Many of Palo Alto’s well-known landmarks and locations bear recognizable names. Hoover Tower,Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School, and Hewlett-Packard Garage ring a bell for most. Gunn High School’s namesake, however, is perhaps less well-known.
Henry Martin Gunn was born in Lexington, Kentucky, on July 7, 1898, and moved to Oregon at the age of 12. He attended the University of Oregon and received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees there, serving in the Navy during World War I in the midst of his studies. He then attended graduate school at Stanford, completing a master’s degree in education before moving back to Oregon to become a principal in the Portland school system. While taking nighttime university courses there, he met his wife Thelma Eiler, an art teacher at the time. As his reputation grew, Gunn moved into the superintendent position for the Eugene School District and then transitioned to the university level, teaching education at the University of Southern California before becoming president of Western Oregon University. After three years there, PAUSD hired him as superintendent in 1950. Gunn’s foremost priority for students in the district was to improve their standardized testing performance.
He cited the fact that PAUSD students performed well above the national average in reading,writing and arithmetic as one of his proudest achievements as superintendent. Gunn also placed special emphasis on “gifted” students, creating a new program specifically to enrich those who weren’t challenged by the general education curriculum. He experimented with new educational approaches at every level, collaborating with Stanford University to bring new curricula and teaching methods to high schoolers while introducing algebra and geometry to elementary students. At the heart of his philosophy was individuality — he encouraged teachers, students, and individual schools to take their own approaches to learning, communicating amongst themselves to find novel approaches while still covering the same basic skills.
As superintendent, Gunn still remained involved in the local community: He was president of the local Rotary Club, held a position on the YMCA board of directors, and was on the executive committee of the Boy Scouts of America. Gunn also led a group of superintendent advocates to establish a local junior college district, and successfully founded the Foothill-De Anza Community College District in 1957.
In 1964, Henry M. Gunn High School, Palo Alto’s third high school at the time, welcomed its inaugural student body. Through naming the school after Gunn, district leaders hoped to pay tribute to his service to PAUSD over his 12-year tenure. Unlike the majority of Palo Alto’s schools and public buildings, however, the school was named after him while he was still living.
After leaving PAUSD in 1961, Gunn became a professor of school administration at San Jose State University and then moved to the California State Department of Education, but remained close with the district. He was the principal speaker at the school’s first graduation ceremony in 1968, and received a distinguished citizen award from the Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce.
Gunn passed away in 1988 at the age of 90 of a stroke, leaving behind a solidified legacy at PAUSD and the Palo Alto community. Former district principal Dr. Winfield Christiansen noted that his greatest gift, one that went beyond education and schooling, was “to make people believe in themselves.”
