OUR LAGUNA:Salvaging history, image by image

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but that wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun for the audience at the Laguna Beach Historical Society slide show on Monday.

The audience was invited by narrators Gene Felder and Eric Jessen to comment on the slides culled from the society’s archives, which included photographs of unidentified people and areas of Laguna. Donations to the collection are sought.

“Our board is concerned that photographs will be lost,” Felder said. “Just let us have them for a few days so we can scan them.”

Some of the photographs have found their way into the collection by serendipitous paths. Jessen, while still a county employee, got a telephone call from a maintenance worker who said he picked up a box of photographs that had fallen off of a truck, some of them of Laguna Beach. The worker’s boss told him to take the box to Jessen, a South Laguna resident with an interest in the community’s history.

“I took the photos to Jane Janz, who identified them as being from Rita Wills Thompson,” Jessen said.

Janz, a descendant of Laguna’s early settlers Kathryne and Nick Isch, is one of the society’s most knowledgeable board members. The society benefits from her personal research and documentation.

Included in the slide show:

“My father was on the council when they decided to put in the bowling green,” audience member Barbara Reed commented. “We had a farm up on the hill and my sister’s boyfriend rode Brownie the horse down and leveled the ground for the bowling green.”

Her father, Harold E. Green served on the council from April 21, 1942 to April 16, 1946 — municipal elections did not coincide at that time with the state or national elections. Green’s other daughter, Donna Smith, also attended the slide show.

“He was unable to speak English except when he was swearing,” Felder said.

More than 20 people raised their hands when the audience was asked if anyone had met him.

Mormons were early settlers in the vicinity of Laguna Beach. When they moved out, they took their homes with them. But the church stayed. It was moved in 1893 to near Canyon Acres and served as the Laguna Grammar School.

In 1908, Kate and Joe Yoch moved the building to Catalina Street (then Aliso Street) where it was converted to the first Catholic Church in Laguna. When the new church was built on Temple Terrace, artist Joseph Kleitsch bought the building in 1931 and moved it to Through and Legion streets for use as his studio. He died three months after the purchase.

The building was subsequently demolished.

About 20 people in the audience had participated in “The Walk.”

Copies of the photographs are available at the society headquarters in the Murphy-Smith Bungalow, next to Wells Fargo Bank on Ocean Avenue. Laser prints are $3 and photographic paper copies are $5, both considered donations.

“Just stop by and make a selection,” Felder said.

The bungalow is open weekends, staffed by volunteers. More are needed.

Joan Irvine Smith was a guest of honor at Monday’s event. She signed copies of her book, “A California Woman’s Life,” available for a $100 donation to the society, and told how she came to write it.

She was “damn mad” when a national publication printed a story that credited her partner with bringing world class equestrian events to San Juan Capistrano, with nary a mention of her contribution.

Smith wrote a correction, which ended up with 10,000 words, illustrated with photographs of horses and events.

“I had about 80 photographs so I figured if I wrote another 20,000 words, I would have a nice, little book,” Smith said.

Smith already had some research done on a book she had been requested to write on meaningful places in California and hundreds of images she could use to beef up the correction.

The book became an ode to Smith’s fervent belief in the preservation of California’s cultural and physical resources, including Laguna Beach.

Felder presented Smith with copies of some of Laguna’s early Plein Air painters as a memento of the evening.

Tribute was also paid Monday to retiring board member Willa Gupta.

Gupta, who could not attend the slide show, served on the board for five years. In addition to her duties as treasurer, Gupta worked on the newsletter, returned phone calls on the society’s voice mail and staffed the Murphy-Smith Bungalow on open days.

“She will be missed,” board member Vern Spitaleri said.

The near-capacity audience included board members Anne Frank, John Hoover, Kevin Spencer, Secretary Nelda Stone and President Kimberly Stuart, who thanked contributors to the society, including Wells Fargo Bank, which leases the bunga- low to the society for $1 a year.

Also: Anne and Marv Johnson, Ernest Stuart, Chris Spitaleri, Carolyn Wood, Ed Drollinger, Johanna Felder and Patrick Jackson and resident Peter Colagrossi, whose Chiquita Street neighbor for about a year was actress Diane Keaton.

For more information about the society or volunteering, call (949) 497-4525.