A man of early service to our town

It has been 13 years since that horrible fire swept Laguna Beach and left many homes in ruin. Standing up to this hailstorm of flames were the best-trained firefighters of Orange County. Without those gallant individuals, many more homes and much property would have been lost.

This week we’re going to look at one of our firefighters and his rich history.

Several years back, when I lived on California Street, I met this man at his home when he was holding a garage sale. I had seen him working out on his lawn many times but had not realized who he was.

It was on Feb. 15, 1908, that our future firefighter was born in Ashland, Neb. His Nebraskan mother and New York-born father gave him the name of Bryce Wayne Pickering.

When Wayne was 7 years old, in 1915, the family moved to Lincoln, Neb. That same year, an older sister brought little Wayne with her to San Francisco to visit the recently opened Pan-Pacific Exposition.

This was a World’s Fair in miniature and was attended by tens of thousands of people — including my dad.

Wayne and his sister traveled throughout the Golden State, including a short visit to Los Angeles, enjoying the warm sun.

Returning to Lincoln, Wayne would live there for less than a year before his father was offered an office job at the Union stockyards in Omaha. After living in Omaha for the next four years, they returned to Ashland.

For as long as Wayne could remember, he wanted, like most American boys of the time, to be a fireman and ride on a shiny red fire engine pulled by galloping horses. This was a time before gasoline engines operated fire engines.

Horses also played an important part in Wayne’s early life, first as a means of traveling the two miles to school, especially during the rough Nebraskan winters when 10-foot snowdrifts were common. Then in his teens, Wayne used to break colts to ride, sometimes in competition, often winding up second to the steer.

In those days it was common in winter for local farmers to make extra money by sawing huge ice blocks from the frozen lakes to be used in summer months.

During one of those times, Wayne was storing some of the huge blocks of ice at the Swift & Co. icehouse when something broke and tons of ice began to shift toward Wayne’s legs. If it hadn’t been for the swift action of a fellow workman who pulled Wayne out of the way, he might have lost a leg.

After harvesting the corn from the fields in 1926, some of Wayne’s neighbors offered to bring him along on their trip to California. This was to have been a two-week vacation, but as it turned out, it would last for decades.

While on this trip, Wayne visited an uncle and aunt who happened to live in Huntington Beach. Here he chanced to speak to Warren Bristol, who owned a service station and offered Wayne a job. The two became good friends and business partners at Bristol’s Richfield station at 602 Pacific Coast Highway. He remained there for years.

During that time, Wayne married Dorothy Field, and in 1935 their first son, Charles, was born, followed five years later by a second son named Walter. The Pickering family lived at 606 California St. well into the 1990s.

In 1947, Wayne became a member of the General Committee, along with his friends Bill Gallienne and Ted Bartlett, and helped plan that year’s Fourth of July celebration.

In the 1940s, Wayne became president of our elite Windsor Club and joined the Huntington Beach Garden Club; he belonged to our golf club; joined our Lions Club; and when he found a spare moment was out in the ballpark playing baseball.

In the 1950s, he joined our fire department under the leadership of legendary Fire Chief Bud Higgins.

Our fire department sponsored a Fireman’s Ball in 1951 in which Louis Pimlott and his eight-piece orchestra played dance music at the pavilion for our residents.

Many of our oil well fires were fought by Wayne and his fellow firefighters. If it hadn’t been for men like Wayne, Huntington Beach might have become just a charred spot in the road.