On May 7, 1918, the President of the University of California, the Secretary to the Governor of California, Speakers of the California Assembly and Senate, the District Attorney of Alameda County, the California State Insurance Commissioner and a representative of California's US Senator Hiram, all came to honor a dead cadet who had been preparing to become a second lieutenant.

Paul Morton Herriott was born in St Paul, Minnesota, about 1886 to Calvin and Mary Herriott. Young Herriott, along with brothers Charles and Clarence and sisters Grace and Mrs. Arthur March, arrived in Santa Cruz in November 1900, where their father became the pastor of a local Presbyterian Church. Paul was remembered as being a "good boy, but not a 'goody-goody' boy," and was referred to as "the playmate of many of the 'class one' young men." He entered Santa Cruz High School with the 1903 class but moved to Portland, Oregon during his senior year.

After graduating from Portland Academy in 1904, he enrolled in the University of California at Berkeley where he majored in journalism, played on the football team and joined the Epsilon Psi fraternity. During his college years Paul was said to having done a little "cow punching" on the Miller and Lux cattle ranch.

Following his graduation from UC Berkeley in 1908, the San Francisco Examiner employed Herriott as their Oakland reporter. Later, while working with the San Francisco Bulletin, Herriott joined the gubernatorial campaign team of H. W. Johnson. Governor Johnson was impressed with Paul's work and appointed him to the State Board of Control. When Johnson was elected to the US Senate, he took Paul with him to Washington, D.C., as his private secretary.

In 1918 Herriott resigned from Senator Johnson's staff, enlisted in the army aviation service and was assigned to a cadet-training program at Hicks Field in Fort Worth, Texas. On May 3, 1918, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported that "Cadet Paul Herriott of Oakland and Lieut. James Ennis of New York were killed when their machine fell after a 'nose dive'. " The accident occurred while the plane was flying about 150 feet off the ground at Hicks Flying Field, Herriott was scheduled to have received his commission within a few weeks of the crash.

The Santa Cruz Surf highlighted the career of Paul Herriott by noting that he "was one of the coteries of young men who in recent years attained high positions in the government of California and was well known in nearly every city and town of the state." Paul Herriott is buried at the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California.

(CAG; USCR, 1910; US Census, CA, Santa Cruz; SCSf May 2, 1918 1:3, May 8, 1918 3:1; SCSn May 3, 1918 1:3; San Francisco Chronicle May 3, 1918, pg 11)