A LOOK BACK -- JERRY PERSON

When it came to fishing, this week’s Main Street business owner had no

equal. In fact, our Look Back person would have preferred fishing on the

pier to anything else.

This week, we’ll conclude our series on Main Street business owners by

looking at Huntington Beach’s most avid fisherman, John Parnakian.

John Isaac Parnakian was born Sept. 18, 1918, in Philadelphia to Isaac

and Valatin Parnakian. His family moved to California where John attended

Washington grammar school and later a private high school in Pasadena.

After graduation, John went into the dry cleaning business in Boyle

Heights when he was 18 years old. During this time, he would travel south

to Huntington Beach just to fish on our pier.

John, or Johnny as his friends called him, entered World War II and

served in the Army Air Corps. He was trained in espionage and became a

special intelligence agent, where he worked his way from Normandy to East

Berlin in the 3 1/2 years he was in Europe.

He returned home, and during this time one of the families Parnakian

knew had a very lovely young daughter by the name of Alice. And on May

11, 1946, they were married.

That same day, John and Alice moved to Huntington Beach to begin

married life in a small home on Frankfort Street. John worked in

construction, building homes here in Huntington Beach, and Alice told me

that John liked to tell of how he sold the first house he built on 10th

Street in 1947 for $5,000.

John then went into the furniture business with his father, Isaac.

In 1949 and 1950, they built the commercial building at the corner of

Main and Orange streets. The Economy Cleaners opened at 328 Main St., and

when it closed a year later, John and his father opened their Modern

Furniture Store. They sold their business to Burl Bishop, who continued

with the furniture store as Bishop Furniture. When Bishop moved his store

to San Clemente, John reentered the furniture business with the

Huntington Beach Furniture Co., which sold modern furniture in the 1960s.

Alice and John had three children -- Tom, Anita and Dorothy. John and

Alice moved to 205 1st St., “to be nearer the water,” said his wife,

Alice. “I can still see John at the rail of our pier with fishing pole in

hand, many an early morning.”

Alice told me that John’s doctors gave him two years to live when he

was diagnosed with leukemia. That was 25 years before John died on Jan.

30, 1995, having outlived those same doctors.

* JERRY PERSON is a local historian and longtime Huntington Beach

resident.