The lives and deaths of two Huntington Beach mayors

A LOOK BACK

There have only been a few times in the nearly 100-year history of

Huntington Beach that two former city mayors have passed away within

a short time of each other.

The first one I can remember was when Ted Bartlett and Don Shipley

passed away in September of 1989.

But this week we’ll look a pair of former mayors of Huntington

Beach who left us in August of 1944.

Our first subject ran a building construction company with his

brother at 222 1/2 Main St. in 1923. Laurence Reed Ridenour was a

successful building contractor and would also go into politics and

serve the citizens of Huntington Beach as their mayor in the 1920s.

It was on June 11, 1889 that Laurence Reed Ridenour was born in

Chillicothe, Miss., in the northern part of the state. He came from a

large family as was typical of farm families of that time. He had

four brothers and three sisters in his family for a total of eight

Ridenour children.

In 1899 the family left Chillicothe for a more warmer climate that

Long Beach had to offer. The young Ridenour received his early

education in Long Beach and he graduated from Poly High School with

honors.

It was also in Long Beach that he became fond of Mildred Fern

Kibler and on Oct. 5, 1911 they were united in marriage.

Laurence and Mildred moved to a ranch near Whittier to raise

citrus fruit and walnuts. When World War I came, Ridenour moved his

family into Whittier proper while he was away serving his country.

In the service, Ridenour learned the building trade and after the

war ended and he was mustered out of the service the family moved to

Turlock and Modesto where Ridenour started a construction business.

We have his sister Maude to thank for convincing her brother to

move to Huntington Beach and open his construction business here.

Huntington Beach was beginning its oil boom years and it was a

time when buildings were needed both in the oil fields and in town.

His first big building contract was for our new high school on Main

Street and he put many hours seeing that it was constructed right.

By now he was a family man with two children, Laurence Jr. and

Harriet. It was in the late 1920s that Ridenour was elected mayor of

Huntington Beach and during his term of office saw to it that our

streets were paved and that better street lighting was installed.

But like another Huntington Beach mayor, Ridenour was forced to

resign his office because of contract conflicts.

But during those years his construction business boomed and he was

doing business in several local towns. But something happened to his

happy marriage and he and Mildred were divorced.

He later remarried Ida, who he remained with for the rest of his

life. They lived at 424 8th St.

While he was in Ajo, Ariz. Ridenour was in an accident that broke

his back and while recovering at the veterans’ hospital in San

Fernando, medical complications arose and on Saturday, Aug. 19, 1944,

he passed away.

Ridenour’s passing came just 13 days after Huntington Beach lost

anther former mayor, Samuel R. Bowen.

Bowen had a successful oil tool fishing business here in

Huntington Beach and held several important oil tool patents for

equipment that is still being used in the oil industry today.

This inventive former mayor of Huntington Beach was born in 1876

in Martinez, near Oakland.

For the most of his younger years, Bowen lived in and around San

Francisco. That city was ideal for a man who enjoyed boating and

swimming.

At one time Bowen studied for the priesthood, but found that it

was not what he wanted in life.

Bowen went to Flowerson, Colo. to work for the Colorado Midland

Railroad for awhile but he returned to California in 1900 to work for the Oil Well Supply Co. in the oil fields of Coalinga, in Fresno

County.

He went on to open his own company here in Huntington Beach during

our great oil boom days and would go on to receive a patent on a

device to retrieve valuable oil pipe that broke in the ground while a

new well was being drilled.

Bowen’s three metal buildings at Yorktown Avenue and Lake Street

were a familiar sight for many years and gave local boys their first

employment.

There is a plaque at the corner of Yorktown and Lake today

honoring the Bowen works and the man that made it all possible.

Bowen was elected mayor of Huntington Beach in 1928. He and his wife Victoria had four children -- Emily, Paul, Walter and Ysabel.

His son Walter would become a casualty of World War II.

But in the 1930s the family enjoyed playing golf and it was

Bowen’s idea to begin the S.R. Bowen Family Golf Battle Trophy.

He had engraved on the trophy “Instigated as a reminder of the

supremacy in the family” and whoever won it in the family kept it

until the next match and you bet that all the family completed for

that family trophy.

Sam Bowen passed away in Whittier on Aug. 6, 1944.

Three days after Bowen died, then Huntington Beach Mayor Tom

Talbert and the City Council issued a resolution to the effect that

the “City Hall would be closed Aug. 9 and that no work be done on

that day from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. as a tribute to S.R. Bowen.”

* 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.