Paul Anderson ’78

What have you done (personally and professionally) since you graduated from Mayfield?
I started my career as a City Attorney, serving several Bay Area cities including Sausalito. When my family moved back to Pasadena, I started to help companies and families with their real estate transactional and land use legal needs.

What is your favorite Mayfield memory?
Wow, so many! Overall, the memories are most vivid of Mayfield’s amazing faculty, including Mr. John Higgins, Señora Teresa Reichert, Pat Peck, Sr. Loretta Tiernan, Mr. Stuart Knox and Sr. Sheila McNiff. Personally, my favorite memories involve the 7th and 8th grade musicals which were so much fun (Oliver & Peter Pan).

Who was your favorite Mayfield teacher and why?
Choosing between the aforementioned is mighty difficult because each teacher gave so much of themselves to the students. If I had to choose one, it would probably be Señora Reichert. She was a terrific Spanish teacher and homeroom guide and a great mentor to me when I served as student body president.

What words of wisdom would you pass on to your childhood self?
Have faith and believe in yourself. God does take care of you whether you know it or not.

What advice would you pass on to a current Mayfield student?
You are the first generation of MJS students to have a freestanding chapel on campus. Use it. Pray often. Remember the Holy Child Jesus is always with you.

What inspires you to stay connected to MJS?
It’s part of my family.

If you could go back to MJS, what grade would you do over again and why?
8th grade was awesome.

What do you consider to be your greatest/proudest accomplishment?
My two children.

What is your favorite quote or saying you find meaningful?
Being happy doesn’t mean you have it all, it means being thankful to the Lord for all you have.

All complain, princes and subjects, noblemen and commoners, old and young, strong and weak, learned and ignorant, healthy and sick, of all countries, all times, all ages, and all conditions…. What is it, then, that this desire [for happiness] and this inability [to find it] proclaim to us, but that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the comfort he does not receive from things present… But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss [inside us] can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, by God Himself.  ~ Blasé Pascal