John Heyl was raised in southern New Hampshire; his father was the school doctor at Phillips Exeter Academy. After earning his BA at Hamilton College, John worked as a woodworker and building contractor in the Boston area through the 1980s.
He relocated to Tsaile, AZ, where he developed a JTPA-funded carpentry training program for the Navajo Nation at their Dine Community College. John moved to Flagstaff, AZ to attend Northern Arizona University, where he earned his Masters in Educational Leadership and did doctoral work in Curriculum and Instruction. John then began teaching, and settled into eighteen years of teaching high school AP English Language, mostly in Flagstaff, but most recently in Gilroy, CA. John retired from his teaching career in 2017.
John met his wife Kathy Greenwald in Flagstaff. They both taught in public schools there until Kathy, who grew up in Monterey, suggested moving from the Colorado Plateau back to the Central Coast. In 2010 they found their current home in Carmel Valley, and settled into their new communities quickly.
Kathy is active in the arts community and shows her work at the Carmel Art Association. John sings with several local choirs. Through his own church, Unity of Monterey Bay, John provides logistical support with COPA, a local IAF community organizing group promoting local issues effecting member institutions’ people. Currently the work focuses on Covid relief for farmworkers, police / citizen relations, and affordable housing and rent relief.
John enjoys the area’s outdoor joys: hiking with the Haasis Hikers, kayaking, and sailing, or working on the house and gardens. John and Kathy chose the Carmel Valley area for its rural nature: the quiet, the village ambience, the screech of the hawks, a small deer family sliding through the oaks, or the bobcat lounging in the sun. All these joys of living here are well worth preserving. So John finally arrives at the CVA Board, knowing that it takes vigilance and persistent effort to preserve a place and community like the Carmel Valley.
