The Quarterly Newsletter of the
HERMOSA BEACH
HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Volume Seventeen ............................................ Number Three ....................................................... August 2005
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President's Message Dear
HBHS Directors and Friends, Hermosa Beach will be 100 years old in
17 months and I am pleased to report that our organ-ization is moving
along in a proactive manner and moral is high. MUSEUM EXPANSION UPDATE: Phase one of the electrical work in the expansion is almost completed. We now have a door installed between the old museum and our new expansion area. Our archives and acquisitions room will be complete, and a sign on the side of the building will be installed in a couple of weeks. A framed Certificate of Appreciation will be presented to the new owners of 238 Pier Avenue for their preservation efforts. This is a classic Hermosa Beach Building that missed the wrecking ball by a very small margin. The owners are restoring it to its original grandeur to operate as a clothing store to raise money for cancer research. Fiesta Hermosa has been producing a world-class arts and crafts festival for over 32 years; it is the largest arts and crafts fair in Southern California! The festival takes place every Memorial Day and Labor Day weekend, please stop by for a frosty one at the HBHS Beer Garden booth -- this is a major fundraiser for our society efforts. If you have any questions or suggestions feel free to call me. 310-318-1403. Sincerely, Rick Koenig. Membership Drive Our Society's success is due to all of our loyal members. Cur-rently, membership strength lies with Household, Life, Honorary, Complimentary, Patron and Business memberships. Before your current membership expires, we hope all of you will continue your support by signing on for another year. If you need to know the status of your membership, just look on the address label on the back of your newsletter. The number on the label will tell you when you last paid your dues. If the number says 2/04, that means you last paid in February 2004, and should renew now. Lifetime or honorary memberships don't need to send in dues. Only paid members can attend the party at our annual meeting. Renew now and don't forget to tell your friends to join too! Give a membership as a gift! Hermosa Beach -- "The Book" Chockerblock full of photos and information, the book of the year is to be available September 19th. HBHS members can send in a check for $25 to cover shipping and handling, or pick it up at the Museum for $20. Description: Hermosa Beach has been one of Los Angeles County's most eclectic summertime destinations for vacationing families, artists, surfers, sunbathers, fishermen, volleyball players and other beachgoers. They ranged from students in search of one crazy summer to their spiritual fore-fathers and mothers who came, saw, and stayed year-round. The city grew through the 20th century from a train stop into the vital mix of residential housing with businesses strung along Pacific Coast Highway -- it has been homey enough to accommodate statesman William Jennings Bryant and television's iconic Ozzie and Harriett Nelson. It's nationally recognized nightclubs and other venues included the Biltmore Hotel, the Comedy and Magic Club, and the legendary Lighthouse, home of West Coast jazz. Authors Bios: Author Chris Ann Miller is a photojournalist who grew up in a home on the Strand in Hermosa Beach, where her father, Warren Miller, operated a famed film studio. Her co-author, Jerry Roberts, is the Southern California acquisitions editor for Arcadia Publishing and also edited books including "Mitchum: In His Own Words" and "Eastern Cougar Anthology". The rare photographs collected for their tribute to Hermosa's storied past were supplied by the Hermosa Beach Historical Society and families who have called Hermosa home for generations. Leroy Grannis Surfs New York! Leroy Grannis is having a photo exhibition entitled "Birth of a Culture: 60's & 70's Surf Photography". The exhibit is at Bonni Benrubi Gallery in New York City through October 1st. Grannis is famous for his surfing photographs and was active on the surfing scene in Hermosa. From the "New Yorker magazine", "You don't have to know the difference between a rail grab and a tube ride to appreciate a great surfing photo. There's some-thing thrilling (and hair raising) about the sight of a tiny human figure gliding down the curl of a wave that's breaking several stories above his head. Grannis, a surfer himself, captured the thrill in the photographs he began taking in the early 1960's, long before the sport became a phenomenon and he became one of its legends. Nearly all of the color images here are from that relatively innocent time, and the best of them have such you-are-there immediacy that you can practically taste the saltwater spray." Born in Hermosa Beach, California in 1917, he began shooting surf culture images on 22nd Street in Hermosa in 1960 as a hobby at the suggestion of a family doctor -- "Doc" Ball. His work im-mediately appeared in the important surf culture magazines of the time including "Surfer", "Reef" and "Surfing Illistrated". He quickly became one of the sport's most important documentar-ians, voted into the International Surfing Hall of Fame as the number one lens man in 1966, awarded SIMA's Lifetime Achieve-ment Award in 2002 for his legendary surf photography and most recently, featured on the cover and within Taschen's "Surfing : Vintage Surfing Graphics". The artist, now well into his 80's, continues working -- and surfing -- from his home in Carlsbad. Those Were the Days! As written for the HBHS by Joanne Purpus, "Even though I moved south from Hermosa Beach almost 25 years ago, those early days of fun and frolic at the beach will never be forgotten. In the late 40's my husband and I drove down from Los Angeles to see the beach town of Hermosa. His aunt and uncle owned a big 'beach house' on the Strand and he had fond memories of summers spent there. I had just had my first boy, Michael, and we were looking for a place to settle. Following 'homes for sale' signs, we arrived at Valley Park Avenue. There, in that small valley, were a group of little (and I mean little) box houses on large lots -- and just over the hill was the ocean! We bought the house that very day. It was $6,500 plus extra for the garage and was about 750 square feet! Pretty tiny! When I saw the old photo of the lifeguards in a recent Easy Reader, it brought back fond memories of a wonderful life in that little town. I remember the Chamber of Commerce building at the foot of the Pier. I happened to be downtown one day and discovered that the Chamber was looking for someone to keep the office open for a few hours for a couple of days a week. The problem was they had used up their budgeted money until the next fiscal year. For some reason I volunteered to be that person, agreeing to be paid when the new budget was adopted. It wasn't a very long time before I was paid and the job introduced me to lots of the business peopole of the downtown area. That began my many adventures into the academic, business and political world in this wonderful little city -- those were the days! |
A Mike Purpus Story The Surfers' Walk of Fame consists of bronze plaques on the Hermosa Beach Pier. Initially honoring 16 pioneer and seven charter members of surfing -- Mike Purpus is one of the charter members. Through their radical changes of board design and evolving techniques, these surfers made riding the waves a new sport for fun and competition. This article on growing up in Hermosa Beach is in Mike's own words. "I was born in 1948 at the Queen of Angeles Hospital in Los Angeles, but as far back as I can remember it all started in the Valley of Hermosa Beach right below Saint Cross Church. My father bought the two-bedroom house for $5,000 and then was sent overseas in the Navy. My mother worked all day for the telephone company and both my grandmothers achieved saint-hood by taking care of my younger brother Tim and me. My grandfathers passed away before we were born. We did not have much money to live on so my mother raised chickens in the backyard and my brother and I sold eggs to the neighbors in the Valley. My brother and I loved our little plastic Dough-Boy Pool in the backyard until my Mom got three ducks that refused to let us use it. If the ducks and the chickens were not enough, my mom got about 15 pheasants. They broke out of their coop and crapped all over everyone's clean laundry in the neighborhood twice. Egg sales went way down so Mom rang their necks, chop-ped off their heads, and we ate fresh pheasant for the next three weeks. When I reached ten we moved to 30th Street and my Dad bought me my first surfboard. Pete Briggs and Ron Garner were my neighborhood friends so we all started surfing together. My Uncle Charlie bought me materials to build a go-cart. I built a wooden cart on wheels to put empty pop bottles in and collect the deposit. My friends and I spent all day retrieving pop bottles off the beach. I would pull the cart along the Strand from Longfellow all the way to my Grandma Purpus' house at 4th Street where we rinsed the sand out of our valuable day's work and then cashed them in at Mickey's. We got a nickel for the quart, three cents for the pint, and two cents for the 12 ounce bottles. Grandma Purpus bought her house from Mickey's brother and my Mom and Dad went to school with their kids, so I was always treated like part of their family too. A sauce sandwich, spaghetti sauce on a French roll, was only a dime and we loved them. I went to Pier Avenue Junior High School along with Mike Stevenson, John Baker, Bill Collins, Alfred Laws, Dru Harrison and Billy Ray James: his father was Juicy James who owned the coffee shop and surf mat rental on the Strand a block north of the pier. Juicy would give us free coffee and donuts after surfing. John Baker's father owned the City of Redondo Fishing Boat and would give us free candy bars and sodas when we paddled out to him. All the surf movies premiered at Pier Avenue Auditorium through the 60's and 70's. Surfers would line up out in front ending in front of the Police Station [a block away]. Every Friday and Saturday night Hermosa Avenue was the place to cruise and Foster Freeze and Winchel's Donuts at 15th Street was the hangout. It was exactly like 'American Graffiti' through the 60's and early 70's. I went to Mira Costa High School where I was on the water polo team with some of the best surfers in the country. Jimmy Craig won the 1964 United States Surfing Championships at Huntington Beach in ten-foot waves. Larry Bark coached the team to first place in the CIF Championships several times. Mr. Bark was my General Business, Typing, Driver's Training teacher and coach. During a big south swell we put our boards on top of the Driver's Training Car and went to Malibu. The other students had to wait in the car until Mr. Bark and I finished surfing. The other students took turns driving home while I slept in the back set. The follow-ing weekend he took me surfing at San Onofre with Toby Earlinger and Mr. Wiliams who also taught at Mira Costa. I went to El Camino for a few years taking business and art classes. I got A's in Ceramics, but was average in everything else. The teachers let me slide because they knew my Mother and respected her as a good artist. My pro surfing career took off and so did I by traveling around the world with the pro contest circuit. I have been to many fantastic places but always came home to the South Bay because it's the only place that has a little bit of everything" More of Mike's
writings can be enjoyed in the "Easy Reader". Who Was That Cat?
We received an interesting letter from Ted Dalton of Long Beach regarding this classic Dale Velsey photo [above] that was in our last newsletter, "I moved from Hermosa Beach in 1996, and miss that comfortable feeling of the town. Regarding your last edition, and the sad passing of Dale Velsey, I have a few comments to mention concerning the group photo, taken in the shop/garage. The fellow seated wearing a bathing suit is Stuart Lindner. Stu and I were classmates at Dorsey High School and fraternity brothers at Pepperdine College. Also, we were stationed together at Fort Ord. Stu was indeed an early surfer of Hermosa Beach waves, and ran with the crowd up and down the coast, looking for curls. We all hung out together at 22nd Street, but Stu was really a pioneer in the surfing sport. He was a terrific artist and cartoon-ist, and eventually cut his hair and went to work at Disney Studio as an illustrator. He later on became a film editor, and I understand that he won an Academy Award Oscar for editing 'Grand Prix'. He was also the film editor for 'Good Morning Vietnam!' (as well as many other feature films). The fellow in the rear of the picture is Bob Bergstrom. Bob was a local Hermosa Beach youth. He worked at the Riviera hamburger cafe, which I believe his parents owned. The Riviera is now the Bottle Inn on 22nd Street. Bob is/was involved with the King Harbor Marina. The young man playing with the cat might be Stu's younger brother, but I'm not positive. The 'Hot Rod' was a 1927 T roadster body on a Model A frame, with a flat head V8 engine. The one I remember was always painted gray primer. Sorry, you're on your own about the cat....?" The Historical Society would love to share your rememberances too. If you are interested in contributing an article to our newsletter, please send it to markshoemaker@msn.com |
