To reacquaint myself with Leigh High School, I went looking for murderers, but I found music history instead. A more joyous process emerged.
While visiting Menlo Park recently, I spotted an original used hardback copy of Child of Satan, Child of God, written in prison by Susan Atkins, the most notorious person ever to attend Leigh High School and grow up in Cambrian Park. I already owned the paperback, as I wrote a few columns on the topic many years ago, helping revive her dark San Jose youth before she joined the Manson Family. I snagged the hardback, thinking I could add something else. I couldn’t.
Instead, I went down a rabbit hole of research. Leigh High School history is far too fascinating and quirky to exhume the Susan Atkins story one more time.
My odyssey of research provided me with much more uplifting, if not nerdy, tidbits. For example, a few Merc stories from the early ’60s documented the new $2,500,000 plot on 45 acres at Leigh and Los Gatos-Almaden Road, the $3,166,677 loan from the State Allocation Board and even the $1,950,000 bid by Dickman Construction to build the school. That was a lot of cash in those days.
At the time, Los Gatos-Almaden Road was not even completely paved yet. Real estate adds described nearby homes with chickens and ducks. A few weeks before the school opened, young kids reported seeing bears crawling around the area, so a few city employees were dispatched to inspect a quarter-mile of the storm drain. They found a few bear tracks, but no bear.
When Leigh High School finally opened in September of 1962, the 1,400-plus students brought the total enrollment for the Campbell Union High School District to over 8,000. At Leigh, there were 37 classrooms, three shops, two arts and crafts rooms, two music rooms, four science rooms and a library. The principal presided over a faculty and administrative staff of 48. The music rooms overflowed with marching and concert bands, orchestras and choirs.
Of all this information, the music made me smile the most, realizing that even in the early ’60s, Leigh featured a robust music program. Guest lecturers taught the baroque, classical and romantic eras. Students performed in everything from field shows to school musicals.
By the time I got to Leigh, the band room had trophies all over the walls. I spent all four years taking art and music classes, pretty much my only good memories of high school. For one class, a cantankerous old-timer, Mr. Gerard, taught keyboards and theory in a room filled with Wurlitzer electronic pianos. I had a blast because I already knew how to play. No one else in the class knew what the treble and bass knobs were.
And of course, Mr. Sweeney taught auto shop. Sweeney was an amazing character who went surfing in his spare time and even built his own house. Sweeney had been at Leigh since the ’60s. He never mentioned Susan Atkins, but he did name-drop Patrick Simmons of the Doobie Brothers multiple times, because the guitarist had taken Sweeney’s auto shop class in 1967. That’s right—I had the same auto shop teacher as Pat Simmons, although a few decades apart.
Pat Simmons is now the only Leigh graduate in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Until I get inducted, of course.
This particular research odyssey was a perfect lesson in why the arts and humanities remain a vibrant use of one’s time, especially these days when the data center cult willfully tries to devalue it all. As I’ve said many times, if not for a music and arts education, I would have strayed into a criminal life. I would not have joined the Manson Family, but I certainly would not have participated in society at large.
Nevertheless, when I spotted an original hardback copy of Child of Satan, Child of God in Menlo Park, I still had to nab it. I couldn’t resist the temptation. I asked the proprietor at Feldman’s if he could remember the person who traded it in. He couldn’t.
I didn’t want to tell him I already owned the paperback. It wasn’t exactly a good look.
“Don’t enjoy it too much,” he said, after ringing me up.
