A look back -- Jerry Person

Our Fourth of July parade is now history and our residents are looking

forward to a wild and wonderful summer in ‘ole Huntington Beach. I

thought you might like to see how an earlier generation passed the time

and what was happening here in the summer of 1915.

In that long ago time we didn’t think about surfing or swimming in our

blue Pacific waters.

Most people then didn’t even know how to swim and that’s why when you

dig out that old photo album of you grandmothers, you see only people

wadding in the water close to shore in their woolen bathing suits.

So what did people do on a hot August day in Huntington Beach?

Well, the big event in August was the arrival of the men in blue, no,

not the Navy, but those old soldiers who fought for the Union in the

Civil War.

The Southern California Veteran Assn. of the southern posts of the

Grand Army of the Republic came down for its 28th annual reunion and

stayed at the Huntington Beach Tent City at Orange Avenue and 11th

Street.

They called their camp the Thomas B. Hartsell camp that year and

placed Commander A.M. Brown in charge.

Others in command included Vice Commander L. Scofield and Junior Vice

Commander W.A. Packard.

On the Army’s first night in town, Huntington Beach Mayor E.E. French

welcomed them and as was the custom of the time, that first night was

known as Huntington Beach night.

I understand that many of the veterans were running late for the 7

p.m. program and our mayor was forced to repeat his welcome message.

The entertainment for the evening was provided by our town’s Woman’s

Relief Corps.

The music for the evening’s program was strictly Huntington Beach in

the form of local talent with the best part consisting of 24 very young

local girls.

Each girl wore a white dress and half of the girls wore red ties and

hair ribbons and the other half wore blue ties and hair ribbons and they

all marched on stage and carried American flags. When they all came

together it was all red, white and blue.

These girls were under the direction of Marie Bushard and Mrs. R.H.

Dow.

Some of those girls who marched that night were Helen Newland, Vera

Bushard, Audra Brunton, Pauline Manning, Gladys Wardlow, Elsie Lake and

Margaret French.

Next came the dancing duo of Frances Fink and 9-year-old Marian Clark.

This was followed by another 9-year-old, Harry Jonas, who played a

musical composition by Paderewski on the piano.

The Lost Chord, a comedy sketch written by a local boy, Charles

Decker, was performed by Fred Gallienne and Clarence Hunt.

The act I would have loved to see was the Leona Quartet composed of

Lawrence Worthy, Clarence Hunt, Fred Gallienne and William “Bill”

Gallienne.

The evening concluded with Alita Brunton, Dessie Carroll, Margaret

Lockhart, Louise Jenson, Elsie Seymour, Olive Hill and Helen Steans

singing “Good Night Soldiers.”

There were other happenings around town but this was the biggest.

Charles Lange had driven down from Anaheim in his motor car and when

he returned home he found that he had lost his valuable gold pocket

watch. He called up city Marshal John Tinsley, but before Tinsley could

do anything about it, Lange discovered it on his footboard of his car. He

again called Tinsley and told him that if it had been any other town, the

watch would not have been there.

The residents living on 12th Street were complaining that their gas

street lights weren’t burning regularly.

The final episode of the film “The Black Box” was showing at the

Princess Theatre on Main Street.

Little John Murdy, Jr., left town with the Orange County YMCA for a

two-week stay on Catalina Island.

George Finlayson was promoted to assistant superintendent and Grover

DeLapp to foreman at the old Holly Sugar factory out on Main Street and

Garfield Avenue.

Somehow this just isn’t as exciting as any weekend in the Downtown

today. But this was a gentler time in our history and certainly less

stressful.

But in five years, the oil boom would change the pace of life in

Huntington Beach forever and that pace of life is still moving faster and

faster toward, well, we will just have to wait and see.

* 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.