in 1909. He bought the school in 1912 from Dixon and later resold it to him.
9. Kelly was also one of four Los Angeleans who bought Manzanita Hall from Dixon in 1919.
10. Emery was also one of four Los Angeleans who bought Manzanita Hall from Dixon. He left after one year to found Seale Academy.
11. Monroe was also one of four Los Angeleans who bought Manzanita Hall from Dixon. She served as housemother and later married Dr. Emery.
12. Hanson was one of four Los Angeleans to purchase Manzanita Hall from Dixon in June 1919. They spent 32 years operating the school’s summer camp, Camp El Dorado.
13. Park was commandant of Manzanita Hall from 1922-1925. He left to start the Pacific Coast Military Academy.
This story by Enid Davis, lower school librarian, originally appeared in the April 2002 issue of Harker News
The women who put the “Harker” in The Harker School came from strong pioneer stock. Catherine and Sarah Harker, who founded and ran Miss Harker’s School for several decades, must have taken great pride in their maternal grandmother Otelia. She was a pioneer who joined the Oregon Trail in 1847 and was elected “first Mother Queen” of the Oregon Pioneer Association in 1909 when she was 95 years old.
Our school’s archives contain an obituary, probably written by her daughter, Sarah Ellen Harker, and published in a San Francisco newspaper. Otelia died in 1911, and we have the original news item.
According to the obituary, Otelia Winchel (sic) was born on January 14, 1814, in Brookville, Indiana. She married John Cullen in 1835
and produced a boy, John W. Cullen, the following year. John Sr. died shortly after. In 1842 she married Adam Guthrie Polk.
Otelia and Adam had two daughters, Caroline and Sarah Ellen. Both sisters eventually moved from Indiana to Portland, traveling along the famous Oregon Trail, and then to Palo Alto, where they joined the staff at Miss Harker’s School. Sarah Ellen was the mother of Catherine and Sara Harker.
In 1847, Otelia Polk and her family crossed the plains to Oregon. The head of their wagon train was Samuel Markham. Samuel’s wife, Elizabeth, was Otelia’s cousin. (My source for this is Linda Markham Curry, a living descendant of Elizabeth Winchell.) In her email to me, Ms. Curry writes: “You may be interested to know that Otelia Winchell-Cullen-Polk-DeWitt was cousin to Elizabeth Winchell Markham, who was the mother of Edwin Markham the poet. Edwin has a history in San Jose too.”
The pioneers made a brief stop at the doomed Whitman Station. This was a missionary compound led by Dr. Marcus Whitman. According to the obituary, Dr. Whitman wanted the family to stay there for the winter, but Otelia “seemed to have a presentiment that forbade, and they pushed on toward the Willamette Valley.”
This premonition avoided tragedy for the Polk family as the famous Whitman massacre occurred about one month later on Nov. 29, 1847. (See the website noted below for more information on the massacre.)
Adam Polk died while crossing the Columbia River, leaving his widow and children to survive the harsh winter alone. They arrived at Oregon City, Ore., sometime in November or December 1847. Upon their arrival, they moved into a cabin on First and Morrison streets. Later, they moved into the first frame house in Portland, built by a Captain Crosby.
Otelia married Francis G. De Witt, an officer on a cargo ship in 1848. They had three children together: Marie B., Francis M. and Otelia V.
Mrs. De Witt died on March 21, 1911, in Portland. She was 98 years old.
If you’d like to see the ribbons she was awarded by the Oregon Pioneer Association, we happen to have them.
The following article by Enid Davis, lower school librarian, appeared in the January 2003 edition of Harker News.
For a symbolic reason, I have left Catherine Harker’s profile last in the series of our school’s founders. The school has gone through many name changes in its 110 years, but the “Harker” as in Miss Harker’s School for Girls still stands.
Who was Catherine Harker? What was her character? Is she someone whose values we can cherish as much as we do her name?
Catherine was born to a pioneer family in Portland, Oregon, on March 2, 1865. She was the daughter of James Bartlett Harker and Sarah Ellen Polk. The family was of English, Scotch and Dutch ancestry. Catherine, known as “Cassy” to family and friends, was the oldest of three sisters. Middle sister Sara became Catherine’s right-hand woman at Miss Harker’s School for Girls. Sadly, Caroline, the youngest, became despondent while in her early twenties and ended her own life.
Young Catherine attended Portland Oregon High School. Before she came to Palo Alto to open her school in 1903, she was a substitute at Portland High School, had private students, taught at Curtner Seminary in California (1895-1898) and at Mills College in Oakland, California (1890-1893; 1898-1901).
Catherine opened her school for girls in 1903. It began on the corners of Kingsley and Bryant in the vacated Castilleja Hall. Eighty students were enrolled and seven graduated the first year. In 1907, the school moved to a six-plus acre spot in an old vineyard. Cows, chickens, potato patches and vegetable gardens could be sighted from the classrooms. Board and tuition in 1903 was $500; the day school cost was between $50 to $90.
Headmistress Harker, who taught Latin and mathematics in addition to her administrative duties, has been described in a variety of sources as a person with three outstanding traits: humor, scholarship and dignity. Two quotes from our archive sources follow:
“Miss Catherine Harker… was not only a meticulous scholar whose daily lessons were carefully organized in neatly penciled notes, but she was a strongly attractive teacher, usually dressed in the dignity of white shirtwaists and long black skirts of her day, who re-assured her students with a contagiously delightful sense of humor.” —(Miss Harker’s School,”The Echo.” School yearbook, 1952.)
“Her faculty of combining humor and scholarliness made her courses a delightful experience.” —(Tall Tree, Vol. 1, No. 4. October, 1952).
The motto of Miss Harker’s School for Girls was “Not to be served, but to serve – Non ministrai, sed ministare.”
In 1923, the City of Palo Alto changed its street signs to reflect the school’s presence. Katherine and Central became Melville and Harker, respectively.
Still on a symbolic hunt for meaning behind the word “Harker” (English majors unite!), I checked out the library’s Oxford English Dictionary. One of the meanings of the word “hark,” is “to hear with active attention.” A “harker,” is, of course, a listener.
So hark! Our school name comes to us from an intelligent, scholarly, person with a good sense of humor, whose selected school motto was to serve others. She dedicated her life to education. Catherine died of a heart attack on the school grounds on December 12, 1938, but her name certainly lives on.
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.