Eberhart, Roland, 1889-1974

Biographical/Historical note

Roland F. Eberhart was a San Jose teacher, Freemason and poet. He was born in Illinois in 1889 but grew up in San Jose. He graduated from San Jose High School in 1909 and went on to pursue his lifelong interest in English and Education as a student at Stanford University, under the tutelage of, amongst others, Ellwood Cubberley. After his graduation from Stanford in 1917, he spent a year teaching English and Typewriting at the Chinese Government Middle School in Tientsin. Then, with the exception of a short stint teaching Commercial Subjects at a public school in Flagstaff, Arizona, in 1921, he spent the rest of his career in San Jose. He taught English at the San Jose Normal School, later known as the San José State Teachers College, and San Jose High School and, with his wife Winnie, settled into a home on South Sixth Street.

Eberhart enjoyed poetry and became an active member of the Edwin Markham Poetry Society and a friend of many local poets, including Henry Meade Bland, the English professor named “The Laurel Crowned Poet of California" in 1929. Eberhart was the editor of the Santa Clara County Teachers’ Association’s Bulletin, El Padre, and served for a time as President of the Association. Researching the details of word division and syllabication practiced by printers and publishers became one of his favorite pastimes.

Much of Eberhart’s life was devoted to community service and Freemasonry. In recognition of his work with the Freemason’s Howard Chapter No. 14 and the Fraternity Lodge No. 399, he received the Freemasons’ highly esteemed thirty-third degree. He also belonged to the Centella Methodist Episcopal Church in San Jose and taught Sunday school classes there. After the Second World War, in which his son, Frederick, was killed, Eberhart seems to have dedicated himself all the more to his charitable work. He sent gifts of vegetable seeds to Japan, through the well-known missionary and founder of the Anti-War League, Toyohiko Kagawa. In making small donations of money and books to numerous other organizations across the U.S., China, Japan and Mexico, he corresponded with a number of other well-known public figures and founders of charitable organizations. These included Herbert Hoover, the founder of Stanford’s Institution on War, Helen Keller of the National Federation for the Blind, and Pearl S. Buck, the author and founder of the East and West Association.

Eberhart continued to make San Jose the home base for his active community life until his death in 1974.