J.H. (John Henrich) Hull must’ve felt like he was walking into a buzz saw after he was chosen to become the first superintendent of the freshly minted Torrance Unified School District on March 30, 1947.
The new district’s board had been formed only a couple of weeks earlier. It included Evelyn Carr, whose tireless campaigning for Torrance to secede from the Los Angeles Unified School District and form its own school district had succeeded after years of legwork. (Carr told the Daily Breeze in 1997 that she’d worn out several pairs of shoes during her door-to-door campaigning for the new district.)
After reviewing several candidates, the new school board, which included Carr, Carl Steele, Grace Wright, Dr. Howard Wood and Howard Thatcher, voted unanimously to select Hull to be the district’s first leader.
The 38-year-old Midwestern educator was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on April 15, 1908. He earned a B.A. in economics and business administration from the University of Redlands, and a Master’s in education from Colorado State. Two years after taking the Torrance job, he completed his doctorate in education at USC.
He served as a high school principal and later as a superintendent in Colorado before moving to California in 1939. There, he began teaching English in Corona until the outbreak of World War II. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1942. He served for three years, reaching the rank of commander.
After finishing his military service, he was working as an assistant superintendent for the Corona school district when he was hired away by TUSD for a salary of $10,000.
In his first days on the job, he had to establish a brand new school district, then consisting of only five schools, to serve the needs of a city already undergoing a postwar boom. To top it all off, LAUSD, miffed at Torrance’s secession, had stripped the schools of all their furnishings and equipment.
The first thing Hull did was to hire more teachers, using funds from a special 50-cent tax on city residents to bring on 63 of them in preparation for the 1947-48 school year. (1,973 students attended class on the first day of school in September 1947.)
Next, he mapped out a comprehensive building plan to deal with the ever-increasing number of schoolchildren in the burgeoning city, whose explosive postwar population growth was still in its early stages.
The plan included a meticulous 31-step program detailing how to go about building new schools. He would need to refer to it often during his 23 years as Torrance schools chief, during which 37 new schools, including North, South and West high schools, would be built.
The student population during his tenure grew to nearly 13 times its original size, with the population of Torrance itself more than ten times what it was when he became superintendent.
Hull served as superintendent for six terms. Upon his reappointment in 1967, he announced that it would be his final term. By that time, his salary had increased to $28,000.
An avid fisherman and golfer, he lived on Hickory Ave. in Torrance with his second wife, Doris, and their two children, John Jr. and Doris Ann, who were then students at Torrance High School.
True to his word, Hull retired as superintendent on July 15, 1970. During his tenure, 20,716 students had graduated from the district’s high schools. In addition, Hull had advocated for the formation of the continuation school Shery High, as well as the establishment of the Southern California Regional Occupational Center (SCROC) for vocational education.
After his retirement, Hull served as executive director of an educational research commission for the State of California, and as foreman pro tem for the Los Angeles County Grand Jury in 1973-74.
He died on Sept. 28, 1974, while visiting relatives in Denver, Colorado. His body was cremated and his ashes scattered over the ocean. He was 66.
In April 1970, TUSD opened a new middle school on 8.9 acres of land it had purchased in southeastern Torrance. Hull Middle School at 2800 W. 231st St., was named for the man who had played such a major role in creating and nurturing the school district.
Unfortunately, the school’s infrastructure deteriorated over the years, and a series of lean school budgets didn’t provide the funds needed for its upkeep and repair. It had already been marked for possible shuttering in 1995, but little was done to improve the facilities. By 2006, its condition was so poor that it had to be closed.
Its students, who had been forced to attend classes in prefabricated modular classrooms, were sent to the closed Sam Levy Adult Center for the next five years to the long-time temporary facility that became known as J.H. Hull at Levy Middle School.
After assessing the old school’s condition, the decision was made to demolish it completely and build an entirely new facility on the site. The passage of school bond measures Y and Z in 2008 made the project possible.
The old buildings were razed in early 2010, and construction of the new school began that May. The brand-new Hull Middle School buildings opened to students in September 2011.
Sources:
Daily Breeze archives.
Find a Grave website.
The History of Torrance Schools, 1890-2000, by Thomas Rische, TUSD History Project, 2002.
Los Angeles Times archives.
Palos Verdes Peninsula News archives.
Torrance Press Herald archives.
