Willis Stork, Retired Champion of Independent Schools, Dies

Willis Stork, retired headmaster of Polytechnic School in Pasadena and a national figure in the independent school movement, died in his sleep Sunday night at his Pasadena home.

A memorial service for Stork, 74, who died of congestive heart failure, has been scheduled for 4:30 p.m. Thursday at the school he headed from 1955 to 1976.

Stork, a member of the board of directors of the 800 schools comprising the National Assn. of Independent Schools and board chairman from 1973 to 1976, came to the private, co-educational elementary and junior high school in Pasadena from the Midwest where he had been an English teacher and administrator. He was educated in his native Nebraska and at Harvard University and the University of Michigan.

In Pasadena, he took over a school with a maximum of 400 students (fewer than 20 per class) who had a minimum IQ of 110 and almost all of whom were destined for college. He added a high school to 70-year-old Polytechnic and its graduates continue to perform well above the norm for either private or public school students taking National Merit Scholarship Examinations.

(Polytechnic’s graduates traditionally have included a disproportionate share of Los Angeles business and industrial leaders.)

Stork also was credited with helping break down an Eastern bias toward West Coast private schools and was responsible for the national independent schools group holding its first West Coast conference in San Francisco in 1974.

He was a frequent contributor to professional publications and a member of library, museum, child health and arts organizations in Pasadena.

Survivors include his wife, Helen, son William, daughter Cynthia Stork Gerber and four grandchildren.

The family suggests contributions to the Willis Stork Scholarship Fund at Polytechnic School in lieu of flowers.