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Paul D. Johnston

In a 1973 oral interview of Paul D. Johnston in the collection of the University of California, Santa Cruz, Johnston says he and his wife helped selct the site for the school on Aptos School Road.   Mr. Johnston reported that three men named Monroe, Lyon and Miller owned a company which offered the Aptos and Rio del Mar community land for a new school site to replace the existing school on Soquel Drive.  Johston reported that the residents of Aptos called a meeting about 1927 and Johnston attended the meeting.  Johnston reported that he was then working at the Aptos Post Office.  Johnston says that he and several others were appointed to see if the land offered by Monroe, Lyon and Miller would be suitable for a school.  Johnston reported that Mrs. J. C. Spencer was one of the school trustees at that time and also Harry Baker.  In an oral history interview conducted in 1973 by Elizabeth Spedding Calciano, now in the Special Local History Collection of the McHenry Library, University of California, Santa Cruz, Johnston said:

"And we thought it was pretty nice, you know, with all the trees, and the children could play there and not be in the way and get hurt.  Traffic at the time, of course, wasn't as bad as it is now.  A few of the people didn't want it over there; didn't want it because it was over there and didn't show from the highway, and they say (sic), 'Well, we are building a nice school over there and nobody can see it'. At that time we traveled around a good bit of the State, and every time you come to a school, you had to almost stop and slow down, so we decided it would be better over there away from the highway where the kids could play and no trouble with anybody getting run over and have any trouble of any kind.  After we'd accepted it and built the school, then everybody thought it was wonderful.  But before there was a whole lot of them that didn't like it.  They thought it was a great detriment.  After we'd only had the property deed about two weeks, then (the developers of) Rio Del Mar, they had a chance to sell that to somebody, and they wanted to give us more acreage over here, right where the freeway is now, see?  And we wouldn't give it back to them.