Keeping history alive

June Casagrande

In a tiny office on top of a modest office building, a handful of

island enthusiasts are working to keep a handle on history.

The Balboa Island Museum and Historical Society is proportionate

to the community it represents: tiny in size, huge in spirit.

“What we want to do is keep the history of Balboa Island prominent

in the community and available to the community,” said Craig Page, a

board member of the society. “We want a place that can be a

repository for our history and where people can come in and see what

it was like here in the past and hopefully, 50 years from now, can

see what it was like today.”

Set up since spring in its new digs in an upstairs office space on

South Bay Front, the museum and historical society are redoubling

their efforts to see that vision come true. This month, the group

will launch its new speaker series on Oct. 14 with a talk on Balboa

Island’s yesteryear by native son Seymour Beek.

Though they’re struggling to make the monthly $1,500 rent and

actively seeking donations, the cost of admission to the speaker

event is a dead-giveaway as to where the group’s heart lies. The

price of admission to the talk is not paid in money, but in a piece

of memorabilia -- a photo, book, story, home movie about Balboa

Island’s younger days.

“Even a story about someone’s family, even in the form of a

handwritten paragraph,” Page said, would be happily accepted as a fee

for admission.

The young museum and historical society started about three years

ago with the hopes of acquiring the old Balboa Island fire station.

Unfortunately for them, it wasn’t for sale. Board members finally

found a permanent location last spring, and put on display their

small but growing collection of island memorabilia: a photograph of

local real estate notable Joanie Cooper in 1957 as an Orange Coast

College cheerleader, and a 3-year-old piloting a wooden rowboat on

the Grand Canal in 1925.

So far, the museum has dozens of books and newspaper articles and

hundreds of photographs. To help raise money and to build a spirit of

historical preservation on the island, the society has started

selling for a nominal fee historical plaques for display on homes

that predate World War II.

“There are probably 20 or 30 out there now, with more applications

coming in every day,” Page said.