Stan Phillips: 90 years of Glendale memories

KATHERINE YAMADA

Stan Phillips, who has called Glendale home for all but six months of

his 90 years, is a walking memory bank of local information.

His parents were living in Santa Monica, where his father was

working for the public utility company, when their oldest child,

Mary, was born in 1913. When the elder Phillips got a job in Glendale

with the Public Service Department, the family moved to Highland

Park. Phillips was born there in 1914, and within six months they

moved to Belmont Street in Glendale.

Dean Phillips worked for the city of Glendale from 1914 to 1925 as

an accountant, serving as auditor and as treasurer under Pete

Diederich, chief engineer and general manager of the Public Service

Department for many years.

The Phillips family moved around frequently, living on Lomita

Avenue, Vine Street and Chestnut Street, then on Hillside Drive.

Phillips went to Pacific Avenue School (now Edison) and Roosevelt

Junior High. He graduated from Glendale High School in 1933 and

enrolled in Glendale College.

One of his first memories was on Lomita when his mother was ill

and in the Cottage Hospital on Windsor Road, several blocks away. At

the time, small houses and truck gardens were scattered through the

area.

“I was 3 or 4 then and sitting on the roof of the chicken coop

with my sister and I could see the hospital. I said ‘that’s where

Mommy is.’ ”

Phillips remembered the huge eucalyptus trees on the old Crow

ranch on Lomita. The old trees had buckled the sidewalk and his

sister, who was learning to skate, fell and broke her arm.

“Dr. T.C. Young set it,” he said. “Later, she had to carry a

bucket of sand while walking around to straighten it. That’s the kind

of physical therapy we had in those days.”

Occasionally, the elder Phillips would take the city car, a Model

T roadster, out on San Fernando Road to Van Nuys to collect money

from the city of Van Nuys.

“We supplied them with electricity,” he said.

He would take the younger Phillips with him.

“We would go along the railroad tracks and wave at the trains,” he

said. “The road in the early 1920s was a two-lane, dirt road. There

weren’t too many cars on it, even though it was the main road to

Northern California. The road dipped through creeks because there

were no bridges in those days. There were orchards and vineyards then

and where the airport is now ranches were then.”

The elder Phillips left the city in 1925 and started a collection

agency.

“This was during the Depression and he had a hard time,” he said.

“People were out of jobs, the WPA had people cutting down a hill by

hand to widen Verdugo Road. There were professional men out there

digging out the hill with pick and shovel.”

The WPA, was a Works Progress Administration program begun by the

U.S. government in 1935 to provide economic relief to those out of

work.

Phillips and his wife, Jane, both remember the day the banks

closed in Glendale.

“We were all caught without money in our pocket,” he said.

Next time, more of the Phillips’ memories.

KATHERINE YAMADA’S column runs every other Saturday. To contact

her, call features editor Joyce Rudolph at 637-3241. For more

information on Glendale’s history visit the Glendale Historical

Society’s web page: www.glendalehistorical.org; call the reference

desk at the Central Library at 548-2027; or visit the Special

Collections Room at Central, open by appointment only.