Paul Ward’s ancestors bought 75 acres in 1894, he still lives on property
Published in the November 23- December 6, 2016 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Robert Airoldi
Paul Ward at his home. Photo by Robert Airoldi
Paul Ward’s family has lived in Morgan Hill for more than 120 years. His great-grandparents moved here from South Dakota, purchasing 75 acres in 1894 from Diana Murphy, one of Morgan Hill’s founding families. Six years later they built a home off Oak Glen Avenue in southwest Morgan Hill. Following them living in the home were his grandparents, parents and a great aunt. Since 1973, Ward has lived in the family home.
“It’s a well-built home,” said Ward, now 93. Subdivided over the years, it now includes 10 acres in front and 25 on the hillside behind the home.
Ward, whose great-grandfather was one of the founders of Machado School, attended the two-room school before graduating from Live Oak High School in 1941. He was headed for the University of California, Berkeley when the Japanese Navy bombed Pearl Harbor. Nine months later he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces. Most of his time in the service was spent in Texas and Louisiana as a flight instructor. He was a pilot for B-26 low-level bombers. When the war in Europe ended he became a co-pilot on a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber.
“I was very lucky they assigned me as an instructor,” he said. “I didn’t ask for the position, but I was very fortunate I never saw combat.”
After his discharge from the Air Forces, he went to Cal where in 1947 in an economics class he met his future wife Ann, the daughter of Croation immigrants. He graduated with a degree in forestry and spent his entire 47-year career in the redwood lumber business.
Still sharp as ever, Ward can recall each and every job he held including the name of the business and the cities or counties in which he worked. But in 1973, while working as a national sales manager in San Francisco, he quit “the best job I had” and moved back to Morgan Hill to help out his father. He became an independent redwood broker working out of a chicken house next door to the home he now lives in.
“There was no heat, a wet dog and no secretary,” he said, laughing. He worked at that job until he retired in 1995, but did upgrade his office.
“The best thing I ever did was quit in 1973 and move here,” he said. When he returned home his dad had been widowed for some time and was happy to have his eldest son return, he said. His brother and sister are now deceased and Ann died eight years ago. One of the difficult things about living so long is a lot of your family and friends are no longer around, he said. One friend he reconnected with upon moving back was Pete Musschia who he’s known since the first grade.
“Pete still has German shrapnel in his body from D-Day,” Ward said proudly. “Now, at our age there’s not much we can do to get in trouble. We talk about the old days at the two-room Machado School.”
He listens to books on tape as he suffers from macular degeneration and lost his drivers license three years ago.
“I turned it in when I realized how bad my eye sight was,” he said. “That was hard to take.”
But he tries to do something active every day.
Most Fridays he can be found having lunch at Rosy’s at the Beach with his friends Anthony Gularte and Kevin Moon, his handyman for the past decade. They’ve been meeting for lunch for the past six years or so.
“When I walk in Toni (the bartender/server) starts shaking the gin,” he said.
