A Look Back -- Jerry Person

Jerry Person

It is my sad duty to report the passing of longtime Huntington Beach

resident and good friend George Arnold at the age 73.

George passed peacefully away on Sunday, March 17 in a Palm Springs

hospital.

I will be writing a column about my friend George in the next few

weeks as I collect material about his life.

But this week we will be looking at a boxer, a Korean War veteran, a

school teacher and a member of the clergy.

On Oct. 19, 1917 Lowell Spangler was born to Harry and Edith Spangler

in San Jose.

Lowell’s dad was employed in one of San Jose’s post offices. In 1921

the elder Spangler was transferred to the Covina post office.

He brought his family to Covina and it is there that Lowell attended

school. Lowell was a good talker and he joined the school’s debating club

where he engaged in several heated debates. He enjoyed the game of tennis

and spent two years on the school’s tennis team.

In 1935 he graduated from high school and afterward attended Citrus

Junior College where he majored in science. While in his first years at

college he took up boxing and entered a couple matches. In one of these

fights he received a head concussion and had to leave school.

While recuperating from his injury Lowell moved to attend Pacific

Union College at Angwin, near Napa, where he spent the next two years.

But money was running low so Lowell found work at Douglas Aircraft in

1939 building dive bombers.

In 1940 he met Edith Johnson and two years later they were married.

The newlyweds moved to El Segundo to work at the Douglas plant there.

During World War II Lowell not only worked at Douglas but alsoattended

Pepperdine College in Los Angeles. After graduating from Pepperdine with

a Bachelors degree he was transferred to the Douglas plant in Des

Plaines, Ill.

During his free time he attended Northern Baptist Theological Seminary

and in 1947 received his bachelor’s of divinity degree.

The family moved back to California to settle in Inglewood where

Lowell became assistant pastor at the First Baptist Church.

They moved again, this time to Azusa where he pastored at the First

Baptist Church of Azusa from 1948 to 1952.

In 1952 he became an army chaplain during the days of the Korean War.

He was assigned to Fort Huachuca in Arizona.

By October of 1952 Lowell, Edith and their daughter Diane came to

Huntington Beach where they would live on 6th Street and later on Park

Street.

Lowell became a pastor at Huntington Beach’s First Baptist Church at

401 6th St. where he stayed for four years.

He received a master’s degree in psychology from Northern Baptist

Theological. After he resigned from the church, he went door-to-door

selling encyclopedias.

In 1962, while out mowing his lawn, his neighbor Scott Flanagan the

principal of Huntington High School approached him. Flanagan offered to

hire Lowell as a substitute teacher for Al Reboin for two weeks.

Eventually Lowell was hired as a full-time teacher at Huntington High.

In the early 1970s Huntington Beach resident Andy Arnold recalls

attending a debate between two science teachers who debated creation

versus evolution.

A second evolution debate was held and after it was over the school

forbid and more of these debates.

In 1983 Edith passed away and in 1987 Lowell left Huntington High

School. He remarried to Jeanie Ferm, who has two children who still live

on Park Street.

Lowell told me he attends St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Newport

Beach these days and enjoys his retirement.

* 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.