The Quarterly Newsletter of the
HERMOSA BEACH
HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Volume Seventeen ............................................ Number One ....................................................... June 2005
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Antiques "Road Show" Coming to HB Ever wonder what that old table you found in Aunt Mildred's attic was worth? Been storing those old plates in the cupboard for years? Picked up a clock in that little shop in Mississippi and would like to know if you did well? Here's your chance! Coming soon to Hermosa! The Historical Society's own version of the hit TV Show, "Antiques Road Show". There will be professional certified appraisers to let you know if your 'stuff' is worth hund-reds or even thousands of dollars. Start searching your garage and closets for those long lost articles, and prepare to bring them to the First Annual Hermosa Beach Historical Society Antique Appraisal Show. To reserve your spot in this show, send us your name and address, and item(s) you'd like to show. (Please include your e-mail address.) Mail to HBHS, 710 Pier Avenue, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254. Or call (310) 318-9421 and leave an e-mail address or home address, and we'll send you the application as soon as the dates are finalized. YOU could be the one with a REAL TREASURE! President's Message I would like to start by thanking Fran Carr for her dedication over the past years serving as our President. I believe that with any organization, specific goals need to be set and strived for. In 16 months the City of Hermosa Beach will be celebrating its 100th birthday. The Hermosa Beach Centennial Committee is currently planning a celebration that will not be soon forgotten. It is crucial that we have our museum expansion open to the public prior and during this event. Fundraising must be made a major priority in order to meet this deadline. We need money to complete our ex-pansion. I am also anxious to keep our members more connected to us by means of regular progress reports, solicitation for volun-teerism, and interesting HBHS field trips. To borrow a phrase from another organization - "Membership has Benefits". Being a part of the Hermosa Beach Historical Society and serving as President is a labor of love for me. I look forward to serving the society to the best of my ability. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to call me (310) 318-1403. Sincerely, Rick Koenig. Membership and E-mail List Our thanks to all of you who have renewed your memberships, and, we wish to give a warm welcome to all our new members. If you are uncertain about when, or if, you need to renew, please check your mailing label as it will show the date you last paid. Checks may be sent to the HBHS, 710 Pier Avenue, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254. Life membership is $250, Business member-ship is $50, Patron membership is $50, and Household member-ship is $25. We really welcome and need your support. Ask your friends to join or give a membership as a gift! Also, we are pre-paring a complete e-mail list of our docents, members, and interested parties so that they can be kept abreast of our events and prog-ress. Please forward your e-mail to: Rick@hermosaarts.org he will compile the list. HB Fiesta Thanks to all who helped to make the HBHS Fiesta Booth a redord-breaking sucess!! Lighthouse Documentary Opening night at the recent Newport Film Festival featured a Ken Konig film, "Jazz on the West Coast: The Lighthouse" -- the premiere jazz club in the Los Angeles area during the 1950s and 1960s. Through the use of numerous interviews, pictures, music and video clips, the film tells the story of the Lighthouse and two men of very different backgrounds and personalities who brought the club and their band called "The Lighthouse All-Stars" to the point of gaining world-wide fame. Along the way, many obstacles were overcome in order to create the club's success. In interviews, the original musicians provide a vivid account of the era. They are joined by jazz fans jazz critics and a bartender and waitress from the original Lighthouse who bring this intriguing story alive. Shown below is Howard Rumsey, founder of the "Lighthouse All-Stars" with film-maker Ken Koenig.
We had two great volunteer days, and accomplished a lot, on May 21st and June 11th; thanks to all who helped keep the Museum expansion progressing. The HB City Council has ap-proved an outdoor museum sign with three words, "Hermosa Beach Museum". Additionally, at its first public budget work-shop, the Hermosa Beach City Council voted to allocate $10,000 from its city coffers to fund needed upgrades to the HBHS Museum. Top This Designer sewer lids have made their Southland debut in Hermosa Beach. The manhole covers feature the coastal city's seal, ocean waves, an old time rancho cattle brand, a modern-day house and a baseball bat, tennis racket and lawn-bowling ball -- all wrapped around a stylized Hermosa Beach monogram encircled by a sun-burst. "It's all there," said John Hales, 88, of the elaborate city logo stamped into the top of the 25-inch-wide opening, And he should know: the retired graphic arts designer created the official seal 0 years ago after a series of storms damaged a municipal pier that had been depicted on the previous city emblem. No wonder municipal workers picked a manhole a few steps from Hale's front door when they installed the first of the city's new logo lids, at the intersection of Ardmore Avenue and 8th Place. They
will replace the generic nub, radial and diamond patterns of the type
that have proliferated on streets across the nation for 50 years.
Hermosa Beach officials said other cities that have heard about their
new lids are already making inquires. "This is the first manhole
in Southern California with a seal on it. We're the first ones on
the block to have them," public works Supt. Michael Flaherty
told Hales. City officials promptly ordered 50 of the cus-tom covers
and promised follow-up orders, as the municiality's 1,000 manhole
covers need replacement. Hales, who has become Hermosa Beach's unofficial historian since moving to town 58 years ago, said he designed the seal in 1964 to reflect the town's year-round sunny environment, its rec-reational orientation and its Spanish land-grant past. The circa-1848 cattle brand depicted on the seal is that of Antonio Ignacio Avila, who held the grant to Rancho Redondo, on which Hermosa Beach now sits, Hales said. The old city logo had been created in 1928 and depicted the city pier being bashed by ocean waves. It contained the slogan: "The Aristocrat of the California Beaches." Hales and his late wife, Lorraine, and their son, Donald, 50, constructed a large mosaic-tile copy of the seal, which now hangs at City Hall. |
It was not his family's first municipal art project: John also created the Historical Society logo that appears on our web site and on all of our news-letters, and he said that his father, George Hales, designed the galleon depicted on the rotunda floor of Los Angeles City Hall, built in 1928. From the Mailroom We received a request from Duane N. Strinden who is searching for the former address (circa 1945) of William (Bill) or Edna Daley. Bill was with the Army in the early 40's defending our western coast. Duane was in the 2nd Marines in the South Pacific. When Duane returned to the states in 1944, he visited Bill and Edna in Hermosa Beach. Duane writes, "They lived on the east side of the street facing the beach - about two blocks south of the pier. There was a change room/toilet/food place on the beach just south of their north corner apartment. Both of the Daley's are dead now, but their children are interested in finding the place in Alhambra where their mother was born, and in finding where their parents lived in Hermosa Beach, before they came north to live in the state of Washington." Mr. Strinden continues, "I am the only one still living that knows about their Hermosa Beach apartment, so I agreed to try to find the address of their folk's place. I would ap-preciate any help that you could give me. If you have a site map I would appreciate that also. Thank you very much." If any of our readers know where the Daley's lived, please contact the HBHS and we'll pass on the information. Hermosa Beach -- "The Book" A book chronicling the history of Hermosa Beach should be available from the HBHS by Labor Day. As we all know, Hermosa Beach has been one of Los Angeles County's most eclectic sum-mertime destinations for vacationing families, artists, surfers, sunbathers, fishermen, volleyball players and other beachgoers. 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 accom-modate 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. 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 Pub-lishing. 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. Dale
Velzy 1927-2005
Master surfboard designer Dale Velzy, who helped popularize sur-fing along the California coast and at one time was the world's lar-gest maker of surfboards, has died at the age of 77. In February 1989, "Surfing" magazine published the Surfboard Shapers' Family Tree. Well deserved at the top is Duke Kahanamoku who inspired turn of the century surfing revivalists. At the top of his own branch is Dale Velzy, the man who was most responsible for ins-piring South Bay surfers and shapers that led the Southern California surfing movement of the 1950's and 60's. He was the first person to sponsor surfers, advertise surfing in a big way, and put surfboards and surfing within the reach of the average kid on the beach. Born in1927 in Hermosa Beach, he was nicknamed "The Hawk" as a boy for his knack in spotting quarters in the sand. On heavy wooden surfboards in the 1930's he surfed with the best riders of the Hermosa, Manhattan and Palos Verdes Surf Clubs. In 1949 he began shaping and repairing Bob Simmons' boards in his Hermosa Beach garage. As a leading member of the raucous Manhattan Beach Surf Club, whose club headquarters were under the Man-hattan Beach pier, Velzy became the first commercial shaper of redwood/balsa combination boards. For beach break surfing conditions, fins were positioned to the rear of the boards, "Bob Simmons made them light," Velzy said, "I made them turn." Eventually, members started complaining about too many shav-ings in the clubhouse and Velzy moved his operation to Venice Beach. Early in 1953, with surfing gaining popularity and orders for boards increasing, Velzy partnered with fellow Hermosa Beach surfer Harold "Hap" Jacobs. First working out of the Venice shop, they eventually rented a little shop space up the street from the Hermosa Beach pier, and built custom boards under the Velzy-Jacobs label that sold for around $75 (collectors now pay thous-ands for those "wall hangers"). In 1955, the "Pig"
board emerged to satisfy the demand of the "hot dog" era.
Turning by bending and pushing was now a breeze, walking the nose was
something every good surfer could do, and even the head dip and quasimodo
(squatting low with fists forward) came into vogue. Before their partnership
ended in 1960, Velzy-Jacobs boards were sold at surf shops in Venice,
San Clemente, and San Diego. Hap Jacobs had his own shop at 422 P.C.H.
in Hermosa Beach. Also in the early 1950's, Greg Noll, Dewey Weber and
several other legendary South Bay surfers and shapers, who were inspired
by Velzy, gained their own position on the Velzy branch of the tree. The Hawk shaped with numerous other surfboard manufacturers up and down the Southern California coast. Velzy's name can be found throughout the surfing world - Velzyland, a popular surfing spot on Oahu's north shore, was named after him. The Doheny Longboard surfing Association named its annual surfing contest in his honor. In 1997, he was inducted as a "surf pioneer" into the Huntington Beach Surfing Walk of Fame. He also was inducted into the Hermosa Beach Surfer's Walk of Fame in 2003. Velzy is survived by his long time girlfriend, Fran Huff, his partner of 27 years, he is survived by his two children from his second marriage: a son, Matt, of Makawao, Hawaii, and a daughter, Malia Cohen, of Thousand Oaks, California; and by two grandchildren. A memorial service and traditional surfer's paddle-out for pioneer surfboard shaper Dale Velzy will be held June 14 at Doheny State Beach. Friends and business associates from Japan and Hawaii are expected to attend the 3 p.m. ceremony and potluck dinner in Dana Point.
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