An Englishman’s American journey

Although 88 years seems like a long time, it’s amazing that a person

could accomplish as much as Newport Beach’s Victor Rumbellow has in

his lifetime.

He was born in England and served in the British Army in World War

II. Since then, he has traveled the world, worked many careers,

married and raised four children.

Rumbellow and his family eventually moved to California, where he

was almost immediately hired on at Paramount Pictures to work the

development of pay-per-view television. Shortly after moving to

Newport Beach in 1966, he and his wife, Olive, began investing in

real estate, including the Newport Channel Inn hotel, which one of

his daughters now oversees.

Rumbellow’s latest passion is the Osher Lifelong Learning

Institute in Irvine, a community organization for retired people who

share a love of learning. Rumbellow helped start and run the

facility.

The Daily Pilot’s Lindsay Sandham recently had a chance to sit

down with Rumbellow as he shared some of his fascinating stories.

You served in World War II. Do you have any good stories from that

time in your life?

One of the funny things about that was we did this push-through in

the German-held territory of Belgium. We went through in the night.

Our division was told, “Don’t travel at night.” The Brigadier said,

“We’re fighting a war here; we’re going to travel at night.”

I was riding in a jeep with my second-in-command, and I went to

sleep. We came to this city called Eindhoven. It has a ring road

around it.

At about 3 o’clock in the morning, he woke me up, and he said, “We

got a problem. You see that vehicle in front? That’s the tail end of

our convoy.”

What had happened was we had taken a wrong turn and we were going

round this ring. So the rest of the army had gone on and we were just

going around Eindhoven.

How did you meet your wife?

At the end of the war, we were in Germany. We finished up the war

in Luneberg. I was in the officer’s club, and we had a dance.

Somebody said to me, “There’s a nurse here that’s just your type.

You’d like to meet her.”

I met her and we got married six months later. She was a nurse in

the British Army. We were married 59 years ago.

After the war, you spent three years working in the

telecommunications business in Malaya [now Malaysia]. Any good

anecdotes from that time?

One day, I was in this little town that was a communications

center, and I got a call from one of my people. He said the telephone

lines had been cut going south.

We were completely isolated; we were cut off by the Communists.

So, I went out to fix the lines, and that was when I got a real

scare, because we took some police with us.

At about four o’clock in the morning, the guards had been out and

they came in, and one of my men thought it was the bandits coming to

attack us. That’s what they did -- they cut the lines, and then when

you went to repair them, they’d shoot you.

After living all over the world, you somehow wound up in

California. How did you end up moving here?

I had a cousin who lived in Santa Monica, so we emigrated. We came

on freighter through the Panama Canal and up the coast. I was very,

very lucky, because I had a wife and 4-year-old son at that time, and

I didn’t have a job or anything, but it was actually sheer luck.

The man who lived next door to my cousin was with Paramount

Pictures. They were just going into what I had just been doing. They

were getting into cable television, and I had been doing cable

television in England.

I was introduced to the chief engineer of this Paramount

subsidiary, and he and I caught on straight away, and he offered for

me to join them. So within 10 days of landing, I was working for

Paramount Pictures, and I stayed with them for seven years.

Then you worked for Douglas Aircraft?

I worked on the shot to the moon. I worked in the Apollo program

as a project engineer, on one of the stages of that rocket that sent

them to the moon. It was one of the stages that pushed them, the

third stage. The first two stages got them into orbit and then we got

them out of orbit and to the moon.

Then I worked on the first Skylab. I was dealing with the

astronauts at that one. I was dealing with NASA.

So, in the late 60s, you were living in Newport Beach and growing

tired of working for Douglas.

Around 1968, I started to get into real estate. I bought our first

duplex in Corona del Mar. Then we bought some apartments. Then we

escalated from that and, in 1972, we bought a motel called the

Newport Channel Inn, which is on Coast Highway in Newport Beach.

We’ve owned it now 32 years, and we own other properties as well.