Thanks for the Memories: Three Oral Histories

NOTICIAS Quarterly Magazine Of The Santa Barbara Historical Society j

Vol. XXXVII, No. 3

Autumn 1991

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i naiiKs for the Memories; Ida Cordero, Gene Harris, Eileen Dismuke

TTie identities ofthefamily shewn here as well as those on thefront cover are not known. Their histories are silent.

^fhis year marks the tenth anniversary ofthe Society’s oral history program. To mark the occasion, this issue ofNOlICIAS offers excerpts from three interviews: those with Ida Cordero, Cjene Harris and Eileen Dismukc. In the past ten years the oral his tory archive has gwwn to more than 300 tape-recorded interviews, a collection that documents the history ofthe Santa Barbara area in the words ofthose who have lived it. This issue is dedicated to those who have made thisprogrampossible, theoral histo ry volunteers, past and present, who have given oftheir time and talents, and to those who have allowed us to preserve on tape their life experiencesforfuture generations.

Photos arefrom the Santa Barbara Historical Society collection unless noted other wise. The illustration on the back cover is the logo ofthe Society’s oral history pro gram. Brackets in the text indicate editor’s riotations or comments. Excerpts have been slightly editedfor clarity.

Michael Redmon, Hdicor Judy SucclifTe, Designer

© 1991 The Santa Barbara Historical Society 136 E. De la Guerra Street, Santa Barbara, California 93101 Single copies $4.00

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Ida Perry Cordero was bom in Santa TAaria inigog toAntone Perry andTAary Ann Dutra Perry. After a childhood spent in northern Santa Barbara County,she attended Santa Barbara State Teachers College and received a graduate degree in social worhfrom the University of Southern California. For over 40 years Ida Cordero worked in the social service field in the Santa Barbara area. Her achievements garnered her widespread recognition including testimo nialsfrom city and county authorities, the award as Santa Barbara’s Woman ofthe Year in ig68and accoladesfrom Pope Paul VI.Shepassedaway in ig8y.In ig86,Patricia Cleekconducted three interviews with Ida Cordero. In this portion ofthe first interview, Ida Cordero speaks ofherfamily background, ofher childhood in rural northern Santa Barbara County and ofa way oflife that has disappeared. In the abovephoto,Ida Perry Cordero, left, and Lau ra Perry Cordero,right, are shown with their mother,JAary Ann Perry.

PATPICIA CLEEK: Your family came from Santa Maria. What memories do

whose father owned a shipping yard in the Azores Islands. He was a seaman and

you have of your grandparents?

IDA CORDEIiO: My grandfather died, so 1 never knew him. He was a steve

his ship came from Portugal and they had to have some repairs done. So that is where he met my grandmother. They promised each other that they would come to the United States. We never got it quite clear whether they married before they came or after they came. They tell

dore at Point Sal, which was a shipping point for the local ranchers. It is now part of Vandenburg Air Force Base. The story is that he had met my grandmother.

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the tale of how my grandfather would walk up to the top of the cliff there at Point Sal and scan the sky for sails and finally she did arrive.

My grandfather was drowned at sea when he was trying to save the wharf.

The company had a brand new donkey engine and he was trying to save that when a great big wave like a tidal wave swept and raised a ship high on the pier which was not very substantial and broke it in half. He was a powerful swimmer, but when they found his body he had broken legs which was why he was unable to make it. Left was his young wife who didn’t know the country, didn’t know the language, with two chil dren and she was pregnant with another, but she survived it very well. Portuguese women of the Azores were used

The story is my grandfather had been saving money for a ranch and had a lot saved up. So for years and years people would go poking around their little cabin, with the eucalyptus trees, trying to find the treasure. My father always said.

“We never bothered because we knew that if Joe Gularte knew there was mon ey to be had, he had it!”

They bought a hotel in San Luis Obispo and were doing very well, and then, finally, he lost the hotel. His luck was 'agin’ him! He was quite an entre preneur.

Then there is the story that during flood times he started a little ferry be tween Guadalupe and Oso Flaco and would charge for it. They even said he was wise enough to keep the banks steep

to losing their husbands at sea.

The men were cod fishermen that were up in the North Sea, and they would be gone for months.

Of course, she knew just Portu guese, and the only other Portu guese person that she had ever met

Ida tak.cs a turn around the Tepusquet ranch on her pet pig.

since coming to the States was a joe Gularte. He was an expert at everything and a professional gambler. When Lady Luck was against him, he would do this really dramatic teamster thing with taking an eighthorse team on that very steep cliff down Point Sal. So she had known him before.

They didn’t get married right away, but eventually, they did.

so chat they would have to ferry long af ter ferrying was needed.

I stayed with my grandmother for a little while when I had an accident. We were living at chat time in Tepusquet Canyon and had to go to Sisquoc to get our mail. We had persuaded my father to let us use a racehorse chat belonged to my mother. We would go in a little cart we

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THREE ORAL HISTORIES

had. So we went to Sisquoc, crossed the river in the cart and were on our way back. We were busy looking at the fun ny papers. There was a gravel pit there.

The gravel pit sounded off its steam horn, and the horse took off like she had heard a shot at the race track. So we came to a place in the road where the road turned, and we didn’t. So we tipped over. I got the scat which is here to this day. Then we went to a bean field to ask for help with my face all bleeding. So when I got to the window, this lady who was very pregnant saw me and fainted dead away.

It got infected somehow, and I had to go to Santa Maria to stay with my grandmother. Now she told me, "Now you watch your grandfather. If he goes

person. The hardships she had to go through coming ro the United States made her a very practical person. She died at fifty or so from cancer.

P. C;Did she learn to speak English?"

1. C.: Oh, yes! She learned to speak English, eventually. She encouraged all of her children to go to school and to learn and to get all they could out of it, to be good Americans. My father was a wonderful patriot!

P. C.: Did you speak Portuguese at home?

1. C;We never learned it very much.

But we learned from our grandmother.

My father said, "No, you are Americans, and you talk the language of our country and learn Portuguese later.” I did take Portuguese when I was at USC. But we never used the lan guage. Instead, in school I learned

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Spanish, and that was very useful for me in my work.

P. C.: Were there other Portu

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Threshing barley on the D<yiovan ranch near Fugler’s Point, 1912.

into any of those gambling places in Santa Maria, you tell me!” I never had a chance to see him because, of course, he would drop me off at the doctor and would come back. So she would ask me.

"Did he go into any? ” "No, Grandma, I didn’t see.”

That’s how I got to know my grand mother, She was a very wise and tolerant

guese around Santa Maria?

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the East Coast, J Boston and across the United States.

A lot of them

came by way of the Hawaiian Islands.

That was at the time of the first migra tion of the Portuguese to the Hawaiian Islands from the Azores.

On my maternal side, my grand mother came to San Jose, where she had a sister who was a nun in a convent. She worked in the convent for awhile. My grandfather Dutra from the Lompoc area

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came by way of Boston and married my grandmother.

P. C;Was Dutra Portuguese, too?

I. C.: Yes! The Dutras are from the is

ty of the killing and the preserving.

P. C.; Didn’t you ever have to go shopping?

1. C.: When we went after the mail

lands of Fayal and Terceira. The Perrys, which was Americanized by a teacher at public school from "Pierra" to "Perry," they were from the island of Pico.

P. C.: Were their customs continued

once a month, it was time enough to get coffee and tea and sugar and flour, lard and olive oil. We used olive oil a lot to

when they came here?

1. C.: Yes, there are a lot of Portuguese

cook with. Once a month was enough.

P. C;So how far away was it to San ta Maria?

1. C.: We went to Sisquoc near Tepusquet. When we were living at Fugler's Point, we went to a little store in Garey, a thriving little community at that time.

fraternal organizations, many of them a hundred years old or more. They did have this loyalty and real fraternal feeling, and they had mutual benefit policies. I still belong to one and have for over fifty years. My mother belonged to it. Then there were the men’s organizations. They were separate. I read in the bulletins that come out, they are beginning to be both.

We were first of all Americans, but we

I started school in Bradley Canyon when I was only about four and a half, because they needed one more student to have the required average daily atten dance to keep the school open. So we would walk from Donovan Ranch clear

did preserve the traditions.

P. C.: Now, what about your school days?

1. C.: We were not the hacienda, tile-

up to Bradley School.

P. C.: How far was that?

1. C.: That was about a mile and a half. I remember there was a well-known

roof'type ranchers. We were farmers. I was born on the Donovan ranch near Bu

family, who had a lot more money than the rest of us, and they bought their son a pony. So he was chasing us down the road with his pony. I was the youngest of them all, so I looked back to see how

gler’s Point. My brother was born there, too. My sister was born on another Don ovan ranch near the San Luis Obispo county line. My brother Leroy was born in the Tepusquet.

P. C.:What kind of ranch was it?

I. C.: Dry farming — barley, grain crops of that kind, beans and wheat.

Beans were a popular item. We had our own very self-sufficient garden. The neighbors shared the orchards, and we canned and preserved and pickled meats and all kinds of things. We killed our own hogs. We had our own smokers to make hams and bacon. Usually, the neighbors joined together and made a par-

close he was and tripped over something and fell and tried to roll out of the way.

That pony stepped on my chest, so that for several years I wasn’t in good health and had to drop out of school for a year.

The next school I went to was the little one-room Garey school—all these were one-room schools, for all grades at tending. Then after that I went to school in Tepusquet.

P. C.; Could you describe a one-room schoolhouse?

1. C.: It was complete with the tradi-

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THREE ORAL HISTORIES tional, pot-bellied stove and the home made blackboard. Before we put the well in, we used to bring up water from Tepusquet creek, which was just down a

ones if chey asked me. We used the oldfashioned charts with the ABC’s and the sentences, and we rolled them over and did the next one. Interestingly enough, to day we are trying to create situations where the older children help the younger children. At that time, it was a necessity, because we had eighth graders and three first graders all in one classroom. The teacher handled them with a minimum of difficulty or discipline.

Our athletic activities

little twenty-foot cliff from the schoolhouse. We used to haul it up in buckets, with a common bucket and a common dipper, but nobody ever got sick. Then we had the old-fashioned “Chick Sales” [outhouse]. During the heavy winter one of them washed away, so we had to use one for everybody and stood guard so girls and boys didn’t get in there together. Then we all had places to keep our horses because almost everybody went by horse. We tried to go in carts or buggies, because that meant we did not have to haul so much feed for the horses.

etc., were

mostly baseball and hide-and-go-seek and tag. The teacher kind of encouraged us to really use our muscles during playtime.

When it rained, a lot of the kids didn’t go to school. They lived where they had to cross the swollen creek or go through a muddy drain. We would flap our arms and do calisthenics, and always there was the chore of chopping wood for the stove in the wintertime. And the parents

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P. C.: Did you have a corral?

1. C.: Yes, a little corral

Ida

'parents,Antonc and PAary Ann Perry,prepare to ride out of at the end of the schoolyard the Pepusquet ranch to look,after stock,animals in Foxen Canyon. with a little open shed. We Photo taken about igi^. would take our feed for the horses.

In the school room, we did a lot to were very active in school. They had to do all of the repairs, paving and whatev help the self-sufficiency of the child. The er needed doing. older ones helped the younger ones. We P. C.: Was your father influential to used phonetic teaching. I was a slow lear you? ner, but I got so I could help the younger

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I. C.: Very influential in the big things!

My mother was a beautiful example of resourcefulness. She could do all kinds of things. She could cook, preserve, kill a hog, and ride horseback and help keep the fences going. She was a good horsewoman.

The county fairs were very important in those days. Both my mother and fa-

The ranch we farmed was owned by Sinsheimer and Fleisher who had repos sessed it because of money borrowed on it by an heir to the Ontiveros land grant.

The Tepusquet Creek ran along, and wa ter rights were divided for each heir. Eve rybody had a water right to the creek, and that is how we had our water in our corrals, too. So the water after several

Three ofthe Perry children, Qeorge,Ida and Laura, have their picture takpi in front ofthefamily sfirst car,a A4odel T Ford. With them is afamilyfriend.

ther rode in the fairs. My mother won a saddle once in a sulky contest.

As I look back, there was very, very little in the ways of toys and entertain ment. We had one of those old victrolas that we finally bought—one of those kind that had a big horn. 1 remember one record, "Davy Jones, Davy Jones!” Moth er did a lot of sewing. We just used spools and made dolls out of them. We had a blacksmith shop right on the ranch. We used to have to work the bellows for my father—great big ones!

P. C;Your family was self-sufficient!

I. C. Very self-sufficient! We had a lot of relaxed moments.

ranches like that was probably not very sanitary. Once in awhile the creek would go on a rampage, and all our neighbors' chickens, pigs and everything would go screaming down the water. Our house was kind of high, so we never had any damage of any kind.

P. C.: Would the floods occur every springtime?

7. C.; No, about every five or six years.

I think in the time that we lived at Te pusquet, we only had two big floods.

They would also wash out the bridges.

We could not cross the Sisquoc River at all because of quicksand. It would wash out the Garey bridge, and we would be

THREE ORAL HISTORIES marooned there, which wasn’t coo bad be cause families shared everything. There was enough to go around! But one time one of our neighbors died, an old bachelor.

My father and a neighbor wrapped him in a piece of canvas, tied him on a cart-horse and rode out to the Cuyama and got him to Santa Maria.

We had a lot of horses. My father had some dapple-grey horses, a team, that he was very proud of, and a palomino horse.

My mother had a darling little horse that had been a racehorse. She called it Ariel.

My father had some names from Shakes peare, coo.

We went to school mostly in a buggy.

Sometimes we walked, and sometimes we rode horseback. When my sister went with us, we always cook the buggy or a cart, because we didn't want three hors es—two was enough, I remember chat a lot of our neighbors were poorer chan we were and had no extras, so we would be a little embarrassed about wearing shoes.

We would hide them under the little bridge chat went across the creek. One day during fishing season, our shoes dis¬

Ida Perry in 1935, shortly after re ceiving her de greefrom DSC.

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appeared. So finally, we had to cell what happened. My mother said, "What a waste of money. We just won’t buy any more!”

P. C.:So what about the children who didn’t wear any shoes?

1. C.;The big ranchers’ children did, but the ranch workers’ children didn’t.

My sister was a fastidious person, and she liked her shoes, and she always would be well dressed. She was about three and a half years older chan I am.

My brother George was twelve, fourteen months younger chan I am. Then my little brother Leroy was about fourteen years younger chan my sister—a space of about eleven years [between the last two children}.

P. C.: You have really given a very full account of what it was like.

Qene Harris was bom in Lompoc in igog.After graduatingfrom Santa Barbara State Teach ers College in 1930, he received a law degreefrom the University ofSouthern California and returned to Santa Barbara to practice. In the ig^os, he served three terms as a city councilman.

His community contributions included worl{ with social service agencies such as Alexander House and Hillside House and work,for overfifty years with the Boy Scouts ofAmerica. He served on the Historical Society s Board ofTrusteesfor three terms,and under his leadership as Board presidentfrom 1979 to ig8z was begun the Society’s oral history program. He passed away in ig86.1n ig8^, he was interviewed by Virginia D’Alfonso. This excerpt recalls his ear ly days in Santa Barbara and relates one ofthe strangest chapters in the city’s political history: the tumultuous reign ofMayor E.0. Hanson. The photo above was taken during his tenure as president ofthe Historical Society s Board ofTrustees.

VlJiQWlA D'ALFONSO:Gene, would you give us a little background on your family before we get into all of your community activities?

QE7JE HAIiEJS: I was born in Lom poc on May 12, 1909. I ran across a story that my mother wrote up before her death as to how we happened to get to

from 1899 CO 1904. My father owned and operated a weekly newspaper there called the Journal-Miner, and during one of the very bad years char they had there,[with] rain and crops, there was an Indian tribe chat was starving. My father, through the newspaper, got aid for them and kept the tribe from starving to death. In their

Lompoc and Santa Barbara. My father and mother lived in Prescott, Arizona,

gratitude for what he had done for them, they made my father an honorary chief

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THREE ORAL HISTORIES of the tribe. The women in the tribe had made a deerskin on which they had a picture of the Santa Barbara Mission.

This was strange,, but there was travel between the inland Indians and the coast Indians, and apparently, they got this picture somehow and put it on this deer skin. My mother decided that she just had to see this mission, and so my dad put the family on the train and came to Santa Barbara to show my mother the mission, and since he was a newspaper man he went down to the News-Press and met Mr. T. M. .

no longer operating—and I was born on that ranch in 1909. That’s how I hap pened to come to Lompoc. I thought it was rather interesting, through a tribe of Indians.

V. D’A: That is an interesting story.

So you grew up in the newspaper busi ness?

Q. H.: Yes, My father was a newspa per man, and I grew up with a lot of newspaper ink in my background.

Thomas More Stork,e and Tildai V. DA: How long Harris, Qene’sfather, werepartners did he have the Lom in the newspaper business for a short time. Clarence Mattei drew this por trait ofStorke in 2934.

poc E^cordl

q. IL: Well, he liked to move around

Storke who said, "Gee, I’ve been look

like all newspaper men did. I wish he

ing for somebody to go into partnership with me and buy out the Lompoc E^cord.

Won’t you do it?”

My dad said, "Well, I have a news

had stayed in Lom poc. The paper has been very successful.

But in 1911, we moved up to Willows, California, and he built

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paper in Prescott."

"No problem. I’ll take care of that.”

He asked my dad how much he would j like to sell it for. He ;

like the climate, and

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so they moved back to Santa Barbara in

gave him a price, and ; when the family got back to Prescott, : Storke had found a buyer for the newspaper.

So he sold the

the first [public] swimming pool in the area and operated that for three years. But the family didn’t like the area and didn’t

1914 and stayed here from then on. /

V. DA:Did your fa ther continue in the

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newspaper and came to Santa Barbara in 1904, and then Tom Storke and my fa ther bought the fccord from W. W. Broughton in Lompoc in 1905. My dad also bought the Stambaugh Ranch, which was famous for its cherries. It is

newspaper business in Santa Barbara? q. H.: No. For awhile he got into the real estate business, but eventually, he went back to work at Mr. Storke’s request and for a number of years ran the job printing office.

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V.D’A:So most of your schooling was righc here in Santa Barbara? q.K:Yzs. I went to kindergarten up through grade school here And then the family moved to Orange Cove. Dad was raised on a farm and always in the back of his mind wanted to be a farmer again, so he bought a piece of land over in Orange Cove in the San Joaquin Val ley and planted a vineyard. That was in igig. We stayed there... until 1923, and [when I was] at the ripe old age of twelve or thirteen... my dad was injured in a runaway. We had a hay wagon, and when we were hauling some hay on part of the ranch, the mules ran away. Dad was thrown from the top of this wagon and got his legs smashed all up, and 1 had to run the ranch ... which convinced me I should never be a farmer, V. DA:Do you have brothers and sisters?

Q. H.: Yes. My oldest brother, Clark Harris, died when I was in law school, in his thirties. My next brother, Ralph Harris, is still alive and living in Santa Barbara, and he’s 84. He was nine years older than I. My oldest brother was 14 years older than 1.

V.DA:So when did you come back to Santa Barbara?

Q. H.: I came back a year before the folks did. My brother Ralph had gotten married and was living here, so 1 came over to live with him. I had gone to Dinuba High School for two years, and I came back here and finished the last two years at Santa Barbara High School. 1 graduated in 1926.

V. DA: When did you decide you wanted to go to law school?

Q. H.: Well, my first choice was ac tually the diplomatic service, and I had applied and been accepted to George Washington University in Washington,

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D.C., where they have the one and only course really for diplomatic service. But the Depression hit tight at the wrong time, and the country went off the gold standard, which reduced the diplomat’s pay twenty-five per cent. Then they took another twenty-five per cent cut, and they were already underpaid, so only the wealthy people could afford to stay in the diplomatic service. There were dozens and dozens of people who had to resign and come back during the Depres sion to the United States. Laura Knight, who lived in Montecito and had traveled extensively, was a friend of ours, and as these diplomats came through, lots of them stopped to see her. She would have me out to tea or dinner with these people, and while she never said, don’t go into the diplomatic service, 1 soon got the message chat not being wealthy. I’d better not go. My second choice was studying law, and I had hopes at chat time of maybe even getting into the diplomatic service later, but 1 never did, V. DA:So you went to law school where?

Q.H.;Well, first 1 was going to go to Harvard, and then several attorneys in town told me chat if I was going to prac tice law in California, I should go to a California law school. 1 thought that was good advice and followed it, and I’m glad I did because I saw some of the Harvard graduates who had a tough time getting through the bar. They had a tough time getting started because they had not learned the code system which California operates under—they had been taught the old English system. So I never regretted not having gone to Harvard, 1 went to use instead, but first of all, after I got out of high school, I went up to Santa Barbara State Teachers College and grad uated from there in 1930. I had gotten a

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Before going on to pursue a law degree at the University ofSouthern California, Harris attended Santa Barbara State Teachers College which was then located on the Riviera.

ceacher's credencial for junior high school, expeccing co reach and go to law school pare cime. And che year I graduaced and goc my credencial, chey changed che requiremencs from a junior high credencial

CO a secondary credencial, and I never

could use ic, so I did ocher chings.

V. D’A:So you wenc how many years up CO Sanca Barbara Scace?

Q. H.: Four years ac Scace College

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Griffith & Thornburgh at $100 a month after seven years of college.

V. D’A: Who were the principals in the law firm at that time?

Q. H.: W. G. Griffith was the senior member, and Lasalle Thornburgh was the next senior member, and then [Griffith’s son,] Yale had graduated from law school. He went to Harvard, incidental ly, and he’d come back about two years before I graduated, two or three years. 1 was the first person that they hired out side of those three that formed the firm. I

William Q. Qrijfith was the senior partner in the law firm Qrijfith and Thornburgh. Qene Harris began his law career unth this localfirm.

from 1926, when 1 graduated from high school, until 1930 when I graduated from Santa Barbara State. From 1930 to 1933, I was at the School of Law at the Univer sity of Southern California.

V. DA:So then you came back to Santa Barbara?

Q. H.: Yes, and this as you can cell from the date, was in the depths of the Depression. Interestingly enough, I had worked for Griffith 6d Thornburgh while 1 was going to college up here. I was what we used to call a shag boy. I ran all the errands and filed papers and served pa pers, regular office boy work, and then one summer, when I was in law school, I worked as a clerk in the office. So they had rather promised me a job when I got out of law school. Forty-nine of us passed the bar, and two of us got jobs. One man in Los Angeles got $75 a month after sev en years of college. I went to work for

worked for them from 1933 to 1935, and then I was elected to the City Council.

V. DA:How did you happen to run for the City Council?

Q. H.; Well, two reasons. Ted Haines, who was Lasalle Thornburgh’s brotherin-law, had been a City Councilman. In those days we had the ward system, and he had represented the Fifth Ward, which was [the]upper east side of town.

He wanted to retire, and to take his place he wanted someone that he approved of.

And he approved of me, fortunately.

V. DA: How old were you at that time?

Q. H.: I was not quite twenty-five. In fact... 1 wasn’t old enough to be elected at the time I was elected.

V. D'A;You weren’t old enough to be elected, so how did you manage to get on the ticket?

Q. Ff.; Well, the election was on May 1, and my birthday was May 12. I wasn’t twenty-five until May 12, and the char ter provided you had to be twenty-five years of age to be elected to the council.

But we didn’t take office until June 1, so I became twenty-five between the day I was elected and the day I took office. E. O. Hanson, who was quite a character, and was elected Mayor at the same time that I was elected to the Council, cried to

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THREE ORAL HISTORIES have me removed because he didn’t like me (and it was mutual) and because I wasn’t old enough at the time I was elect ed. But the City Attorney ruled that ... I was old enough the day I was sworn in.

didn't wane him there. So 1 gave the Chief of Police some free legal advice to the effect that if he did, I would file a suit against him for false arrest, and he

MAYOR

V. D’A: Could you tell a little bit about E. O. Hanson? He was a very colorful figure.

Q. H.; He was very colorful.

During this Depression period, he was playing to the underdog and the people that were out of work and the people who were having problems. They elected him be cause he promised them the world, which he couldn’t produce. But the day he took office he went down during the night and locked up all of the various offices, so that when the various department heads arrived the next morning, they were locked out. He had ap pointed a patrolman as Chief of Police to take over the Police De partment, and he had police sta tioned at all of these doors, and they wouldn’t allow any of the old department heads in. He appoint ed new ones, and the opening day ceremony was quite a deal.

They had a capacity, standing-room-[only] crowd in the City Hall chambers, and they had loudspeakers wired out to the pepper trees there at the entrance, so a big crowd in the Plaza was listening to what was going on. Typical of how he would act, he didn’t like the City Attorney... Max Nichols. So Han son called this new Chief of Police, who had been a patrolman the night before—a nice enough guy— but he just wasn't qual ified to be Chief of Police. He called him up to the podium and told him to take Mr. Nichols out of the chambers. He

A rather dapper'looking B. 0.Hanson at city halL His term as Mayor began in controversy in ip33 and ended with nis resignation under sure thefollowing year. Courtesy ofthe Santa Barbara News-rress.

wouldn’t have anything left by the time Mr. Nichols and I got through with him.

So the poor chap walked back to his seat and sat down, and Hanson said, "Come back here and take this man out.”

They went through this three or four times until, frankly, they gave up be cause the Chief of Police was just afraid

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CO carry out che orders che Mayor gave him.

V. DA:Now had che Mayor appoint ed a new City Attorney?

Q. H.: He was going to, but he hadn’t.

V. D’A: That was an appointive of fice in chose days?

Q. H.: 1 don’t recall if it was appoin tive or elective, but anyway, he didn’t like him, and he wanted to get rid of him. It got to be funny, because this poor Chief of Police was going back and forth with orders from che Mayor, and we were threatening to sue him if he did, so he fi nally gave up. But Hanson did appoint, and made it stick, a whole bunch of new department heads. And there was great turmoil.

Then he started publishing a real scandal sheet. It was nothing but a scan dal sheet, and we finally got rid of him by having one of che employees in the city willing to testify chat he was forc ing the city employees to kick in part of their salary to support this scandal sheet.

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Percy Heckendorf was then District At torney, and so we took Mr. Hanson up to Heckendorf’s office and gave him his choice of going to San Quentin for this or resigning. "What we really wanted to do was get rid of him, so we let him re sign rather chan send him to prison, V. D'A: Where had he come from?

Was he an old Santa Barbaran?

Q. H.: No. He and his brother Ole Hanson were che ones who started che little San Clemente community down che coast. They’d been around several places. In che interim, before we finally got rid of him, we had gotten a petition out to recall him. He immediately coun teracted with a recall petition against all of che councilmen and put up his own slate. I was che only one of che six coun cilmen, being from che upper east side, chat he couldn't get enough signatures on for che recall. So 1 was not recalled, and che rest of them were. And believe me, it was a rough deal from chat point on un til we got rid of him.

Percy Hechpxdorfserved as Santa Barbara County District Attorney from Helaterwenton to serve as a superior courtjudge.

j ..

.EEN DISMUKE

Eileen Qalvin Dismuke was bom and raised in Santa Barbara. After graduatingfrom Santa Barbara High School in 1925, she work,ed for the Chamber ofCommercefor eight years before moving on to a career with the County ofSanta Barbara, which culminated in her position as a deputy public administrator. She was deeply involved in local history agencies, most notably her ^^-year association with the T^ative Daughters ofthe Qolden West and as afounding member ofthe El Camino I{eal Association.She also served seven years on the California State Histori cal Landmarks Advisory Committee,sat on the board ofthe Santa Barbara Mission ArchiveLibrary and was a member ofthe Woman s Projects Board at the Historical Society. She died in 1985. The highlight ofthis portion ofher 1981 interview with June O'Tdeil is her account ofthe event that transformed theface ofthe city, the igz^ earthquake. The photograph ofEileen Dismuke above was taken about 1 g68.

EILEEN DISMVKE: My mother and father were not Californians. I’m a first generation Californian, and there are many people who belong to the Native Daughters of the Golden West whose roots go back six and seven generations in California, because they were part of the

early Spanish families who came here co establish California. So I feel very fortu nate that my mother and father had the good sense to come to Santa Barbara.

My mother was born in England near Newcastle-on-Tyne, and she came to California when she was about twenty

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56

wn fZ T

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-mtr .... mil

The H^our House, at the comer ofDe la Querra PlazA ond De la Querra Street, was the site ofthe wedding supperfor Thomas and Margaret Qalvin, Eileen Dismukes parents. This photo is aated July i8gz.

and came to Santa Barbara to work at the Potter Hotel when it opened in 1902 down on the waterfront. It was a gor geous six hundred-room hotel that brought many of the wealthy people from the East to establish homes in San ta Barbara and of course contributed to the growth of Santa Barbara in many ways.

My facher, likewise, was born in Limerick, Ireland, and he as a young boy [of] sixteen went to South America to find his fortune... he lived in South America until he was thirty-five, when he came to Santa Barbara. ... he came as a carpenter to work at the Potter Hotel in 1902, and so that's where my mother and father met. They were married here

in 1905, and I was born in 1906. My brothers were bom here, coo.

My facher had a group of carpenter friends who got together over a weekend after my mother and facher were mar ried, and incidentally, I found a picture of the Raffour House; it was in the newspaper and I cut it out because this Raffour House is where my mother and fa cher had their wedding supper when they were married September 3, 1905, and it was down in the De la Guerra Plaza, close to where the TfcwS'Press is now. It was a very famous French restaurant...

J. O’N:So you grew up here and went to school here?

E. D.: Oh, yes. 1 went all through McKinley School, when it was in the old

57

THREE ORAL HISTORIES location where the Scare Division of Highways Office is now, over on Castillo Street. You know, you can see it from the freeway as you go by. The McKinley School was right across the street from there.

My mother and father had a little three-room house built for them by a group of fifteen carpenter friends of my father's over the weekend following their marriage. They had bought this lot on the corner of Dibblee Avenue and Rancheria Street, and the carpenters built the house for my mother and father. It was just a little doll house, a little living room and a little bedroom and a little kitchen.

And the bathroom was outside, as they were in chose days. So my brothers and I were all bom in chat little house.

I attended McKinley School. I went to what was intermediate school in Santa Barbara—it was the seventh and eighth grades—and I graduated from Santa Bar bara High School in June 1925 and our high school class was the first senior class to graduate in a summer graduation at the new high school. I attended the old high school for the first three years. It was up on the corner of Anapamu and De la Vina Streets. Then the last year of high school, I spent in the new high school over on Anapamu.

J. O'N:Do you remember the enrollment?

ing Monday after graduation, I went to work there, and the week following chat on Monday morning at a quarter to sev en was the morning of the big earthquake in Santa Barbara.

The building that 1 was working in was where Hunt’s China Shop is now [14 East Carrillo Sc., Hunt’s shut its doors in 1987.], and it was the old library building.

It was the old public library, and the Chamber of Commerce had the upper floor, and another business had the lower floor...it was about three stories. The upper floor had been where the library was, and it was just like a big auditorium upstairs, a sort of a story and a half, a high-ceilinged room. And along both sides of it were huge jardinieres about this high, I would say, like old-fashioned can dy jars, only they were big glass jars in which the fruits and vegetables of Santa Barbara County were pickled for the ben efit of visitors to see. They were on ei-

E. D.: No, but I know chat our gradu ating class in 1925 was one hundred and thirty students...

J. O’N: When did you become inter ested in the Native Daughters?

E. D.: Well, I graduated from high school in ’25, and I went to work at the Chamber of Commerce. The day chat I graduated from high school, I was hired CO be a secretary and receptionist at the Chamber of Commerce, and the follow-

Eileen attended McKinley School, at that time located at the comer of Castillo and Haley Streets.

58

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The. Chamber of Commerce purchased this building at 14 East Carrillo Street fromthepubliclibrary in igi^. A largerstructurereplacedit in igz6.

ther side of the audicorium, and of course, chose were all just broken into a million pieces during che earthquake.

But chac was che back pare of che of fice, and che front part of che office was where our desks were, and che safe and all che material chac we worked with. And then there was a long counter that stretched along che entire length of our office, and there was a swinging door down at this end—this was on the second floor of the building. Our desks were all against chac wall, which was where che driveway is now.

I was awakened when che earthquake struck at quarter to seven, and of course, we all thought the end of che world was com ing, because it was a terrible, terrible shake.

The chandeliers were swinging back and forth, che furniture was going everyplace and it was just a horrible feeling.

Anyway, after it settled down, I got up and got dressed, and I walked up Orte¬

ga Street six blocks over to State Street and walked up State Street in all the rub ble chac came as a result of che earth quake. And if bulldozers had closed in on both sides of State Street behind che buildings and had just done this, chat ex actly what State Street looked like. The fronts of all of che buildings were caved in in che middle of che street, and the shakes were still shaking, you know, we had lots of aftershocks.

I walked up State Street amidst this rubble to Carrillo, and there in che middle of che street was my boss and his assist ant standing looking at the damage.

That entire wall against which all of our desks and everything were placed had collapsed in, and everything in that building was just demolished. Even the safe had to be destroyed, it was in such a state of disrepair.

And if we had been in chat building, we would have all been killed. We

THREE ORAL HISTORIES

couldn’t possibly have gotten out, because we were upstairs to begin with. There was a little swinging door about this big down at the end of the counter—the counter was coo tall for us girls to jump— probably the men could have jumped it— but we would have just simply— J. 07V.; You would have been crapped.

E.D.: Everybody who was downtown then probably would have been killed or injured because of the damage chat was done to State Street. So as a result of our building being wrecked, a little temporary building was made of rough lumber down in the De la Guerra Plaza for our tempo rary office, and during July and August, that’s where we held forth... We were the clearinghouse for all of the telegrams and telephone [calls] that came from people all over the world, wondering if their people had been inundated in tidal waves, because they had Santa Barbara inundated in tidal waves and wiped off the map. And, I mean the stories chat went out about what happened were just terrible, and I am sure chat anybody who lived away from Santa Barbara who had relatives here thought we were all dead and gone.

So we had a big job there during the

59

summer, and then, of course, as I say, the reconscruccion committee came into be ing CO restore Santa Barbara, to rebuild it, and much thought went into how they would do it, and the result, of course, is the architecture that we have now. But it was fun to have been a part of all of this at the time chat it'hap pened, in spice of the fact chat it was such a tragedy. There were actually only seven people directly killed as a result of the earthquake, with millions and mil lions of dollars in damage, but it was be cause it happened at the time chat it hit in the morning at quarter to seven, when people weren’t circulating around down town yet. [Twelve people died as the re sult of the earthquake.]

J. 07V.: Was your home badly damaged?

E. D. The only damage to it was the chimney. We had a fireplace, and the chimney was knocked off, but the inter esting things 1 found when I walked up to State Street was chat houses—the wooden houses like ours and single-floor buildings had just been moved completely off of their foundations—maybe two or three inches. They’d be moved over, and they’d

The 700 block,ofState Street in the aftermath ofthe igz^ earthquake. It was this kind ofdamage that prompted Eileen Dismukc to say that the city’s main street looked as ifit had been hulldozed.

60

be sticking out just about two inches. It would be just like you just picked it up and moved it over a couple of inches. But all the chimneys were down, all the chimneys were down, and— J. 07V.:Do you know the severity of the quake?

J. 07V.: Yes, I think they said it was 6.2. [Official estimate was 6.3 on the Richter scale.]

7- 07V.:But it lasted for some time?

E. D.: Oh, yes. I don’t remember how many seconds it lasted, but it seemed inter minable at the time. It just seemed like it would never end, and of course, it was such a completely new experience for all of us.

J. 07V.: This was the first time you had experienced any quake at all?

E. D. I never had felt an earthquake before. It was my first experience with an earthquake. The Richter Scale hadn’t even been established at the time of the Santa Barbara earthquake. It was not es tablished until after the Long Beach earthquake, I think in 1936, or was it ’34, somewhere about there. [l933] Anyway, it was after the Long Beach earthquake that the Richter Scale was established so that they would know what the severity of earthquakes were. But they just had to presuppose what the one in San Francis co and ours were. I don’t think they real ly had any accurate measurement of it.

J. 07V.: Well, it was certainly some thing to live through, wasn’t it?

E. D.: Yes, it was. 1 have seen Santa Barbara rebuilt as a result of it, all of State Street restored, and of course, the Courthouse was built and finished in 1929 after the earthquake, because the old Courthouse was so badly damaged. The public library was damaged. After we moved from the little temporary building down on the De la Guerra Plaza, we went to a building at the corner of Sola and

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Chapala Streets...a big red brick build ing is there now, but it was a beautiful great big Victorian house that was owned by George Owen Knapp, a wealthy Moncecitan, and he loaned one half of it, or at least rented one half of it, to the Red Cross, and our office had the other half. The public library, since their building was in such a state of dis repair, had to move all their books to an other place, and so they used the livery stable in back of the building where we had our office for the public library until the library was rebuilt.

Then they had a committee that got together and worked out plans for the re building of Santa Barbara, the style of architecture...That was the Reconstruc tion Committee, of which Dr. Henry S. Pritchett was the Chairman. [Pritchett chaired the Santa Barbara Relief Fund Committee, which coordinated procure ment of relief funds.] He was the head of the Carnegie Institute for many, many years and a highly respected man throughout the United States and a mar velous person. He became a member of the Chamber of Commerce and was ac tive in many organizations in the city that had to do with the betterment and the building of Santa Barbara. He and his committee did a tremendous job in formulating the plans for the rebuilding of Santa Barbara.

The Chamber of Commerce relocated to ternporary quarters in De la Querra Plaza before moving to the Knapp property.

SANTA BARBARA HISTORICAL SOCIETY BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Mr. David F. Myrick ,

President . . First Vice President Second Vice President

Mrs. Susan B. Simpson Mr. Michael Rodrigue

Secretary Treasurer

Mrs. Jean Goodrich . .

Mr. David W.Gledhill

Mrs. Helene Beaver

Mr. J. James Hollister, 111

Mrs. jean Callanan Mr. Leland Crawford

Dr. C. Seybert Kinsell Mrs. Delfina R. Mott

Mr. Oswald J. Da Ros

Mr. Donn Tognazzini Mr. William G. Troiano,Jr. Mrs. Julie Villa Mr. John C. Woodward Mr. William F. Luton, Jr., Executive Director

Mr, C. John Douglas, III Mr. Michael Galvin

LIFE MEMBERS Mr. Stephen A. Acronico Mr. and Mrs. William B. Azbell Mr. and Mrs. J.W. Beaver

Mr. Richard C. Harpham Mrs. Natalie B, Clark-Harpham Mr. and Mrs. Glenn D. Hillebrand Mr. Eric P. HvolboU

Mr. and Mrs. Danily Bell Mr. Marvin J. Branch Dr. and Mrs. Ashleigh Brilliant Mr. H. R. de la Cuesta Burkhart Mrs. Virginia Castagnola-Hunter Mr. and Mrs. Pierre P. Claeyssens Mr. and Mrs. Charles Cleek Mrs, M. C. Conkey Mrs. Florence Corder-Witter Mr. J. V Crawford Mr. Richard G. Croft, Jr.

Dr. C. Seybert Kinsell Mr. and Mrs. William F. Luton. Jr. Mrs. Jane Rich Mueller Mr. Spencer L. Murfey, Jr. Mr, William W.Murfey Mr. David F. Myrick Mr. and Mrs. Godwin J. Pelissero Miss Frederica D. Poett Mrs. Rena Redmon Mr. and Mrs. Paul Ridley-Tree Mrs. Alma R. Ritchie

Marla Daily Mrs. R. E. Danielson, Jr.

Mr. and Mrs. Wade Rubottom

Mr. and Mrs. Oswald J. Da Ros Mrs. Albert de L’Arbre

Mrs. Russell A, Ruiz

Mr. Wilson Forbes

Mrs. Melville Sahyun Mr. Peter J. Samuelson Mrs. Nina Sandrich

Mrs. Helen W.Foyer Master John Galvin Mr. Michael Galvin

Mr. and Mrs. J. Terry Schwartz Mrs. David Shoudy Mr. Walter G. Silva

Miss Sally Gane Mr. and Mrs. Keith Gledhill

Mr. and Mrs. Burke H. Simpson Mr. Ivano Paolo Vit

Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Fish

Mr. and Mrs. John C. Woodward BENEFACTORS; Santa Cruz Island Foundation, Northern Trust of California, Jon Douglas Company and Two Anonymous Categories of membershm: Life/Benefactor, £5,000 or more; President’s Circle, $i,ooo; Patron, ^00; Associate, $250; sustaining. $ioo; Supporting. S50; Regular, $30.

(Contributions to the Society are tax-exempt.

Museum & Library: 136 East De la Guerra St., Santa Barbara, CA 93101 ● Telephone: 805/966-1601

Non-Profit Organization U.S. Postage PAID Santa Barbara California Permit No. <34

NOTICIAS Quarterly Magazine of the Santa Barbara Historical Society P.O. Box 578 Santa Barbara, California 93102-0578

Address Correction Requested Forwarding Postage Guaranteed

CONTENTS: Pg.41: Ida Cordero Pg. 48; Gene Harris Pg. 55: Eileen Dismuke