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Bio- Sawyers
SURNAMES:  GARD, LEVIN, SWALL
If asked to designate a person that would typify the best manhood of Santa Clara County's present-day generation of native sons, there would be no mistake in nominating Frank Huff, the present postmaster at Mountain View. He was born on the old Huff homestead on the Charleston Road, two miles north of Mountain View, March 24, 1867, a son of the late James A. and Emily E. (Gard) Huff, honored pioneer settlers in this part of Santa Clara County, being the second oldest of the five sons surviving of a family of nine children, and grew to manhood on his father's farm. He was early called upon to follow the plow, and as a boy, attended the Whisman school, while his vacation days were busied with work on the farm. The elder Huff was very much interested in the success and welfare of the Whisman school, serving as chairman of the board of trustees for many years and taking a very active interest in the education of his children. He himself having had very meager educational advantages, without doubt made him all the more solicitous in matters pertaining to education.

Having completed the home school, Frank entered Washington College at Irvington, Alameda County, pursuing the scientific and commercial courses, graduating from both departments in 1888. During his senior year he was called upon to teach Algebra and to assist in the business department. After his graduation, during the years from 1888 to 1891, inclusive, he was a teacher in the commercial department of said institution. When Stanford opened in 1891 he matriculated with the first class. For the next two years he was a student there, after which he was called back to Washington College to become the head of its business department; but after one year resigned and resumed his studies at Stanford for another year. He then took the teachers' examination in Santa Clara County, receiving the highest standing in a class of thirteen. His first experience as a public school teacher was four years as principal of the Boulder Creek Grammar School in Santa Cruz County, where he was also a member of the county board of education, after which for eighteen years he held the position of principal of the grammar schools in Mountain View, where he feels was done his greatest work as a school man. He resigned this position in the fall of 1917 to accept the principalship of the city schools.

He resigned the principalship of the Washington School in the fall of 1919, wishing to give his full time to his orchards, never having entirely relinquished the determination formed when a boy to own and manage a fine orchard, making his life work in horticultural pursuits. In 1900, while teaching at Mountain View, he had set out the twenty-acre home ranch on Levin avenue, owned by his wife, to prunes and apricots, and he lived upon it and cared for it during the major part of the time he was engaged in teaching. In 1920 he purchased a splendid young orchard planted in prunes and peaches at Hollister which he still owns and manages.

He married on December 28, 1898, at Mountain View, Miss Mame Levin, the daughter of Joel and Mary (Swall) Levin, well-to-do and highly honored pioneer citizens of Mountain View. Mr. and Mrs. Huff have but one child, a son, William E., born February 20, 1900, who graduated from Stanford in January, 1922, having majored in Geology. He was top sergeant at the College of the Pacific during the war, and at its close was in the officers' training camp Waco, Tex., with the infantry replacement troops. He is now engaged in the engineering department of the Cinco Minas Mining Company in the state of Jalisco, Mexico.

In politics Mr. Huff is a stanch Republican who sincerely believes in America for Americans, and is strongly opposed to the immigration into our country of people who are out of harmony with American institutions and ideals, particularly those of such blood as cannot be assimilated by the Caucasian race to its benefit. While supervising the Washington School, Mr. Huff had under his charge something like eight hundred pupils from the kindergarten to the eighth grade, largely of Italian parentage, and during the World War, in his school and war work, he had fine opportunity to observe the Americanism of men and women barely able to speak the language and of their children not yet out of the grammar schools. As a result he has great faith in their possibilities as citizens, and wishes it distinctly understood that his objection to foreign immigration is based on duty to our own and our children's children, and a desire to build up a clean-cut American type with similarity in ideals of life and government rather than on the question of the possibility, through our schools and civic life, of bringing the foreigner to American standards. Whatever Mr. Huff may have accomplished, or may yet accomplish along other lines, his greatest work will remain the implanting of American ideals of character and conduct in the minds of the hundreds of children who have come under his influence, and in the training he has given them for clean American citizenship. In a recent talk on American ideals to the pupils of the Mountain View high school during graduating exercises he said to them in closing. "Fit yourself for accomplishment; be virile; take your part in affairs, and help to see that the Golden Gate swings only outward to those who hold not our American ideals.- One of the greatest satisfactions of his life is the esteem of those who were once his pupils, and the feeling that he may have aided in the building of a character that fitted them for success.

Mr. and Mrs. Huff are prominent in religious and social circles. Mr. Huff had much to do with the building of the Presbyterian Church at Mountain View, and for many years, prior to leaving to take charge of the school in San Jose, served as a member of its board of trustees. It was during his term as trustee that the title to the present church property was cleared and the new church building erected. Believing thoroughly in the principle of cooperation in selling the products of the soil. Mr. Huff belongs to the Prune and Apricot Growers' Association, while every other project intended to promote the general welfare receives his encouragement. He was active in the campaign that removed the saloons from Mountain View. He declined invitations to accept civic honors other than those of a teacher on the grounds that one civic position is all that should be intrusted to a person at a time. He is at the present time chairman of the civic affairs' committee of the Chamber of Commerce, a stockholder in the Farmers and Merchants National Bank of Mountain View, a member of the Mountain View Grange, an Odd Fellow, and a Native Son of the Golden West. He is also a member of the committee for putting over the project of a new $200,000 high school for Mountain View. His appointment as postmaster at Mountain View came to him in April, 1922, and he entered upon the active duties of his office on the fifteenth day of the month following.
Coming from one of the county's best families, being still a comparatively young man and an untiring worker, with a thorough education and a high moral character, it is safe to say that his career will be graced by even greater successes and higher honors than he has already achieved.

From Eugene T. Sawyers' History of Santa Clara County,California,  published by Historic Record Co. , 1922. page 1019 cdf

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