Almost gone, but not forgotten

Noaki Schwartz

For Beatrice Thomas, 85, losing the Cannery Restaurant on Sunday

will mean having to let go of one of the last tangible memories of her

husband.

From the moment she stepped into her dockside home as a newlywed back

in 1943, her existence in Newport was intertwined with the life of the

factory. She is now one of the last living people associated with the

founders of the old cannery.

Back in the day, her husband, Tommy, was one of the three managers of

the canning plant and a firm believer in fate. Within three days of

meeting Beatrice in San Francisco, he proposed. It seemed, to him, that

everything had just fallen into place. They were both Greek and one of

their parents were from the same small Mediterranean village.

It took her a little longer. At first she thought of him as “a little

pushy,” she said, until his clever sense of humor and delightful optimism

for life overtook her sensibilities. And so she said “yes” and moved down

south into “an 800-square-foot house on the canal” in a little seaside

town called Newport.

Everyday from her kitchen window she could hear and see the factory’s

steam whistle blow. It was the signal that the fishing boats had drifted

in with their catch. The legions of boats came in at all hours of the

day, at times dragging Tommy out of bed at 3 a.m. to help unload the

fish.

In those days, before pollution killed the fish, they caught tuna,

swordfish, mackerel, sardines and anchovies. During the summer they

mainly fished for tuna and in winter, mackerel. Newport was even called

“Mackerel haven.”

While the mackerel could simply be grounded up and put into cans, tuna

required a lot more work. The fish were thrown onto long tables

surrounded by women dressed in white uniforms stained from hours of

deboning. They wore caps and stood in boots in shallow puddles of

seawater mixed in with pungent odors, Thomas remembered.

At that time, 110 people worked at the cannery and women were paid 5

cents per case. It was the middle of World War II and help was scarce, as

was the level of trust. Thomas said commercial fishermen had to carry

passports to go in and out of the harbor.

“During the 1930s and 1940s they were the only major employers in

Newport when the summer tourist season subsided,” she said.

Despite the war that raged on on foreign shores, however, the three

men who ran the cannery -- Walter Longmoor, Jerry Spangler and Tommy

Thomas -- were great friends and never fought.

“It was like a family,” Thomas said. “It was beautiful.”

Immediately after the war when help returned, business boomed. In

1954, 2,694 fisherman caught 72 tons of albacore. But with the increase

in business and residents in Newport, the waters gradually became

uninhabitable for the fish.

The catch dropped so dramatically that in the summer of 1966 the

cannery stopped running and was eventually shut down. Finally, in the

early 1970s, the old building was completely torn down.

It was about this time that a group of enterprising World War II

veterans stepped in and decided to rebuild the cannery and turn it into a

restaurant. Tommy was pleased to see that the place, which had for so

long rooted him in Newport Beach, was going to be reborn to a new

generation, Thomas said.

As the months of construction wore on, the new cannery partners

prepared to host an opening party in 1973. As the building neared final

completion, Tommy suffered a stroke. Thomas said she attended the party,

“in body but not in spirit.”

Soon after the opening of the restaurant, her husband passed away.

“He gave so much of himself to the cannery,” she said.

After depending on Tommy for both financial support and companionship

for 30 years, Thomas has had to face an almost equivalent amount of time

on her own. She has filled her time tutoring children, teaching literacy

and taking language classes at Orange Coast College.

Thomas also has collected and carefully pieced together yellowing

newspaper clippings and old black-and-white photographs chronicling her

husband’s time at the cannery. The two photo albums never leave her hands

-- they are priceless.

Someday, she said, she plans to write a book about this piece of

history.