Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Photograph by George Sakkestad

Simonson's friends say he's completely devoted to Los Gatos High School, whose corridors he's walked for 47 years.

Principal Lessons

Whether the road is bumpy or smooth--and it's been both--Ted Simonson stays the course

By Dale Bryant

In his 47 years at Los Gatos High School, retiring principal Ted Simonson took only two days of sick leave. His father, a rough-hewn, scrappy Norwegian right out of the world of Lake Woebegon, probably would have lifted an eyebrow at those two days.

His father, after all, was a man who--although he did take two weeks' vacation when he lost an eye in an industrial accident--never took a sick day in 44 years of work. His son, a chip off the old block, quickly points out, "I took those two days in my first year of teaching, so I actually beat my old man. He only went 44 years without taking sick leave, and I went 46."

When Ted Simonson leaves the campus on Aug. 21, he will have completed 50 years of service at the school, including accumulated sick leave and the additional 25 days he plans to work beyond graduation day. But those long summer days will be anticlimactic in the wake of the emotions that are bound to converge when the man who's been principal of the school for 20 years says goodbye to the Class of '98 on June 12.

For 25 years, Simonson has worked as an administrative team with vice principals Patti Hughes and Al Simon, all dedicating themselves for years to 70-hour work weeks; all three are retiring this year. Graduation day would have marked Simonson's 50th wedding anniversary; he and his wife, Donnie, had planned to celebrate with a trip to Europe, but she died in December.

And then there's the school itself. Jack Cody, who is retiring after a 46-year career teaching English at LGHS, says of Simonson, "You won't find anybody who has the devotion to that high school that Ted has. It's the love of his life."

Simonson came to Los Gatos in 1951 as a business teacher. It was an unlikely place for Simonson to have landed. The son of an oil-field worker, he had grown up tough and combative like his father, with a work ethic to match. He hated high school, preferring to put in an honest day's labor for an honest buck. When he was still in his teens, he saw combat in Germany in the final year of World War II and came face to face with one of history's darkest episodes as his 42nd Rainbow Division marched into Dachau and discovered that the truth about the Nazi prison camps was more horrible than anyone could have imagined.

Simonson and his three brothers grew up during the Depression; their father moved the family frequently, finally settling in Ventura, where they raised animals and produced milk while he continued to work the oil fields.

Simonson's job was milking the cows, but when he kicked out the toes in his shoes playing a game, his father said to him, "I've bought the last pair of shoes and the last stitch of clothing I'm ever going to buy you." Simonson was 13.

And that's how old he was when he got his first real job in 1938--shoveling freesia bulbs for a grower at $1 per day and earning enough in 40 days to buy a 1931 Ford roadster, causing a bit of a scandal in a community where many men couldn't afford a car. "My dad wouldn't give me anything," Simonson says, "but if I earned a buck, it was mine."

The industrial accident that cost his father an eye also brought him a $1,500 settlement, which he invested in houses. "My dad, who had a sixth-grade education, would buy, trade, do anything to make money," Simonson recalls. "When he died, he owned an oil-maintenance company and apartments--and at the age of 79, he was working 16 hours a day." Simonson also recalls his old man was still throwing punches when he was 70. "He was violent. And he was prejudiced, a real racist. That was the environment I grew up in," Simonson says.

Simonson developed a passion for reading in elementary school, but he had little interest in high school, preferring to work and earn a few bucks.

Simonson's bulb-digging job was followed by one hoeing lima beans, and later working nights and weekends at a gas station. "I did that job for a year and went to school in a cursory fashion," Simonson says. His mechanical aptitude stood him in good stead with that job, but he learned if he worked even harder, he could make even more money, and high school be damned. So he went to work in a lemon-packing house, lifting 55-pound crates of lemons for eight hours every night during his junior and senior years of high school.

A Buck Private Named 'Shorty'

With World War II raging, a teenaged Simonson achieved high test scores in the U.S. Army and landed with an elite group of college-bound soldiers, where he was to be trained as an electrical engineer. But the winds of war shifted, and this group was suddenly formed into the 42nd Infantry Division--the Rainbow Division--made up of men from every state. Instead of being educated by the army, Simonson, known to his army buddies as "Shorty," ended up a buck private on the front lines.

His outfit was shipped overseas in December 1944, landing in Marseilles for Operation Nord Wind. Simonson spent Christmas in 1944 and 1945 near the Rhine River in Germany. His war experiences helped define a personal philosophy for Simonson, and he's stayed close to his comrades-in-arms ever since, keeping track of 950 men as secretary of his regiment and attending the group's annual reunions.

"There were seven of us who were particularly close," Simonson says. "Whenever one of those seven dies, we all go to the funeral, and we make sure to talk to the family and let them know what he was like as a young man."

Simonson learned to be a survivor in combat, but he never learned to like battle. "The combat experience consists of boredom, terror and chaos," he says. "There's never a minute when you think this is OK."

Simonson remembers a major German attack during which two-thirds of the men he was with were killed in a 52-hour battle; another time, he went into the woods with 150 men, and only 30 came out. A mortar shell went off near Simonson while he was in a foxhole, severely damaging his hearing.

Toward the end of the war, the 42nd Rainbow Division moved toward Munich. "One day we were told there was a prison camp with thousands of prisoners, and they told us to hurry. By then soldiers understood Jews were being persecuted, but the young guys in the military weren't aware of the level of atrocities," Simonson says. Then they saw firsthand. "There were 30,000 prisoners at Dachau. We found boxcars filled with bodies."

Several years ago during festivities marking the 50th anniversary of V-E Day, Simonson, along with some of his fellow veterans, went at the invitation of the Bavarian government to talk to schoolchildren about what they had seen at Dachau. "The officials wanted students to hear it from people who had been there, people who had seen," he says.

Simonson says the things he learned in combat shaped his philosophy for life: "I was prejudiced when I went into the army; it was the way I grew up, but in combat I learned you have to judge people by their actions, not by the color of their skin or their education or how much money they have."

The other lesson combat taught him: "You have to make yourself do what you should do when you don't want to." This is the advice he gives to parents about disciplining their children. Simonson says he subsequently learned one more lesson: "When you're wrong, you have to be able to say 'I was wrong' and get on with your life."

The School Years

Simonson returned from the war to find his 40-year-old mother dying of cancer and his father carefully charting a course for his son's life. He had bought an auto-financing company and wanted Ted to run it. After working in the oil fields and attending junior college, Simonson moved to San Jose with his wife, Donnie, so he could study business at San Jose State University, but halfway through, Simonson realized what he really wanted to do was teach. The most expedient route was a special secondary credential in business.

In 1951, he went to work as a business teacher at LGHS for $3,400 a year. In those early years, he taught full time, coached football and wrestling (for no additional pay), served as adviser to the student body treasurer, taught night school four nights a week and drove a school bus on the mountain run. His wife also worked, and during the summer, they headed south, where Simonson worked as a welder for his father.

With an eye on earning a better salary, Simonson earned a counseling credential, and later an administrative credential; he served as dean of boys for 14 years.

In retrospect, Simonson says, "I probably wouldn't have taken the dean's job if I'd realized then that we would soon have hippies and drugs and that kids wouldn't have to cut their hair."

Simonson's life experience hadn't prepared him for hippies in the halls of his beloved school.

"Society was in turmoil. Vietnam was going on. The early '70s were a terrible time--the 'turn on, tune in, drop out' era."

Simonson's world was turned upside down when students decided traditional activities such as proms and graduation parties were no longer cool. "I think a lot of kids got shortchanged during that era," he says.

As early as 1966, Simonson became aware of drugs on campus, a new aspect of student life that would haunt the rest of his career.

"I knew what pot smelled like," he says, "because I played trombone in bands, and some of the musicians smoked it, so when I began to smell it on campus in 1966, I started asking around. What the kids told me was that marijuana was not only at LGHS, it was everywhere, at all the schools." Simonson got on the phone and started calling administrators of other schools. "And what everyone said to me was 'Not here.' "

Simonson convinced the principal they should alert parents, so they went to the media. "I'll tell you, we hit the newspapers from here to New York," he recalls, still looking a little shellshocked after all these years. The gist of the coverage: Affluent Los Gatos High School has a drug problem.

Although students eventually embraced many of the traditions scorned in the hippie era, drugs and alcohol never went away, and keeping them off campus has occupied more than a little of Simonson's attention.

He's been both praised and criticized for allowing the police department to put undercover officers in the school, although undercover operations have led to arrests, both of students and of off-campus suppliers.

There's also been criticism of the drug-sniffing dogs that make unannounced visits to the campus. "These aren't police dogs; they're friendly," he says. "The kids pet them." The dogs don't search students for drugs; they search lockers, and Simonson thinks its the least discriminatory way to combat the problem of drugs on campus. "We contract with the company that brings the dogs on campus, and we don't know in advance when they're coming," he says. "That makes it impossible for us to treat anyone differently." Simonson also notes that the dogs have never found drugs after their first visit. And keeping the school drug-free is his goal.

Bumps in the Road

Simonson was a vice principal when the principal's position opened up. The school board was searching outside for a replacement, but a citizens committee convinced the board Simonson was the best candidate. Carol Musser was on that committee.

Few people know Simonson better than Musser. She's been there at his finest hours and at his bleakest.

"Every few years, a group would surface that would be upset about something, and they would start a move to get rid of Ted," she says.

But Simonson's a survivor. And he says what makes him one is that he does what he believes he should do even when he doesn't want to, and when he's wrong, he admits it and moves on with his life.

He's made more than a few enemies, for instance, by steadfastly refusing to allow an athletic boosters club on campus, even though many high schools--including Saratoga High in the same district--have dramatically increased athletics budgets doing so. School board member Bob Allen says Simonson holds to his position because he thinks the influence of money might lead to preferential treatment.

Simonson has weathered storms--including inflammatory remarks at a Chamber of Commerce dinner--because those who know him stick with him through thick and thin. The impression he makes on those who merely hear of controversies is different than the impression he makes on those who actually know him. Musser says that no matter what Simonson does or says, the bottom line is that "people who know Ted know where his heart is."

Allen--whose first encounter with Simonson came in 1962 when Dean Simonson threw Allen out of school--says that sometimes when Simonson is trying to make a point, "his mouth gets away from him." When that happens, he says, people sometimes stop listening, and they never see where he was headed with his argument.

Joanne Benjamin, a longtime Town Councilmember and a history and economics teacher at LGHS, understands the paradox of the loyalty Simonson engenders even in those situations where he's stuck his foot in his mouth.

"No one's ever accused Ted of being politically correct," she says. "Sometimes he says things that make your mouth fall open, but you excuse it because it's Ted."

She calls him the best principal she's ever worked for. "He's there for the kids and the teachers 100 percent. His door is always open, and teachers know they can openly disagree with him without any repercussions."

His friend Jack Cody says those who know him will tolerate what might seem to others like a bigoted remark because "they know there's no evil in back of what he says. They know that he's not trying to denigrate people."

When he referred to joggers as "jigglers" in front of a room full of the town's upstanding citizens in 1992, his friend Carol Musser didn't take offense--even though she was the target of the remark.

Musser was being installed as president of the Chamber of Commerce, and Simonson had been invited to participate in a roast. Musser thought the comment was funny; it was the kind of comment one might hear any given week at a meeting of the Lions Club, an active community service group with a reputation for rowdy meetings punctuated with bawdy humor. Musser and Simonson are fellow Lions.

Charges of racism and homophobia followed a joke he told during that same roast. Simonson's explanation is that he had the germ of an idea for the speech and had set aside an afternoon to prepare, but when an unavoidable interruption kept him from preparing the speech, he went to the installation with little more than a notion of where he wanted to go with his presentation. "Carol was going to be leading the Chamber of Commerce, and I wanted to make the point that one thing she needed to be concerned about was a stereotype of Los Gatos--particularly portrayed by the San Jose Mercury--as a community of self-centered nouveau riche, a golden ghetto."

The joke he told to make a point about stereotyping cities wasn't what one expects to hear from a school principal--a joke based on the stereotype of San Francisco as "fairyland" and Oakland as "jungle land."

When word of the inappropriate remarks began to filter out, all hell broke lose. The media raked Simonson over the coals. People who'd never heard of him castigated him on radio talk shows.

Most people who knew him stuck by him. They insisted he was neither racist nor homophobic.

A LGHS graduate--a young black man--made a special trip to attend a school board meeting on the controversy. "He told of Simonson making a special effort to take him under his wing when he was having problems," Joanne Benjamin says. She recalls the former student saying, "He was like a second father to me; people who say he's a racist don't know the man."

Someone else who attended that board meeting was a video producer named Pam Walton, whose video "Gay Youth" has been used by hundreds of school districts across the country as an education tool. She came to say Ted Simonson was no homophobe. "In 1990, I wanted to do a film about the problems gay and lesbian youth face," she told the Los Gatos Weekly-Times recently. "None of the other schools would cooperate, but Ted agreed to let me come on campus to film a lesbian student. He told me he'd read my proposal and agreed that it was an important topic."

Not only did Simonson permit the filming, he allowed Walton to film graduation, something that she remembers made some people in the community very angry. "He was under a lot of fire at graduation," she says. "People kept asking us what we were doing there."

For his insensitive remarks at the Chamber of Commerce dinner, Simonson apologized, admitted his mistake and moved on with his life. He survived.

Parting Shots

As Simonson leaves LGHS, he says he's concerned about the direction education is headed. "There's a big push to train kids to work in industry. I don't agree with that," he says. "I'm not interested in turning out cogs who can be thrown on a scrap heap."

If Simonson had his way, schools would be preparing students to have a life. He believes schools should be teaching young people to do what they should do even when they don't want to and to be able to admit when they're wrong.

He also says young people aren't being given opportunities to develop leadership skills. "We have leadership classes, but what they really teach is how to be organized." Simonson thinks kids are under too much adult supervision. "They're going to all sorts of specialized summer camps, when I think what they need to do is play sandlot baseball, where they learn lessons in life like if you act like a jerk, no one wants to play with you."

At 73, Simonson isn't exactly ready for the rocking chair. His friends Bill and Patti Hughes have commandeered him to help prepare their vast gardens for next fall's Community Foundation dinner, and he's planning to outfit the 1972 Jaguar sitting in his driveway with a Chevy engine. "It's a beautiful car," he says. "But, oh, that Jag engine!"

Friends have also talked to him about getting involved in local politics. He's thinking about boards he might join and says running for school board someday or even jumping into the Town Council race in November is a possibility he's contemplating.

At 79, Simonson's father was putting in a 16-hour workday. Will Simonson finally let his old man outdo him? Fat chance.

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