A LOOK BACK -- Jerry Person

I was talking with the city’s chief beach maintenance man, Tim Turner,

and during our conversation he mentioned that his brother Terry worked

for the subject of this week’s look back.

Anyone who has lived here 20 or 30 years will remember watching TV

commercials featuring a balding and rotund gentleman named Ralph

Williams, but I’ll bet many of them won’t realize that Williams is part

of Huntington Beach’s colorful history.

In Salt Lake, Ky., on April 12, 1917, Ralph L. Williams was born. His

father Ed operated the local sawmill.

When the price of lumber dropped in 1930, Ralph’s father decided to move

to Alexandria, Ind., to better care for his family of five boys and five

girls.

The Williams family appeared in a magazine article in the 1930s titled

“Small Town U.S.A.” They were billed as the “Typical American Family.”

Ralph attended both grammar school and high school in Alexandria, and

went on to attend Indiana University, where he majored in engineering.

He graduated in 1938 and went to work in the service and parts department

of a local Chevrolet and Oldsmobile dealership. In a couple of years he

was made sales manager.

While in Alexandria Ralph took up flying. In early 1941 he enlisted in the Canadian Air Force, helping ferry bombers to Europe. He later signed

up with the U.S. Army Air Corps in Indianapolis as a flying cadet. He was

sent to California to the Santa Ana Army Air Base for training.

Several of the cadets, including Williams, drove to California expecting

to see a “West Point of the West.” Instead, they found a sea of tents, on

ground that was either dry and dusty, or muddy from rain.

Williams was sent to several training fields in California and Arizona,

and saw action in 1943 as a fighter pilot over Italy and Africa.

Ralph was discharged in September 1945, and returned to Indiana where he

and his partner, A.E. Ash, started a business called Commodities

International.

This lasted only six months. Ralph then moved to California to work as a

sales representative at the Chevrolet Plant in Los Angeles.

In 1949, Williams moved to Yuma, Ariz., to work as sales manager for C.C.

Dunbar Chevrolet.

While in Yuma, Williams met Eugenia Freund, and the two were married in

the Imig Manor Hotel Chapel on May 25, 1950.

In 1952, Williams moved his family to Huntington Beach, where he bought

Otto Culbertson’s Chevrolet dealership at the corner of what was once 3rd

Street and Pacific Coast Highway. He renamed it Williams Chevrolet.

This location would be the start of his automobile empire that would

include dealerships in Garden Grove, the San Franando Valley and here on

Beach Boulevard in Huntington Beach.

Williams went on to become a director in the Huntington Beach Chamber of

Commerce, a member of the Masonic Lodge, an Elk and a member of the

Rotary Club.

He was a member of the Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach and a member of

the Athletic Club in Los Angeles.

But all of this came at a price, as problems with the Internal Revenue

Service would later appear on the horizon.

JERRY PERSON is a local historian and longtime Huntington Beach resident.

If you have ideas for future columns, write him at P.O. Box 7182,

Huntington Beach, CA 92615.