LOOKING BACK

Young Chang

Arlington “Arlie” Swartz, Costa Mesa’s first city clerk, was also the

first public works director, eventually a city manager and the man

largely credited for modernizing the city’s roads.

Former mayor Bob Wilson, who served during the mid-sixties and twice

again in the seventies, even calls Swartz the most important character in

the story of Costa Mesa’s shaping.

But Wilson wants to tell a personal story about Swartz first. It’s a

story that’ll show just how sweet and humble Arlie -- that’s what

Wilson’s always called him -- really was.

Wilson remembers going to a Conference of Mayors in Hawaii where he

befriended a leader from Japan. Wilson promised his new buddy tickets to

Disneyland if the visitor were ever to swing by Southern California.

One day, the foreign mayor called. He was in the country and wanted to

hit Orange County before he returned to Japan. But Wilson and most of the

council members weren’t in town that day. So Arlie did what was very

typically Arlie.

First he picked up his wife Alma and then the two of them drove to Los

Angeles International Airport to greet the Japanese mayor and his wife.

The Swartz’s hosted their guest in their very own home for a weekend and,

of course, took them to Disneyland.

“That’s my friend Arlie,” Wilson, 84, said. “Everything he did was so

generous. He never took credit for anything. He was the kind of guy you

just had to love.”

A Brooklyn native, Swartz moved to Los Angeles when World War II broke

out and he was called to join the Seabees while Alma Swartz joined the

Army Nurse Corps, according to “From Goat Hill to City of the Arts: The

History of Costa Mesa,” written by Wilson.

He moved to Costa Mesa in 1946, took a position at the Newport Heights

Irrigation District and also became one of Costa Mesa’s first chamber of

commerce members.

Swartz played a tremendous role in getting the city incorporated in

1953, Wilson said. And once Costa Mesa officially became a city, Swartz

took on the role of city clerk -- one he’d soon shed to become director

of public works and, finally, city manager.

He even got a street named after him.

“All of these titles were so tremendous, he didn’t know what to do,”

Wilson affectionately said. “He wasn’t good at accepting titles. He was

so very humble.”

* Do you know of a person, place or event that deserves a historical

Look Back? Let us know. Contact Young Chang by fax at (949) 646-4170;

e-mail at young.chang@latimes.com; or mail her at c/o Daily Pilot, 330 W.

Bay St., Costa Mesa, CA 92627.