A Look Back -- Jerry Person

Jerry Person

There are times in each ones life that the tribulations seem

unbearable and that life itself has dealt its owner a hand that makes

life seem so unimportant and meaningless.

This week we will look at just such an individual.

It was on June 20, 1918 that a new and important life came into this

world amid the strife of a world war in Europe. A baby boy was born to

Dr. Edgar and Pearl Ewing and they named their new son Charles Gordon

Ewing, but to most of his friends he was simply Gordie.

The family moved to Huntington Beach in the early 1920s just as our

oil boom town was beginning to grow. Young Ewing attended Central

Elementary School (Dwyer School) and went on to graduate from Huntington

Beach High in 1935. Ewing got a job in the composing room of the old

Huntington Beach News under the watchful eye of editor and publisher Jim

Farquhar.

War again came to America and Ewing enlisted in the army in 1942 where

he became a member of the 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment. He saw

action in Holland with the 82nd Airborne Division and in the Ardennes

campaign where he was wounded. When the war ended, his unit was stationed

on the Elbe River and later was an honor guard during the occupation of

Berlin. He then was sent to Japan for two years with the Eleventh

Airborne Division.

War came again into Ewing’s life and he was transferred to Korea in

1950 with the Seventh Infantry Combat. On Christmas of 1950 Ewing’s

division became the last to leave China’s border with the evacuation of

Hungnam.

Next Ewing joined the Third Ranger Company and fought in the spring

offensive of 1951. Now a Master Sergeant, he was stationed in Japan where

his duty as chief maintenance engineer was to design a better rip cord

tester for parachutes. When the 187th Parachute Regiment, Ewing’s unit,

left to go back to Korea he returned there as an operations sergeant.

With the Korean armistice Ewing came home but continued his career in

the military as maintenance chief for the 44th Infantry. He was put in

charge of the division’s helicopters and light aircraft. In late April of

1954 Ewing opened a commercial artist shop called Les Beaux Arts in a

building that had formerly been occupied by Stanley’s Barber Shop and it

was at 308 Walnut Ave.

Two years later Ewing went back to work at the Huntington Beach News

office as a utility man whose duties were to keep the heavy machinery in

working order. During his leisure moments Ewing drew cartoons for his

friends and sometimes dabbled in sign painting. But the storm clouds were

fast approaching in Ewing’s young life. He was now 40 and often times

would discuss with his friends how life just wasn’t worth sticking around

for. He even mentioned to them that if he ever took his own life it would

be in front of a mortuary so they wouldn’t have far to get him. On March

26, 1958 Ewing sat watching the academy awards on television at 9:30 p.m.

and sometime afterward got up and walked over to Smith’s Mortuary in the

600 block of Main Street where he paused and stood. In his hands he held

a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun that earlier in life he had fashioned

himself. What he had been thinking in those seconds as his finger slowly

touched that shotgun’s hair trigger we’ll never know. At 10:59 p.m. the

Rev. Charles “Chuck” Smith of Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa found Ewing on

the mortuary’s front porch.

Ewing had lived at 306 Walnut Ave., which ironically had been the

location in 1951 of the Huntington Beach Bible Shop.

* 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.