The Harker School history

The first buildings were erected in 1895.

In September 1902, Harker opened The Thoburn School, a boarding school for young ladies.

He was a member of the town’s first board of trustees, and in 1904 he was elected to the local school board for a three-year term.

By 1906, the school occupied three rented buildings: two on Bryant and one on Ramona, and they began looking for a permanent site for the school.

In 1907 the school purchased 6.25 acres of pasture in the Alba Park section of Palo Alto and the main building was constructed at 1050 Greenwood Ave.

Dixon sold the school to William Shedd in 1909, but later bought it back from him.

Shedd remained as headmaster through at least 1918, presumably until Dixon sold the school to Col.

Kelly moved to Palo Alto in 1919, bought Manzanita Hall and established the Palo Alto Military Academy.

Major Donald L. Nichols, a 1926 graduate of Palo Alto Military Academy, purchases the school and takes over as superintendent when Col.

In 1935, he accepted the position of Commandant of Cadets at his alma mater, the Palo Alto Military Academy.

Five years later, in 1940, he became the superintendent of the San Rafael Military Academy.

In 1950 Nichols purchased PAMA and made his final move back to Palo Alto where he served as superintendent of the school and took over active management of the institution.

Miss Harker's offered a high school program at least through 1953 (newspaper clippings imply the program terminated with grades 9 and 10 after the '52-'53 school year), as referenced in the meeting minutes of the board of directors.

In 1954, the Harker School joined the California Association of Independent Schools (CAIS) and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.

By 1906, the school occupied three rented buildings: two on Bryant and one on Ramona, and they began looking for a permanent site for the school. It is unclear when the boarding program ended; it appears to have been terminated by June 1955, perhaps coinciding with the reorganization of the school in 1955.

He moved to the Bay Area as an infant, and when he was in second grade his mother enrolled him at Palo Alto Military Academy (PAMA). He attended PAMA and graduated from ninth grade in 1956.

In 1959 he purchased Harker Day School, a nursery through grade 6 campus located directly across the street from the PAMA campus.

He went on to attend Palo Alto High School followed by Stanford University where he received a degree in economics in 1963.

In 1965, Nichols returned to PAMA to work for his father, Maj.

In 1966 Major Nichols moved from Parkinson to a home he built on the Harker school property on the corner of Harker and Melville.

In 1972, Nichols merged the two schools, changed the name to Harker Academy, and relocated the campuses to San Jose.

Borders lived in the partially renovated convent building, and girls were added to the program beginning in the summer of 1973.

Fundraising efforts of the Mothers' and Fathers' Clubs over several years resulted in the addition of a swimming pool and recreational facilities that were dedicated on May 8, 1976.

Whether it was the school's campaign to write letters to soldiers of Desert Storm in 1990, the award-winning recycling program, or Jump Rope 4 Heart (for which he was a record-setting participant), Nichols was personally behind each schoolwide effort.

In 1993 Mayor Susan Hammer honored Nichols at the State of the City Convocation for her work on the Earth Day Task Force for the City of San Jose.

Donald L. Nichols died on March 13, 1997.

High school won’t return to either school until 1998.

In 1999 he joined Harker as the middle school head and then assistant head of school for academic affairs.

Her work on guiding the new upper school’s curriculum development to such noted success led to Nichols being named to a University of California advisory board in 2002, where she worked with educators from other schools as they wrote their syllabi for U.C. submission.

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.

Howard Nichols retired in 2005, but continued to consult for the school and serve on the board until his passing on Dec.