MAURICE GAYLORD GREENLY

So much of the future development and advancement of California as a State, and each county as a unit in its progress, is dependent upon the growing generation, that enough cannot be said in favor of the men and women who are devoting their lives to educating these embryo citizens and helping to make them into men and women who will be an asset to any community. Especially in the line of vocational education, fitting them for their future work in life; or in preparing them for college courses, so that they, in their turn, may become educators. And Merced County has been unusually fortunate in its selection of faculties for the different schools in the district.

As principal of the Hilmar Union High School, Maurice Gaylord Greenly is filling an important place in county education. A native of South Dakota, he was born in Estelline, that State, on December 23, 1890, the son of Hiram B. and Latie A. (Gaylord) Greenly, both born in the State of New York; and they became homesteaders in Dakota Territory, the mother locating there in 1881. The parents moved to Brookings, S. D., when young Maurice had reached the age of eleven years, in order that their family of three children, of whom he was the youngest, might obtain good educational advantages. He attended the Brookings High School for three years, and then entered preparatory courses for entry into Brookings College, now the South Dakota State College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts. Taking up a general science course in college, he graduated from that institution with the Class of 1913, with his degree of B. S.

Following his graduation, Mr. Greenly immediately went to Honolulu, and there engaged in teaching in private schools for one year, and for the following seven years taught in the public schools there. Returning to California in 1922, he spent that year and the next as a post graduate student in the educational department of Stanford University, and received his degree of A. M. in June, 1923. In September, 1923, he entered upon his duties as principal of the Hilmar Union High School and has since that time devoted his energies, both mental and physical, to the building up of the school under his care and maintaining its high standard of efficiency.

The Hilmar Union High comprises the following subsidiary grammar schools: the Elim Union, Fairview, Hilmar, Merquin Union, Riverside and Raisin districts, Prairie Flower being joint with Stanislaus County. A regularly accredited high school with the University of California, with courses in commercial and vocational instruction as well as the regular high school courses; and situated as it is, in the midst of the fertile Hilmar Colony, in the northern part of Merced County, the school has an important bearing on the future in store for this county. There are 130 pupils at the present writing, 1925, and this enrollment mounts steadily with the growing population and development of the district. Housed in a modern and well-planned building of brick construction, built at a cost of $35,000, in 1919, the school was first started in 1911; and eight years later the bond issue was established for the badly needed new building. The first issue of $28,000 was found insufficient and an additional $6000 voted. Mr. Greenly is the fourth principal of the school, the others who served before him being W. W. Pettit, Herbert Kittredge, and A. L. Wedell. A "born" educator, and intensely energetic and interested in his work, Mr. Greenly keeps the Hilmar Union High up to a fine standard of work, getting unusual results from his earnest work in striving to bring out the inherent ability in each individual student.

During his years spent in Honolulu, Mr. Greenly met his future wife, and there his marriage occurred, in 1917, to Miss Helen Hoag, a native of Pasadena, Cal., and a graduate of the San Jose Teachers College, Class of 1915. Three children have blessed their union: Maurice Gaylord Jr.; Patricia Jean; and Marian Leilani.


History of Merced County California With a Biographical Review OF The Leading Men and Woman of the County Who Have Been Identified with Its Growth and Development from Early Days to the Present

Author: John Outcalt (1925)

Maurice Gaylord Greenly, page: 680

Contributed by: Alma