Man To Turn School ‘Junk’ Into Gold for Poor Village

San Juan Capistrano Unified School District officials looked at their old storage buildings and stockpile of outdated school equipment and saw junk. John Pierce looked at the vintage Quonset huts and battered furnishings and envisioned a new way of life for a tiny Mexican village.

He invested $40 in the property, and embarked on fulfilling a “longtime dream” to transform the thatched-roof village where his wife was born into a full-scale town.

It all began when Pierce, 51, a tile setter and ceramist who lives in San Juan Capistrano, mentioned to friends in the school district that he was interested in having one of the old Quonset huts if school officials ever wanted to get rid of them.

“When I was in the Marine Corps, I lived in one and have quite a fondness for them, even though I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to do with this one,” Pierce said.

“I ended up with four Quonset huts and enough material to completely build a small town,” he said proudly.

The school district first used the huts, built by the Marine Corps in 1942, as classrooms. Later, they became warehouses for surplus supplies. Over the past 3 1/2 months, Pierce has been taking them apart, bolt by bolt, and has promised the school board that all the debris will be carted away by February. He has meticulously stacked and numbered piles of wood, windows, metal, and tubing. All together, they look like little more than a giant scrapheap.

“I have 500 school desks and chairs, blackboards, pencil sharpeners, teachers’ desks, 25 typewriters, ceiling-mounted wall heaters--everything we’re accustomed to in our schools in the United States,” Pierce said.

In a couple of months, Pierce and his wife plan to move to Mexico and reassemble the huts in San Miguel del Rio, a village of seven families in the state of Michoacan.

“I’ll have a house to live in, a farm to farm, and a nice river to fish in,” Pierce said.

Although Pierce initially envisioned a nine-unit complex, he stripped the Quonset hut floors and discovered there was enough material to build 21 units--including a school, clinic, church and community center. The 700 plywood sheets taken from the floors will form additional walls, and their steel underpinnings will become rafters and wall supports.

It wasn’t by accident that the blond, blue-eyed, ruddy-faced Pierce selected the thatched-roof village of San Miguel. His wife, Elda, whom he met in 1976 when he owned a tile factory in Tecate, Mexico, comes from the village, and her family still works land in the ejido, or communal plot.

For San Miguel, it will be a big change indeed. The village has electricity but no running water. Its inhabitants, about 20, harvest peanuts and corn on land loaned to them by the government.

“I hope it will draw more people to the village. The more people who come to work the land, the easier everyone’s life will be,” Pierce said.

“They will wake up and think it’s a dream,” Elda Pierce added.

“When it’s all done, it’s going to be a complete town, that’s what it’s going to be,” Pierce said, excitement in his voice.

“These were the most fantastic buildings ever built,” he said, showing off some wood panels and galvanized metal frames salvaged from the Quonset huts. “Look at that--very little rust and no damage. I bet you it will last another hundred years. These things just don’t self-destruct.”

Pierce would seem an unlikely man to be building a town in Mexico. He was born in a small farming town outside Lawrence, Kan. Part Wyandotte Indian, he grew up on reservation lands in a dirt-floor home, and learned farming, construction and tile setting from his father. He was a communications instructor in the Marines from 1954 to 1956. While stationed at Camp Pendleton, he worked at his tile setting trade on weekends.

After leaving the service, he continued tile setting until 1976, when he moved to Tecate to open a tile factory. The business failed in 1978, however, and Pierce returned with his new wife to the United States. For a time they lived in a garage in Spring Valley, in San Diego County.

Now they operate their own ceramic business--pouring the molds, glazing, firing, painting and marketing everything themselves--all out of their small apartment.

Pierce doesn’t think his San Miguel project is unusual, however.

“I’ve been doing things like this all my life,” he said.

From 1956 through 1977, Pierce delivered Christmas Eve donations to small Mexican towns as far south as Ensenada, gathering clothing and food from friends in the community. He stopped doing so, he said, when it became too difficult to ensure that the goods were distributed properly.

Although the Pierces live modestly, they say San Miguel del Rio will not lack for amenities.

Pierce plans to build public restrooms and a laundry facility, with hot water heated by a salvaged solar panel.

“I also have stools, kitchen sinks, four refrigerators and enough fluorescent tubes to light up the whole town,” he said.

The community center and park will have volleyball equipment, two picnic tables and a Ping-Pong table.

Also on the drawing board is a water purification system, which Pierce plans to assemble from old swimming-pool water pumps. Villagers now bathe and do laundry in the nearby Coahueyana River, and carry river water to their homes.

As time passes, Pierce’s project keeps growing. A representative of the San Onofre nuclear generating station has offered to donate paint and electrical equipment. Pierce may also build some outdoor barbecue pits with chimneys.

“Last time I was down there, I spotted a natural clay pit nearby,” Pierce said. “If I have the time, I’ll make my own bricks.”

And, late last week, Pierce began checking into the feasibility of establishing a goat farm in San Miguel del Rio--with 300 of the wild goats the U.S. Navy is trying to eliminate from San Clemente Island.

Penetrating the Mexican bureaucracy, however, has been more challenging to Pierce than taking apart and reassembling all the buildings.

With help from the office of Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad), Pierce is negotiating with the Mexican government to allow his “village” to cross the border duty free, and to arrange for government transportation of the equipment to San Miguel del Rio.

Pierce has agreed to distribute surplus materials from the village to other parts of Michoacan.

Pierce estimates it will take at least five 18-wheel trucks to haul the materials the full 1,760 miles to San Miguel del Rio. The village is about 25 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean, and about 250 miles west of Mexico City.

Ricardo Enriquez, who represents the state government of Michoacan in Mexico City, said he plans to do a documentary on the Pierce family for Mexican national television.

“This is the most important project of this kind that we know about,” Enriquez said.

“The government is grateful for the donation, especially for the school supplies. We will call the documentary ‘El Regreso’ (The Return), symbolizing the Pierce family’s loyalty to its roots.”

Nancy Walker, an aid to Packard, said she didn’t know what to make of Pierces’s request for assistance initially.

“I’ve worked in congressional offices and with the State Department for 20 years,” she said. I’ve never had anyone ask me to help move a whole city across the boarder. It’s a remarkable story.”

San Juan Capistrano Unified School District officials are delighted, too.

“They opened the huts up for bid and no one wanted them,” Pierce said. “They called (a wrecking company) and found out it would cost a bundle to have the buildings demolished.”

Said school board member Ted Kopp, “We were just glad someone took them off our hands.”