An Ambuehl Comes to Visit Ambuehl

Ambuehl Elementary got a visit this week from an Ambuehl.

The school is named for Harold Ambuehl, a former principal at what was then called San Juan School (now San Juan Elementary) and the superintendent of the San Juan School District, predecessor to the Capistrano Unified School District.

Ambuehl’s daughter, Janet Ambuehl Strauss, dropped by this week, her first visit since the school opened in 1977. She lives in Canada and was on vacation, according to Principal Curt Visca.

“She met with staff members and students during her visit, and answered students’ questions about her father and what it was like to grow up in San Juan Capistrano many years ago,” Visca wrote in an email to parents.

Here’s her recollections of her father:

My father was born in 1908 in North Dakota. He grew up on a farm.  My father became a teacher and worked in North Dakota for a number of years supporting his family, who lost their farm during the depression.

Married in 1935, he went to Los Angeles with my mother on his honeymoon. He worked several jobs in Los Angeles while earning his master's degree at USC. When World War II broke out, he tried to enlist, but he was told that he was too old. 

Since there was a need for math teachers, he decided to teach high school at a public high school during the day and at a community college in the evenings. 

Around 1949, my parents moved to San Juan Capistrano. My father was a teaching principal in 1943 at the only elementary school in San Juan Capistrano, called San Juan School.  He retired in 1972 after serving as principal and finally principal/superintendent of the San Juan School District up until the time that it merged with the new Capistrano Unified School District. 

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