The godfather of the Leon Fibonacci prank was William Barley, a mathematics teacher at Los Gatos High in the 1970’s. I had him as a math instructor in both my junior and senior years, and found him a very charismatic teacher, but he demonstrated some unusual qualities. The first was his choice of hair style: initially he had very short hair, even more closely cropped than a crewcut. Then he grew a beard, balancing that out by shaving his head. But instead of shaving his whole head at once, he initally shaved just half of his head, and was the strangest looking person in town for 24 hours (he finished shaving the other half the next day).

    His second unusual trait was a fascination with the number series (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 etc.) named after the 13th century Italian mathematican, Leonardo Pisano Fibonacci. In my senior year (1970-71), my first class of the day was Mr. Barley’s Math V class. And at Los Gatos High School, the first class of the day was the “homeroom” – the official class that the administration used to classify and communicate with students.

    At the beginning of the year, Mr. Barley announced that we would be studying Fibonacci number series (I think he did the same for the previous year’s class). Jo Carol Gordon and Kelly Haughton were in this math class as well. One morning during the first month of the school year, some students decided to pull a joke – while a number of students crowded around Mr. Barley, another one went over and put Leon Fiboncci’s name on the absence list slip, which was then duly collected when someone from the attendance office came by a few minutes later. About 15 minutes later, that attendance office person came back and with an ashen face said, “Mr. Barley, we have no record of a student named Leon Fibonnaci, but you marked him absent.” Mr. B. laughed it off and told the person it was just some wise guy student putting a 13th century Italian mathematician on the list and to forget about it.

    But Kelly and Jo Carol thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we marked Leon absent and no one came down from the attendance office?” But how to do that? Well, the obvious answer was to enroll Leon in LGHS. And the first step for that was to obtain the proper documentation.

    Kelly’s father worked at IBM with a person named Emil Hopner. Emil’s son, Victor, was a former classmate of ours, who had moved to Switzerland. Through Emil, they were able to contact Vic in Switzerland, and got him to send over a fake transcript of grades for a Leon A. Fibonacci (note the change in middle name, thus providing the acronym “LAF”), using Vic’s home address as that of Leon’s school. LGHS had seven periods, so the next step was to sign up seven teachers, so Kelly convinced his teachers to accept Leon as a student, and assign him grades at the end of each quarter: besides Mr. Barley, these included Coach Pietro Denevi (PE), John McDonald (Biology), Robert Negendak (Social Studies) and Steven Ridgely (English). Now, all that was needed was a warm body. Luckily, one was just about to show up.

    Los Gatos High School had a student exchange program with Leigh High School, wherein one day each year, a small number of students from each school were bused to the other school for one day. Kelly had some friends at Leigh who found out for him the names of those students bound for Los Gatos.  Kelly contacted one of the exchangees, Rodney McDonald, and convinced him to cut the formal exchange, and instead act in Leon’s stead. So on the morning of Tuesday Nov. 10th, the Leigh High exchange students showed up at Los Gatos and split up to attend various classes, with apparently no one noticing that they were one short. Kelly, who had never met Rod before, took him in hand, and armed with the Swiss transcripts, as well as a list of classes that Leon was planning to take (ie. those of the teachers who were already in on the plot), went to the main office and told them that Rodney was an exchange student (which was actually true) from Switzerland (not so much) who was staying at Kelly’s home. Kelly was as nervous as could be, but Rodney was a smooth operator – he was as cool as a cucumber, and managed to look slightly bored while in the office – exactly what a 17 year old would look like in that situation. The administration accepted everything at face value, and although it was Kelly and Rodney who had walked into the office, as far as LGHS officially knew, it was Kelly and Leon who walked out.

    The school student newspaper was the El Gato. The editor (Kakie Hanson) and one reporter (Lee Monk) were told about the prank. In the November 25, 1970 issue of the paper, there appeared an article reporting on the student exchange program with Leigh High School. But right next to this piece was the weekly “Focus” column where a chosen student is interviewed. And the student chosen for this issue was … Leon! Probably written by Lee, this item was complete with a photo of Rod, humorous (often mathematically related) quotes, as well as a tip of the hat to Mr. Barley. Assumedly, the photo was taken on the very day that Rod was on campus for the student exchange.

    Leon got solid A’s. One time it was decided to test the system by having Leon miss a day of school through illness. A doctor’s note was submitted when he came back the next day, and that sailed through the adminstration just fine. Someone from the Wildcat (our yearbook) alerted us that the club pictures were to be taken soon, which gave Kelly enough time to rustle up another Leon – this time, it was a student from Camden High School, Tyson Cowan, who Kelly met while working at Jack in the Box. Tyson cut school and came over to Los Gatos, and posed as Leon for the photos of the Chess Club, CSF, Cycling Club and German Club (but inexplicably missed the photo of the Math Club).

    So everything was going just fine … until February 22, 1971, when several extraction notices were delivered to our homeroom. (Extraction notices were requests for a student to be extracted from a class in order to come to the main office to discuss some (unstated) administrative matter). One of the extraction notices was for Leon. It was too late to declare Leon absent that day, so we sat around stunned, not knowing how to deal with this situation. Another student who got an extraction notice went to the office and reported back that he had been called in because he had missed the appointment for his cap and gown fitting for graduation, and they were trying to reschedule it. So that’s what happened with Leon – he had missed his cap and gown fitting. But the jig was, as they say, up.

    Things quickly deteriorated once the fiction became exposed. The administration realized that they could be in trouble, since they had been reporting to the state (and thus receiving funds) that they had one more student than really existed. In order to minimize any unpleasantness, one of the administrators (probably Orrin Matheny, the vice principal) declared that Leon had had a nervous breakdown and was no longer an enrolled student at LGHS, and so our dreams of seeing Leon graduating with the rest of the class came to naught. A few days later, Ted Simonson (the Dean of Boys) called Kelly into his office. The Dean put on a stern face and lectured him that it was a bad thing to enroll a 13th century mathematician into the school and that this subterfuge was “going on the permanent record of all seven teachers.” But even at the tender age of 17, Kelly could tell that Simonson was having a tough time keeping a stern face and not breaking out in laughter.

Post prank:

Towards the end of the school year, the El Gato provided the seniors with questionaires about their most memorable moments at LGHS, ways to improve the school, parting words, and what they might “will” to those left behind. I filled out one for Leon, including the most memorable moment the day “I had a mental breakdown and left the school, all without my knowledge”, and improving the school with “Abolish the attendance office and require all students to take 4 years of math”.

Leon continued to receive mail at Kelly’s home, as a graduating senior. One was from the Naval Academy, suggesting that Leon should apply for an appointment there.

In the early 70’s I knew someone who worked for Social Security. Back then, those agents used to have access to blank Social Security cards. This person filled one out with Leon’s name, with the ID number 123-58-1321 (although Leon was never registered with Social Security). I had the card at one time, but alas, I seem to have lost it.

I got Leon ordained (via mail order) as a minister in the Universal Life Church (in Modesto, California) on Aug. 22, 1973.

1988 marked the Centennial of Los Gatos High School, and on June 18 there was a celebration there. I attended this, and still have a copy of the Schedule of Activities put out by the El Gato. This included an interview with Kelly who provided a brief explanation of the prank, as well as an abridged version of Leon’s 1970 interview in the El Gato.

On the Classmates.com website, Leon is listed in the LGHS class of 1971 (I don’t know who did that). But Leon also has a Facebook page (started by Kelly) that links to several LGHS friends, and notes that he went to Los Gatos High, but now lives in Pisa, Italy.