RG03_Palo Alto Military Academy, 1919-1972

Palo Alto Military Academy originated in 1919 when Colonel Richard P. Kelly, and Dr. Greenville C. Emery purchased Manzanita Hall, a college preparatory school in Palo Alto, CA. Palo Alto was founded in 1889, after the purchase of the land for the subsequent founding of Stanford University in 1891. It was quite remote, with only six families as residents in 1891. All provisions had to be brought from San Francisco or Menlo Park. The Palo Alto School District was established in 1893, and it established the first public high school in 1898, fully five years after Manzanita Hall was founded. The Palo Alto Community Book states “One of the sometimes curious effects of establishing a great institution like Stanford University is that educational impact which draws clusters of preparatory schools in its wake.” Manzanita Hall was one of four preparatory schools that survived, as Palo Alto Military Academy, beyond 1950.

Colonel Kelly was a native of New York State, and an 1896 graduate of Cornell University. He came west and settled in the Seattle area in 1902. He was commandant of two other west coast military academies before coming to Palo Alto, CA, to establish the Palo Alto Military Academy. Though he was co-partner with Dr. Greenville, who had spent thirty years as master in the Boston Latin School (then the oldest school in the United States), Colonel Kelly was the Superintendent and Commandant, and the more active administrator of the school. Dr. Greenville C. Emery was headmaster, and Nellie P. Hansen was Principal of the Lower School. In the wake of World War I, the 1919-1920 Palo Alto Military Academy general brochure explains the change to a military program in light of the need for young boys to be brought up with “military drill and discipline, whether for war or for peace.” Dedicated to instilling moral courage, independence, and a sense of responsibility, Kelly saw this as a process of “men in the making,” even as he subsequently restructured the program for younger and younger “men” of elementary and junior high age. However, he also appreciated the need for “the comforts and kindliness of a home,” with care from “sympathetic women.”

Building on Manzanita Hall’s fine academic reputation, Colonel Kelly created Palo Alto Military Academy as a non-sectarian, though admittedly Christian, boarding and day school. In the second academic year, the former high school program was discontinued and the enrollment limited to boys ages 5-15, in grades one through eight. The Academy continued to prosper throughout the 1930’s and 1940’s for day and boarding students, building onto the seven-acre campus to support the apparently growing enrollment. Grade 9 was added ca. 1937.

The daily program for the cadets was structured, starting the day with reveille and ending with taps, with even the youngest boys participating in all the military formations. The academic program emphasized arithmetic, language, spelling, and writing. The boys recited and memorized a poem, proverb, or quotation of they chose for the weekly public speaking assignments. The winning quotations were published in the yearly general brochures, which we have in the Collection. The Academy was in session year round, offering an optional summer program, which consisted of an six-week “coaching program” with morning classes in Palo Alto, and a six-week recreational camp, Camp Eldorado at Lake Alpine in the Sierras. There is a single summer brochure from 1930 indicating that the recreation camp was held at Camp Discovery in Sonoma County.

Donald Nichols succeeded Colonel Kelly as owner and Superintendent of the Academy in 1950, when Colonel Kelly retired after 30 years of service. A Massachusetts native, Major Nichols was a 1926 graduate of the Academy. When his father died at an early age, Major Nichols’ mother enrolled him at the Academy to provide him with male role models. He later attended Polytechnic High School and Heald’s Business College in San Francisco, after which he entered the National Guard. In 1935, he became commandant of cadets at Palo Alto Military Academy, until he left to San Rafael Military Academy, where he taught military science tacts, and eventually became superintendent. Major Nichols was, by all accounts, a kind man, known to take students into his home at holidays and he put several students through high school and college at his own expense.

“Building Character for Your Son” was Major Nichols’ motto for the program at the Academy. The fifties was again a period of prosperity for the school, the enrollment growing from sixty-five cadets in 1950 to one hundred and twenty-five in 1959. The 1958 brochure advises that applicants apply one year in advance because of demand. Major Nichols succeeded in making the Academy one of the finest junior military schools, recognized throughout the country. Indeed, the 1959 brochure states “graduates are accepted without application in the best private high schools and preparatory schools throughout the United States.” Major Nichols, who lived in his home on the campus, created an environment where the school was small and simple, yet with a homelike atmosphere. Enrollment was limited to 125 cadets, who came from the U. S. and throughout the world. In the fifties the school was organized with the following “Department Heads” under Major Nichols: Commandant, Principal, Music Director, and Special Events / Summer Camp Director. Deciding to broaden his educational program, Major Nichols purchased The Miss Harker School for Girls in 1959, in Palo Alto across the street from the Academy. He separately operated the two schools from 1959 to 1972. Palo Alto Private Schools, Inc. was founded April 1, 1965 as an umbrella corporation for the two schools, which were still run independently. Major Nichols was president, and his son, Captain Howard Nichols, who came to work for the school in 1965, was later named Assistant Superintendent in 1968. A 1966 press release notes that “more private school are in the future plans of the new corporation,” however that never occurred. Major Nichols merged the schools and brought them to a new campus in San Jose in 1972. Records from Palo Alto Private Schools, Inc. and the sale of the Palo Alto property can be found in Series 10. The name of the Academy was shortened to “Palo Alto Academy” in 1970, because of decreasing enrollment and presumably concerns, in the wake of the Viet Nam War, about military training for young students. In 1968 the Executive Committee had decided to de-emphasize the military aspects of the program and it was decided that rifles would no longer be issued for drill. Major Nichols had begun a campaign in 1969-1970 to educate the local public regarding the “character and conduct of P.A.M.A.,” after enrollment declined dramatically, in part due to poor economic conditions.