Hometown Heroes: Pancho Barnes and Donald Douglas Sr.

March 30, 2012

SUSAN CLOKE

Columnist, Santa Monica Mirror

Pancho Barnes
Photo by George Hurrell
Copyright Estate of Pancho Barnes

Pancho Barnes (1901- 1975) joined 19 other women pilots, including the most famous woman aviator of the time, Amelia Earhart, as they took off from Santa Monica Airport.  The women were flying in the first Women’s Air Derby. 

It was 1929, nine years earlier women had won the right to vote, there were approximately 2000 licensed pilots in the U.S and fewer than 30 were women.  It was a sign of the importance of the race that so many of the woman pilots were competing.   Among the celebrities attending the event was humorist Will Rogers.  He dubbed it the “Powder Puff Derby” and the race is still known by that name.

Pancho Barnes, born Florence Lowe to socialite Pasadena parents, went with her grandfather to the first national Aviation Meet held in Dominguez Hills in 1910.  He told her that someday she would be able to fly and she believed him.  The adventurous and self-named Pancho became the first woman stunt pilot in Hollywood and flew in Howard Hughes’ film “Hell’s Angels”, she organized the stunt pilot’s union, was a founding member of the Ninety-Nine’s, a close friend of Chuck Yeager, and a test pilot herself.   In 1930 Pancho challenged and beat Amelia Earhart’s speed record of 184 mph, flying her beloved plane, the Mystery Ship, at 196 mph.

It was the golden age of flying in America.  It was the time of Lucky Lindbergh and the Spirit of St. Louis and America was in love with flying and fliers.   Pancho Barnes exemplified the spirit of adventure and the daring of the early aviators.  Airplanes were the stuff of dreams.  There were no commercial passenger planes.  But all that was about to change.

Donald Douglas Sr.
Boeing Archives via Wikipedia

The same year Pancho and her grandfather went to the Aviation Meet in Dominguez Hills, Donald Wills Douglas (1892-1981) was in Virginia, watching as Orville Wright qualified the Wright Flyer for the U.S. Army.  Douglas wanted to know everything there was to know about planes, but he never learned to fly one.    That didn’t stop him from designing and building some
of the most famous airplanes of the 20^th century at his company, Douglas Aircraft, located in Santa Monica, California. 

Douglas came to Los Angeles in 1920, rented his first office on Pico Blvd and formed the Davis-Douglas Company to build the Cloudster for Davis.  When the Cloudster didn’t fly as expected, Davis left the company and Douglas continued as the Douglas Aircraft Company.

With an early commission from the Navy for a new folding-wing torpedo plane (the DT-1) and funded with the help of LA Times publisher Harry Chandler, the Douglas Aircraft Company was on its way.  By 1924 he had relocated Douglas Aircraft Company to the old Herman Film Corporation building on 24^th and Wilshire Blvd. in Santa Monica.

Under contract to the Army Air Corps, Douglas Aircraft debuted the open-cockpit Douglas World Cruisers, the first planes designed to circumnavigate the globe.   The first 4 World Cruisers tool off in March of 1924 from Clover Field.   (Clover Field was the original name of Santa Monica Airport, in honor of WWI pilot Lt. Greayer Clover.) 

In September of 1924 two of the World Cruisers completed the 28,945-mile journey.  Over 200,000 people were at Clover Field to watch them land and to celebrate.

Douglas aircraft went on to build mail carriers, army cargo planes, medical evacuation planes and even the first successful plane that could take off and land on water, the Douglas Dolphin. 

Then, in the 1930’s, came the Douglas Commercial (DC) planes: the DC-1, a 12 passenger plane, followed by the transcontinental, 14 passenger DC-2, and the iconic, 21 passenger DC-3.  Before the beginning of WWII over 800 DC-3 airplanes were flying in the U.S.   Built in Santa Monica, these planes first flew out of Santa Monica Airport.  The DC planes led the development of the national aircraft industry and the City of Santa Monica changed to accommodate the new industry.

A sign Douglas had posted at the DC-1 construction site in Santa Monica read, “When you design it, think how you would feel if you had to fly it!  Safety first!”

WWII transformed the airline industry and Douglas Aircraft was at the center of that change.  Douglas became President Roosevelt’s go to man for warplanes. Thousands of warplanes took off from the Santa Monica Airport on their way to join the U.S. and Allied Air Forces.

During WWII Santa Monica Airport was hidden under a raised “town” with houses, streets, trees and farms with barns and animals.  Movie studios became part of the war effort and created the camouflage to protect the airport from being visible to enemy aircraft from the air.

Donald Douglas was a brilliant engineer and a visionary person.  He built a company that changed the world and the world recognized his contributions. 

Did Pancho Barnes and Donald Douglas know each other?  I think they must have, but I couldn’t find any record of that.  What I do know is that Pancho Barnes and Donald Douglas are emblematic of our history and the skill and vision each of them brought to their work is an essential part of the ethos of Santa Monica.

Links:

Visit the Museum of Flying at the Santa Monica Airport to learn more about the history of aviation, and the important role it played in the history of the Santa Monica.   Information, www.museumofflying.com

Pancho Barnes has been memorialized in the film, “The Legend of Pancho Barnes and the Happy Bottom Riding Club.” http://www.legendofpanchobarnes.com/film/index.php

and in the Lauren Kessler 2000 biography, “The Happy Bottom Riding Club: The Life and Times of Pancho Barnes.”

She is also portrayed in “The Right Stuff” a 1979 book by Tom Wolfe about the U.S. manned space program and in the 1983 film  “The Right Stuff” based on the book.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_Stuff_%28film%29

Donald Douglas has been memorialized in the Wilbur H. Morrison 1991 biography, “Donald W. Douglas: A Heart With Wings.”

and in the PBS series
http://www.pbs.org/kcet/chasingthesun/companies/douglas.html

Greayer Clover: for more information and for his writing
http://www.ourstory.info/library/2-ww1/Clover/SuzanneTC.html

What Say You? 710 Wilshire Boulevard

710 Wilshire Building.  Arthur Harvey, Architect

SUSAN CLOKE

Columnist, Santa Monica Mirror

For all its life 710 Wilshire Boulevard, “the Santa Monica Professional Building,” has housed small businesses and professional offices.  Now it is the subject of public debate in the City.  The owner, Alex Gorby of Maxser and Co. Ltd., is proposing the retention and adaptive reuse of the landmark building and the building of a 285-room hotel, with ground floor retail and restaurant uses, to be located on the existing parking lot immediately to the south of the Santa Monica Professional Building.

 A Spanish Colonial Revival style building and a City Historic Landmark the 710 Wilshire building is easily recognizable and well liked.  Designed by Los Angeles architect Arthur E. Harvey, who also designed the Embassy Hotel Apartments on 3^rd Street.  In 1928, the year 710 Wilshire was built, at six stories and 40,638 square feet, it was the largest building in the neighborhood.

If developed as proposed the old and new buildings together will total approximately four times the size of the existing, approximately 40,000 square foot 710 Wilshire building.  A development of the size proposed would not be allowed under current zoning.  In materials submitted to the City in 2010 Maxser and Co. stated: “The alternative of building a smaller 135-room hotel consistent with current zoning is not economically viable.” 

So, in order to apply for development rights over the current zoning, the 710 Wilshire Boulevard project opted to go the Development Agreement route through the City approval process. They are one of 14 major developments currently in the City’s Development Agreement queue.  In the downtown area the Development Agreement applicants include, among others, the Miramar Hotel and a Marriott Hotel.

A Development Agreement (DA) is a contract negotiated between the City and the developer.  The City Council Members are responsible for representing the interests of the City as they have the final say on the terms and conditions of the DA.  The premise of a DA is that the benefits the City would achieve would justify the breaking of the City Zoning Code.  Additionally, in a DA, deal points can be very broad.

In the case of 710 Wilshire one deal point, the preservation of the Landmark Building was not negotiable and is included.  But there are other issues to be negotiated:  the size, the height, the massing, the scale, the aesthetics of the proposed design, all are up for discussion.  Parking, bicycles, transportation funding are on the table.  Local hiring programs, student internships, and more – a list of conditions the City finds to be of sufficient importance and benefits to offset the additional benefits to the developer. 

The City is addressing, but has yet to resolve, many of the issues listed above and the plan for review by a joint committee composed of members of the Landmarks Commission and the Architectural Review Board is a good idea.

Where the 710 Wilshire DA is weakest is on the terms of a living wage requirement.  In fact it’s downright off in its wage proposals and it includes a provision which gives the City Manager the authority to reduce the required wage standards, under certain conditions, instead of meeting of going through a public process at City Council.

Elsa Mercado

I spoke with Elsa Mercado, who currently works at the Viceroy, and is a shop steward for the hotel union.  Born in El Salvador,  she lived in a beautiful area with mountains and rivers and was surrounded by her extended family.  She and her many cousins were very close to each other and saw each other every day.  She dreamed of becoming a nurse. 

One day a man came to the house of one her cousins and asked for help changing a tire.  After getting help with his tire the man let them know he was an investigator for the government of the then president.  Her cousin had organized against the president, as had Elsa Mercado.  The man took her cousin away and for fifteen days no one knew where he was.  Some agriculture students found him lying in a field, he had been badly beaten and they brought him home.  Shortly after that war broke out and life was in danger.  Finally, poverty and war and family problems made her decide to try for a better life in the United States.  Elsa Mercado had dreams for herself and her three daughters.

For thirteen years Elsa Mercado lived in California without her daughters.  At first she worked in factories where the wages were very low and the work very hard.  Places we would call sweatshops.  When she got a chance to work at a hotel, she jumped at it.  Of working at the Viceroy Hotel she said, “We have rights, we have a dignified wage, we have health care and other benefits, and we have the liberty of saying what is right and what is wrong.”

Now her daughters are here in California, all are working and, at the same time, one is studying to be a teacher, one is studying to be a lawyer, and one is studying to be a nurse.

Elsa Mercado said, “I believe my plan is to continue to work at my job and also to work for the union in the defense of people who work.  We are asking for a dignified wage of $15/hour and rights and respect from all the hotels that will be opening in Santa Monica.”

Setting livable wages and requiring reasonable benefits is allowable in a Development Agreement.  Santa Monicans made it clear that they support the concept of a dignified wage, that it is important, during the time the City discussed and passed the Living Wage Ordinance.

I join in asking the City Council Members to require that the Development Agreement for 710 Wilshire include requirements, for as long as the hotel is in business of, in Elsa Mercado’s words, “a dignified wage and rights and respect.”   

What Say You?

Hometown Heroes: 21st Century Abolitionists

SUSAN CLOKE

Columnist, Santa Monica Mirror

Human trafficking is unthinkable but, tragically, not impossible.  Human trafficking, the buying, selling, and smuggling of people—most often women and children; exists in the year 2012.  It exists around the world and it exists in the United States.

This was a hard column to write.  Every person I spoke with, every report I read, brought fresh horror to mind.  Thirteen year-old girls forced into prostitution under the threat of having a sister tortured and killed.  Men and women, desperate in their own countries, lured by fraudulent promises of a better life in America, the land of opportunity, locked in basements and only let out to do forced work.  Children who are kidnapped and sold for profit, their families desperate to find them. 

The FBI reports (http://www.fbi.gov/) “Victims are controlled physically, through beatings, burnings, rapes, and starvation; emotionally, through isolation, psychological abuse, drug dependency, and threats against family members in home countries; and financially, through debt bondage and threat of deportation.”

Thankfully, there are 21^st century abolitionists willing to come to the aid and defense of the victims of human trafficking.  One such is Valerie Martinez, organizer of the Santa Monica Bay Woman’s Club March 30 event to benefit organizations that work with victims of human trafficking. (www.smbwc.org/forfreedom) 

The organizations are: CAST, A21, and Saving Innocence.  All three organizations are local.  For Ms. Martinez this work started when she was in school in Australia and heard, Christine Caine, founder of A21, speak about human trafficking.  “I didn’t even know human slavery still existed.  I knew then I would do almost anything to help even one girl who had been forced into being a sex slave,” said Ms. Martinez.

CAST (Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking http://www.castla.org/about-us) was started in 1998 after their work in breaking the 1995 El Monte Sweatshop case where more than 70 Thai laborers were held captive behind razor wire, under twenty-four hour guard and forced to work 18 hour days.

CAST provides trafficked persons access to safe shelters, medical services, job training and education.  CAST is actively working with other organizations and government to prosecute traffickers and to promote legislation and regulations to end human trafficking and to protect victims of human trafficking.

The A21 Campaign, (http://www.thea21campaign.org/) calls for the “abolition of injustice in the 21^st Century.”  A21 has their first shelter in Greece, as it is the gateway to human trafficking in Europe.  A21 workers are the first people the Greek police call when they suspect a person is a victim of human trafficking. 

A21 workers go to detention centers and let the girls know that help is available.  They bring in food, clothing and hygiene products, provide legal representation, offer shelter programs, and repatriate girls who want to go home.  A21 works to provide each girl with the help she decides she needs.

Saving Innocence, http://www.savinginnocence.org/ officially founded in January of this year, began as a result of Kim Biddle’s volunteer work with child victims of human trafficking here in Los Angeles.  Ms. Biddle has so far been able to help 16 girls, ranging in age from 11 to 17, who were victims of human trafficking.  Most were arrested for prostitution but were, in fact, forced sex slaves. 

She follows the girls starting with when they are put in to juvenile hall, acting as their advocate as they go to court, live in group homes and begin to re-establish paths to safe and more normal lives.  Ms. Biddle said, “I feel I’m fortunate to be able to go to some of the darkest places in society and bring light to those places.  I’m committed to walking with these girls on their journeys.”

The work to abolish human trafficking is becoming stronger as the traffickers become a stronger force in the criminal world.  The actress Mira Sorvino, a Goodwill Ambassador to combat Human Trafficking for the UN Office on Drugs and Crimes said, “human trafficking is tied in 2^nd place with illegal sale of arms as the most profitable criminal enterprise in the world with an estimated illegal profit of 32 billion dollars per year and second only to the drug trade.”

In her role as a Goodwill Ambassador Ms. Sorvino has traveled the world attending conferences and working with governments to end human trafficking, but her focus is on the United Sates.  She said “people in the U.S. are not aware, and find it hard to believe, this is happening here and yet the numbers of victims of human traffic in the United States are as high as 300,000 persons.  I have spoken about human trafficking to legislators, attorneys general and police departments.  We need to pass strong laws and to provide education that will protect victims, prosecute traffickers, and end human trafficking.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is a world leader in the fight against human trafficking, estimates “it is likely that somewhere between 12 million and 27 million human beings are suffering in bondage around the world. Men, women and children are trapped in prostitution or labor in fields and factories under brutal bosses who threaten them with violence or jail if they try to escape.

“I have seen firsthand the suffering that human trafficking causes. Not only does it result in injury and abuse—it also takes away its victims’ power to control their own destinies. In Thailand I have met teenage girls who had been prostituted as young children and were dying of AIDS. In Eastern Europe I have met mothers who lost sons and daughters to trafficking and had nowhere to turn for help.” http://www.state.gov

As a nation we believe that all people deserve, in Secretary Clinton’s words, “to live free, work with dignity, and pursue their dreams.”  Yet, today we face dangerous, criminal organizations trafficking in human beings.  They are the new slave traders.  May we all be the new abolitionists.

What Say You? Miramar

The original Miramar. 
Home of Senator John P. and Mrs. Georgina Jones
Santa Monica 1890
Photo credit:  Wikipedia

SUSAN CLOKE

Columnist, Santa Monica Mirror

“Senator Jones built a mansion, Miramar, and his wife, Georgina, planted a Moreton Bay Fig tree in its front yard in 1889. The tree is now in the courtyard of the Fairmont Miramar Hotel.”  Wikipedia

The Fairmont Miramar, a luxurious and iconic Santa Monica hotel, evokes images of weddings in lush gardens, turtles in the fountain amusing generations of children, the bungalows with their fabulous stories of famous guests, lunch by the pool, gala events in the ballrooms and, of course, the signature Moreton Bay Fig.

Michael and Susan Dell, owners of Dell Computer Corporation and relatively new owners of the Miramar, would like to redevelop the Miramar Hotel.  Their representative, Allan Epstein, appeared before the Planning Commission at the February 8 ‘float-up’ to explain their new vision to the Commission and to an audience that filled both the Council Chambers and the lobby of City Hall.  (‘Float-up’ is the term used for initial meetings, which are for introductory discussions only.  If successful they are followed by a public review and approval process.)

The request the Miramar filed with the City (Development Agreement application 011DEV-003) in April of 2011 is for “550,000 square feet of project development. 265 guest rooms, food, beverage, meeting, and spa facilities, retail space along Wilshire Boulevard, approximately one acre open space area at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Ocean Avenue, up to 120 condominiums on the upper floors of new buildings, up to 484 on-site subterranean parking spaces.”  City Staff Report
 

The Miramar Hotel currently “has 262,284 square feet of floor area located on the 4.5 acre site, with 296 guest rooms, restaurant, spa, and banquet facilities and160 surface parking spaces on site.”  City Staff Report

At the float-up meeting, Allen Epstein told the Commission they intend to “preserve the 1920’s Palisades Building, and to create a one-acre park around the Landmarked Moreton Bay Fig Tree.”  The park is planned to be open to the public when not being used for hotel functions.

He also presented their intention to include an affordable housing component, with up to 40 units, to be built at 1127-1129 2nd Street, directly across from the hotel on property now being used as a surface parking lot for valet parking.  

And he spoke about the place the Miramar has in the Santa Monica Community.

That place in the community was confirmed by the many supporters of the Miramar redevelopment proposal who spoke movingly of the long history of the Miramar in Santa Monica.

 
Employees of the hotel, a union hotel, spoke of the good working conditions and the feeling of being part of a ‘family’ when they worked at the hotel.  Long time local leader Irene Zivi, saying she is a pragmatist, spoke of the many benefits that would come to the City and to the schools because of the increased Transit Occupancy Tax.  She also talked about the many occasions when the Miramar generously supported community events.  The chef at Fig, the restaurant at the Miramar, talked about the hotel supporting his work with students on healthy foods projects.  Patricia Hoffman, of Santa Monicans for Renter’s Rights, talked about the importance of affordable housing to the City.  Neil Carrey spoke of his long tenure on the Recreation and Parks Commission and his support for the proposed one-acre open space at Wilshire and Ocean.  Nat Trives, former Mayor, co-chairs Friends of the Miramar. http://www.friendsofthemiramar.com/

The many people who spoke against the project also confirmed the place of the hotel in the community.  They voiced concerns focused on the proposed scale and design of the new hotel.  People spoke about a ‘’wall of development” that would create a barrier between the site and the residential and business community just east of it.  They mourned the loss of the bungalows.  They raised concerns about the proposed 4 years of construction work and the traffic and environmental problems that would create.  They talked about the scale of the project and the impact that would have on Palisades Park. They spoke of the scale and height of the proposed project and its impact on neighbors.  They spoke of their memories of the Miramar and its place in creating the character of Santa Monica and expressed their fears that the redevelopment of the site would change the character in ways that would diminish Santa Monica.

This project is being proposed at a time when the City is taking a new look at itself.  The new LUCE (Land Use and Circulation Element) is now the guiding land use document.  The proposed Miramar redevelopment will have to show how it meets the vision of the LUCE.

A new plan for the Downtown District is under study.  Questions will have to be asked and answered as to how the proposed Miramar redevelopment should relate to that plan.

And the negotiation of a Development Agreement is complex.  Development Agreements are different from traditional zoning approvals in that the Development Agreement is a contract where existing zoning rules can be changed in order to achieve community benefits.  In Development Agreement negotiations the Council represents the people of the City.

It seems to me that the project, as initially designed, asks for more square feet of building rights then is appropriate for the site, given its place in the history and the future of Santa Monica.  The drawings that were submitted with the application are, appropriately, schematic.  As the project takes shape and form, design will be a central issue.  It seems to me that the design itself needs to pay homage to the history of the site and to serve as a guide to the future character of the built environment in Santa Monica.  That is no small task. 

You may be reading this and wondering whether I’m a yea or a nay on this project.  I’m wondering myself.  But I intend to stay informed and to do my part.

I’m anticipating a robust public process, and given the quality of all the participants to this negotiation, I’m hoping for a successful resolution for a great hotel and a great city.

What Say You?

Hometown Hero: John Byers, Santa Monica Architect

Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica
18^th and Arizona, Santa Monica
photo credit:  Carol Lemlein

SUSAN CLOKE

Columnist, Santa Monica Mirror

John Winford Byers, Santa Monica’s most important architect and builder in the period between WWI and WWII, told the LA Times, “Buildings of adobe are replete with a delicate and elusive charm and there is an easy plasticity about the material that makes it particularly suitable to the Spanish or California type of architecture.” (May 17, 1931)

Byers was noted for his work with adobe and was a leader in its use as a California building material.  Today we would label adobe “green.”  It’s local.  It provides great insulation – keeping buildings cool during the day and warm at night.  And it is an all-natural material.

Byers was a self-taught architect.  After receiving a degree in Electrical Engineering from of the University of Michigan he went on to do graduate work at Harvard University.  Byers also had experience as a teacher and had worked at the North American Academy in Montevideo, Uruguay before coming to Santa Monica in 1910 to chair the Romance Languages Department at Santa Monica High School.  It is thought that during his time in Latin America he became enamored with the architectural vernacular he called, “Latin Houses.” 

After his working day at the High School was over, Byers would work as a translator for the Mexican workmen on construction sites and through working with them he learned how to build with adobe.  His began his architectural career building residences for his own family and for his cousin.  His first commissioned design, in 1916, was a house for W.F. Barnum, the principal at Santa Monica High School.

Byers relied on the building traditions of Hispanic cultures, building in the Mexican Colonial the Spanish Colonial and the Monterey styles.  When he couldn’t get the curved, clay roof tiles he needed for these buildings he established his own workshop and employed the traditional technique where workmen used their thighs as forms to shape the wet clay for the curved tile shape needed for rooftops.  The workshop also produced decorative tile, wrought iron and woodwork.  He named his company the “John Byers Organization for the Design and Building of Latin Houses.”

By 1926 Byers was a licensed architect.  Among his clients were Norma Shearer and Irving Thalberg, Shirley Temple, Joel McCrea, Laurence (Buster) Crabbe and King Vidor.  He went on to design Ray Bradbury’s house, a ranch house at the Getty in Malibu, and the Club House at Brentwood Country Club, where he was a member and an avid golfer.

One of Byers important public buildings in Santa Monica is the Miles Playhouse.  Designed in 1929, the Playhouse was the vision of J. Euclid Miles who wanted a memorial for his daughter, Mary A. Miles, and Miles bequethed $25,000 to the City to fund the Playhouse.

Justin Yoffe, the Cultural Affairs Supervisor for the Playhouse said, “Three years ago we started “Fireside at the Miles”  We opened up the main hall so citizens could experience the intimate auditorium the way citizens did when it was first built.”  This January and February “Fireside at the Miles” will feature six weekends of music and dance at the Playhouse, located in Reed Park.  www.milesplayhouse.org

The Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica is another important public building designed by Byers.  Restoration architect Ralph Mechur, talking about the Church, said,  “Its plaster exterior and dark wood ceilings and beams create a sense of early California.  The Church has kept the sanctuary building intact as the congregation has grown.  It was exciting to create a campus for the Church, knitting together the church building, a modernist addition and the adjacent 1914 bungalow.”

The Santa Monica Conservancy will meet in the Church on Sunday, January 29, 2012.  "We are pleased to be holding our Annual Meeting in the John Byers designed Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica. He is widely recognized as one of, if not the most influential Santa Monica architect of the first half of the twentieth century,” said Carol Lemlein, President of the Santa Monica Conservancy.  www.santamonicaconservancy.org

 

A third Byers’ public building is the office he designed and built, located at 246 26^th Street.  The building, a Santa Monica landmark, is currently being used as a restaurant.  He worked there with Edna Muir, also a self taught architect.  She  worked for Byers for 11 years before getting her license and then becoming his partner in the firm. 

“During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Byers became a major proponent in Southern California for the revival of traditional adobe construction, and in addition to designing his own houses, acted as consultant in this capacity for the development of Rancho Santa Fe and several other major projects in California, Nevada and Arizona,” said Ken Breisch, an architecture professor at USC.  “Much of Byers' and Muir’s early work exhibits traits of the Spanish Colonial Revival, while during their later years they also worked in other American Revival styles to produce some of the most beautiful and graceful adaptations of historic revival architecture in Southern California.”

At the time of his death in 1966 he lived at 2034 La Mesa, an elegant Montery Revival design and the third home he built in Santa Monica for his own family.  He was 91 years old.  John Winford Byers, architect and builder, designed some of Santa Monica’s most treasured residences and public buildings.

Byers’ designs defined the architectural landscape of Santa Monica in the years between WWI and WWII and they continue to influence the architectural landscape of Santa Monica.   In many ways we are exploring and rediscovering how to express the respect for the landscape of California, the understanding and use of materials that adapt their buildings to the climate and, hopefully, the grace that was the Byers legacy to the City.

Honoring Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.        January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968
Photo The Seattle Times

SUSAN CLOKE

Columnist, Santa Monica Mirror

The Civil Rights Movement captured the imagination of the Country.  It was 1965, the Rev. Martin Luther King, working to get voting rights for African-Americans, planned to lead a 50-mile march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.  

It was, finally, the right time to do the right thing.  I wonder how that happens.  How is it that something intrinsically right can take so long to be possible?  The prejudice, segregation, and Jim Crow laws were always wrong.  How did they last so long?  For that matter, how did they ever begin?

Eight of us, all college students, drove in a University of San Francisco station wagon from San Francisco, California to Selma, Alabama to be part of the march.

We knew Alabama State Troopers had turned the marchers back each time they tried to cross the Pettus Bridge onto the highway to Montgomery.  Photographs of the marchers had been front-page news in papers across the country.   Now, students, teachers, religious leaders and civil rights workers, from all over the U.S., were coming to Selma to join the march, forcing the focus of the nation on the right of the marchers to proceed and on the issue of voting rights.

The trip across country was different from any other car trip I had taken in my life.  By the time we got to Texas it was clear to us that people knew who we were and many didn’t like us.  We drove straight through, stopping only when we needed to, quickly buying food in convenience stores and eating in the car.  We talked and talked - civil rights, philosophy, religion, the Vietnam War – in the way of college students everywhere. 

I talked about my father.  My family lived in Minnesota when I was in elementary school and we went to Florida for a winter vacation.  My father would hold the door for a black woman and say, ‘after you Ma’am’, he would address black men as “Sir”, he would tell a black person in a store that they were next and should go ahead.  I took it for granted.  It was just my father being his usual, polite self.  It wasn’t until I returned to the South as a young adult that I realized that his politeness defied the culture of the Jim Crow South where no white man ever held the door for a black woman and where all black people in a store waited until all white people had been served, even if those white people came in after them.  My father wasn’t a person for political action.  I never knew him to go to a rally or a meeting or write a letter to the editor.  But he was a man of personal responsibility.

After several days of driving we arrived in Selma and went to the Church that was the center of the Civil Rights movement.  We were expected and they gave us the name of the man who was going to put us up and cards that we could use for meals.  I still have my card.  It says, “Susan Cloke is a guest in Selma and is entitled to free meals.”

Our host seemed old to me, but I think that was because I was so young.  He lived alone and his house, really a cabin, was small.  He had cleaned the unpainted wood by washing the floors and walls with boiling water.  The stove was on the back porch and he had a pot of beans waiting for us.  I liked him right away for his kindness and his soft-spoken manner.  We sat on his front steps and talked with him until it was time to go back into town for the meeting at the church.

It was at the church that I first heard Rev. King speak.  I have long remembered, and thought about a particular speech, which I can’t find and so this is not an exact quote, but what he said, much more eloquently than I can, was “Morality is like a muscle.  If you don’t use it to make small decisions then, when you need it, it won’t be strong enough to do what needs to be done.  Don’t think, ‘well, I don’t have to do this right thing because it’s not important and no one will even notice I didn’t do it’ and then think you will be able to do the right thing when it is important.  That won’t work.  Do the right thing now and when you really need to act you will have the needed strength to see you through.” 

The Selma Montgomery March started at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.  The first attempt to cross the Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965, was led by John Lewis of SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) and Rev. Hosea Williams of SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference).  March 7, 1965 became known as ‘Bloody Sunday’ because Alabama State troopers beat and gassed and wounded the marchers. 

On March 21, 1965, on the third attempt, with a court order in our favor, we crossed the bridge and started for Montgomery.  On the fifth day of the march, near Montgomery, thousands of people joined with the several hundred marchers who had walked all the way.  To ‘give witness’ was the expression used.

King in his Montgomery speech said,  "I know you are asking today, “How long will it take?” Somebody's asking, “How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?”  Somebody's asking, “When will wounded justice, lying prostrate on the streets of Selma and Birmingham and communities all over the South, be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men?" Somebody's asking, "When will the radiant star of hope be plunged against the nocturnal bosom of this lonely night, plucked from weary souls with chains of fear and the manacles of death? How long will justice be crucified, and truth bear it?" I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because truth crushed to earth will rise again. “How long? Not long, because “no lie can live forever."  How long? Not long, because "you shall reap what you sow.  How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

President Johnson, responding to the Selma Montgomery March took the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to Congress with these words, “Even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause, too, because it is not just Negroes but really it is all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.”

Martin Luther King Jr. stood next to President Johnson as the President signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965.  Rev. King was the leader of the Birmingham Movement and his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” was a manifesto for the Civil Rights Movement.  He was a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He was a leader of the Civil Rights Movement, a leader of all Americans and a world leader.  He was 39 years old on April 4, 1968 when he was assassinated.

Rev. King’s message of non-violence gave people hope and inspiration. He would interweave stories from literature, from the bible and from history into his sermons on the power of non-violence to change the world.  Rev. King, in his own words, “Speak truth to evil.  Speak truth to power.  But speak without hatred.”