A progressive Illinois elected official known for his cool passion, oratory skills, battle against corruption, down to earth attitude, sharp wit and keen intellect gains a name nationally and runs for president. Sound familiar? This must be someone with a name that schools will be named for, right?

Could it be that our new school site's name is inspired by this person's career? No, it's not who you thinking of—this is a story from a couple generations back about someone who has a few things in common with our current president.

As the country regrouped after World War II, a man who fit the description above ran for president, but didn't quite make it. His name was Adlai Stevenson and his following and reputation in 1965 were such that the Mountain View School District chose to break with the usual form of naming schools after local figures. The new Adlai E. Stevenson Elementary School opened that year as a school for grades 4-6. Neighboring Theuerkauf housed grades K-3.

Adlai Stevenson was born in 1900 and became the governor of Illinois in 1948. Though he wasn't yet a national figure, President Harry Truman and others encouraged him to run for president in 1952 against war hero Dwight Eisenhower, who'd led the Allied Forces in Europe during the war that had ended seven years earlier. Stevenson lost, but stayed in the public eye and tried again, also unsuccessfully, in 1956. During the Eisenhower presidency, Stevenson was, among other things, an international journalist and worked as an attorney. Though he lost by wide margins in both presidential runs, he remained prominent. Later, in the John F. Kennedy administration, he served as the US Ambassador to the United Nations. Stevenson died in 1965, the year that Stevenson School opened. It's not yet clear whether the timing of Stevenson's death played a role in the choice to name the school for him.

Honor Spitz at the History Room in the Mountain View library reports "the reason for choosing that name, as stated by the then District Superintendent of M.V. Schools, Phillip Schneider, was because Stevenson 'personified the kind of human being that kids could aspire to. He was an intellectual individual, a student all his life, and made significant contributions as a citizen—the three things the district would like its students to aspire to.'"

Joyce Aoyagi was a teacher in the school in those years, along with her late husband. Among her students was Stevenson PACT parent Judy Zellers. Joyce is now a youthful and active 87 years old, living in Aptos. I had the chance to speak with her recently and she was delighted to hear that the school was reopening. Her voice is full of joy and warmth as she recalls her years at Stevenson. The circular design of the campus was something novel in those years and she felt that it was conducive to lots of productive learning. Joyce loves teaching and emphasized that she'd made a great and rewarding career choice for which she's grateful. She made sure to point out that she was a big admirer of Adlai Stevenson and that she had done a lot of work for him.

PACT is continuing a positive legacy at Stevenson. There were years of valuable experiences preceding us there that we can build upon as we move ahead.

Jim S, Room 36 Parent

When I was 9 years old, I wrote my first biography - about Adlai Stevenson II. It was 1960 and he had been named UN Ambassador by our new president, John F. Kennedy. Part of my intent, I have to admit, is that my parents preferred McCarthy's hysteria over Stevenson's global community approach to Communism (he was still strongly anti-Communism - we all were) . And it was fun to aggravate my parents. :) But I learned that he valued education over prisons and he felt that the world could not thrive if half of it was in poverty.

In college, I wrote about him again. It was 1969, after Stevenson had died, along with JFK, RFK and MLK. I was a freshman. It was the 60's, and alongside the free love and drug culture were the idealists - we could change the world to be better for everyone. Adlai Stevenson was one of our heroes. I started my paper with this quote :

"We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on it's vulnerable reserves of air and soil, all committed, for our safety, to it's security and peace. Preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and the love we give our fragile craft." Adlai Stevenson

My mind raced and a lump rose in my throat when I heard that our beloved PACT school will have the privelege of sharing space with the memory of such a great leader - one who believed in:

• equality for all (he said that the world cannot thrive if half of it suffers from poverty and oppression)
• the strength of community that meets the needs of individuals but presses each person to serve their own community and the world
• critical thinking (he once said he thought political campaigns should buy 1/2 hour of TV time and have it be silence, so people could spend it thinking for themselves)
• education as a means to individual and community betterment "I don't want him to go to jail. I want him to go to school." AS

I encourage every family in Stevenson PACT to read about this great man before we move to the site named by visionaries in this school district. Talk to your children about him. What did he do that was important and how can we make the world a better place, as he challenged so many to do.?

Go to the website AdlaiToday.org and feast your eyes. We couldn't, in my opinion, have a better school name. Every day, when we see the word Stevenson in our school name, our hearts will be warmed with the knowledge that we follow a great leader who embodied the principles we value. And every day, we will be challenged to listen to each other, to value our differences and seek for our similarities. And every day we will feel the nudge to find more and more tangible ways to make our community, our city, our world a better place for all.

Thank you, and know that each of us has the potential to change the world. Really.

Bonnie, Stevenson PACT teacher