Successful and then they can try again in a future trial.

And so we've had people that have tried out and then continue to train and then try it out again later in the year, and then it's been super successful for us.

Relationship that we have.

We wouldn't have the incredible equipment that we have in making sure that our first responders have the most up-to-date technology best technology to do their jobs every single day.

So thank you very much.

We really do appreciate all the support.

And then next I'll introduce Marine Safety Division Chief Trevor McDonald.

Alright.

Thank you so much.

So these boats are gonna be an incredible, an incredible piece of equipment that's gonna help support the Marine Safety Division ability to respawn.

These boats are gonna uh are gonna impact our our Swiftwater team, our flood rescue, and be able to support our dive operations.

We were able to purchase two of these boats that are gonna be available for calls.

Um and uh and and uh the other thing I want to talk about is the ability to deploy and how these boats work.

So they're a mobile mission specific resource with improved deployment capabilities, right?

So these have um a versatile mission profile that can be operated with a motor.

We can operate them with paddles.

You can also deploy them by hand and walk them through flood zones to provide service.

So, in closing, this is just an investment that increases public safety.

Uh it increases our ability to protect lives and keep our rescuers safe.

So, once again, thank you so much.

And and now I'd like to introduce uh Joe Pinya, supervisor uh Janet Newitz or Janet Wynne's um representative.

Good morning everyone.

Once again, my name is Joe Pena, district representative here on behalf of Supervisor Janet Wynn.

Want to congratulate and thank um Firehouse Subs Public Safety Foundation for their generous contribution and donation to improving public safety for allowing the Huntington Beach Fire Department Rain Safety Division to purchase two additional um playable rescue boats.

So on behalf of the supervisor, present the certificates and congratulations.

Thank you.

And it's it's just these small events that really help raise awareness of what we're doing in the community, and the more awareness we raise, the more money we can raise, and the more money we raise, the more greens we can give away.

So again, I know everybody's schedule is super busy, but thank you for coming and celebrating with us.

I think we all can agree we hope you never have to use these boats, but if you do, we're happy you have them.

So thank you again, and I'm gonna give you guys this, and we'll take a group photo.

And thank you.

I'm gonna take this to my bank shortly.

Good morning, everybody.

We're at the uh Porsche Club OCR Toys for Tots event.

I'm here with Monica, the lady behind this this uh special event.

Monica, do you want to kind of tell the residents about the Toys for Tots event?

Oh sure.

A little history about it.

I'm happy to, and first of all, we're delighted that you and your family came.

Thank you.

Mayor Casey McKinnon.

I'm proud supporters of you.

Thank you.

The Orange Coast Region of the Porsche Club has been has been putting on a Toys for Tots drive for the last 14 years in conjunction with the Huntington Beach Police Department and the 5th Battalion 14th Marines from the Sill Beach Naval Weapons Station.

So they're here with their howitzer and their Humvees and their artillery, as well as the Huntington Beach uh police department.

Uh thanks to Chief Para and the former Captain Bo Svensbo, who was instrumental in helping us set it up and work together in co in a cohesiveness with the police department.

Uh we put on the toy drive in conjunction with the they bring their it's getting feedback from customers and they wanted more.

So then we added cookies and then we all added pop tarts after that, homie pop tarts, and then we started doing cinnamon rolls on Wednesdays and Sundays, which are really popular, and then we added dog treats and dog muffins, and we kind of just keep going and just keep listening to our customers.

Everything is made fresh daily in-house, so nothing is frozen, nothing comes from another store.

Um we make everything here.

I think everyone loves the cinnamon roll.

My favorite thing about this cinnamon roll is the icing.

It's so good.

I can't even put a word on it.

It's vanilla, it's fresh, it's a cream cheese icing, and it's definitely a must-try.

So our Pop Tarts are not like your normal grocery store Pop Tarts.

They're made out of a puff pastry dough.

So we take that dough and we're gonna fill it with different like preserves or chocolate ganache, or we may have cookie butter.

Then we frost them with different icings.

We have like vanilla or chocolate, um, and we decorate them to the nine.

I always hated when I saw cookies, and they were just like this mound of the cookie dough.

I wanted to make them like perfectly round.

They're like a soft, chewy cookie.

So they have that like crisp outer corner um outer edges, but they have that soft gooey center inside as well, and they just look aesthetically pleasing.

Hello, I'm Dwayne Wentworth.

I'm Dave Wentworth, and we're the great-grandsons of the city's first mayor.

Our mom, Alicia Wentworth was our first female city clerk.

She loved our city's history, becoming our first city historian after her retirement.

She was interviewed interviewed for several episodes of the series 90s series, Your City, Your Issues, sharing early photos and describing our city's past.

In this episode, she talks about the city during World War II, icons, Bud Higgins and Duke Ahonomoko, and early Huntington Harper.

Please enjoy this remarkable episode, a flashback.

Hello there.

Welcome to this edition of Your City Your Issues.

I'm your host, Blint Morrison.

Today we're going to take another look at the history of Huntington Beach, all done in pictures.

So stay with us, and we'll be right back after this important announcement with our retrospective overview of the history of Huntington Beach from the 1940s to the late 60s.

Stay with us, won't you?

Welcome back to this edition of Your City Your Issues.

Joining me now is Connie Brockway, our city clerk and a very special guest, and this is kind of the third in a series of the history of Huntington Beach.

And Alicia Wentworth, nice having you with us again.

Good to be here.

You were formerly the city clerk, so between the two of you, you have a great many years' experience here on Huntington Beach.

Let's add it up.

You have what?

I have 30 years.

My anniversary was in June.

Is that right?

And I've been city clerk for 10 years.

And Alicia, you were city clerk for 15 years, and 12 years before that, you were deputy.

Well, many, many years.

It's a lot of years.

And I know during that period of time, Alicia, you've acquired quite a few photographs of the old uh the history of Huntington Beach, the old city as it was, and the changes have been made.

So this is kind of a chronicle of all of those.

As we know, the city of Huntington Beach has always been kind of a place where people come together for not only the ambience of the ocean, uh, the surf and so forth, but for a lot of fun activities.

And we're going to see some of those fun activities that they had, starting right off the bat with I think uh old soapbox derby that was held back uh in the the bluff area there that was down on Adams.

Is that the same?

Adams Avenue.

Adams Avenue.

So let's take a look and see if we don't have that coming up right now on the monitor, and we'll see if we have that.

There you go.

Now that's real entertainment.

Now, judging by that car that's sitting in the background, that looks like about a 30, maybe six or something like that.

So this would probably be the late 30s, early 40s.

I would say.

Was this the Chamber of Commerce that put it on?

Do you recall?

I don't I uh that was before I came here.

I guess it all became part of the American soapbox derby, and certain winners from certain areas would then advance to another race.

Akron, Ohio.

That's right.

Finally finish up in Akron, Ohio.

So they're there, and uh boy, they've got their their uh feet on the on the old uh gas pedal and they're ready to go.

Now these all had to be made by the boys themselves, and there were certain requirements, and I know that the wheels had to be a certain requirement.

All standard, all standardized.

And uh they're ready for that race down that hill.

And and again to set the structure, uh, most people don't realize this, but um Pacific Coast Highway was then called Ocean Boulevard.

Ocean Avenue.

Ocean Avenue, which we kind of think maybe fed all the way into the Long Beach area.

Where they have their ocean avenue still.

Sure.

And uh then uh during the war, right after the war, they kind of nationalized all of these highways, and then that that's when they had uh uh US One with right along the coast and went all the way up to um the Canadian border.

In order for people to get across Coast Highway, then they had to use uh for the first time this signalization, and this was I think uh a pedestrian response type of uh signal.

The very first signal in the city of Huntington Beach at PCH and uh Main Street in 1942.

You can see the Golden Bear in the background.

Right.

Now, do you do you know who the young lady is that that was Barbara McChan uh McCandless?

Oh, really?

Yes.

Well, for heaven's sake.

Perry Huddle uh directly to her left and Don Blossom on the right side of the picture there.

Very far right.

And I'm not sure sure who that is on the far left.

Probably some of the from public works that maybe was helping out.

Or one of the council persons.

It's a possibility.

So then that would be to cross over to the Pavallon area.

Correct.

And to the uh was the station was still functioning at that time, the OPE.

Oh, yes.

Yeah.

Now when did they take that out?

I knew it was well that was moved up onto Lake Street.

Oh, really?

In the probably early 60s.

Oh.

And that was Huntington Beach Company that did all of that.

Yeah, I could along with PE.

I can remember when they started ripping out all those rails and everything like that.

And it was kind of really an end of the era.

That was in the later 50s.

Only only to find out that later on, here we go right back to that kind of transportation.

Let's take a look at uh maybe oh, there we are.

Now we're into World War II, very obviously.

And um, tell us where this is.

This is on Lake Park in the Lake Park Clubhouse.

And this is the park entrance uh from the park side, not from Lake Street.

Right.

Now I don't know if there was a public meeting there, but I do know that the military was used to uh guard all uh uh installations and to guard uh public places.

It was taken over by the military during the war.

As was the pier.

Oh, okay.

Now I I was looking at the insignia, there's no shoulder patch on there, but I would assume from the cap insignia there that you can see on the uh foreign aft caps that it was probably the coastal artillery.

Uh just assuming that I'm not sure uh which division would be out here.

Maybe it was the 40th at that point in.

We had uh also right in City Hall, we had an area that was the emergency preparedness area.

And we had uh the whole basement was set up for that.

And this was prior to what we deemed to be the atomic attacks and was the basement to the elementary school.

Oh the elementary school.

Oh, that that was civil defense.

And that was the city's main board.

This will build guy in there, sort of toward the middle of the left side of the chalkboard.

And uh that was all your main players in the city at that time that formed the civil defense board.

Boy, it looks like that poor guy in the center.

It looks like one of those movies where they're gonna grill them and they have the small.

So that was our emerging emergency preparedness center, and uh, in order to get into that, and I would imagine from specific areas throughout the city, they had these switchboards, and we'll take uh well, these phones that you could call into the switchboard, we'll take a look at that now.

That uh with these gals managing the the uh the switchboards.

I imagine from certain checkpoints in the city, and they've even signed their names on there.

So from these various checkpoints, they would call in to the emergency preparedness center in the event that something was happening within their area.

Right, these were all volunteers on duty.

And and there would be people, spotters out there that would be calling in to them from time to time.

They would then, I guess, update the board that we saw in the background, which was probably uh um a board that was using the.

These are all people that a lot of the old timers will remember.

Sure.

Hazel Malikum, Francy Jones, Ann Peterson, and and Eva Hardy.

This was uh I was able to get this through Fort MacArthur, and it doesn't look like much, but if you look to the far left of your screen, you'll see that there's 9th Street there, and in the far right is 10th, and at the very top of the screen would be uh the old uh PCH or Coast Highway.

Now that square in the center is a lookout that was disguised as an oil derrick during World War II, and from that they were able to look out to see and see if there were any Japanese submarines or anything like that.

So, and then of course they had communication to um not only to the pier, but also back to the Bolsa Chica area, and the Gud Club at that time was the headquarters for the coastal artillery battery that was here.

These again were plans that were available through uh Fort MacArthur.

Uh there might be some areas on there that are marked secret.

The largest bunker out there was the one with the six-inch guns, and that's been outlined in black.

And you see the two half-rounded areas in front.

Those were the blast shields over the top of where the cannon would be.

Cannon had an effective range or the the piece, coastal artillery piece had an effective range of about 24 miles out to sea.

So if they zeroed in, they could probably blast Catalina real well.

I'm not sure about this.

This is uh this is Battery Harrison, and this is the smaller one.

It's faced the the uh wrong way because if you were to take that and flip-flop it around the other way, you'd get more of a north-south configuration.

The two circles on there are known as Panama Mounts, and there's one of the big guns that was used uh during the coastal artillery uh period of time.

And that would be the size of the gun that would have been mounted in that first battery that we saw there.

Um interesting, and you see the the uh parapet over the top of that that was the blast shield in the event that enemy projectiles were to hit that, it would uh keep that gun protected.

Um so we go back now to the next shot, which is uh uh right inside the uh emergency preparedness center, and there's a little notation up on that toteboard in the back.

May 15th, 1945.

And what does that say, Alicia?

Uh last drill.

Last drill that they're conducting.

So that was about the time I think that Germany was surrendering during World War II.

In April, they well, let's see.

It was just about that time.

Yeah, and uh shortly after.

FDR had just died in April.

Right.

And uh President Truman was then president, and uh so that was the last drill that they were connected, and I noticed that sign up there's a serve in silence.

That was the motto.

And and it was loose lips, will sink a ship and all that sort of thing.

But I would imagine that because of the work that they were doing there, they didn't want a lot of conversation going on so they could hear what was happening.

And also don't talk about what you're doing.

That's right, what you were doing there, right?

Yeah, it's confidential.

Well, not only that, uh and that was during the war years, and uh right about that period of time.

Uh, we were also involved in in a lot of activities down at the beach, and that's why Surf City is known as it is.

Uh, we got some shots here of some lifeguards that go back to 1944.

There they are, and let me read these off to you from left to right.

We have uh Tom Hendrickson there on the left, and next to him a very well-known figure here in Huntington Beach.

That's Elmer Coombs, if you would recognize him as a teenager when he was uh Huntington Beach lifeguard.

Right above above him is Fred Schwartz, and then the blonde-haired fellow down in front with the uh kind of necklace type thing is uh Howard Ethington.

Right above him and to the right is Jack Dowdy, and something happened with Jack.

They didn't write it.

No, no, that was and then down below.

The only female in the whole picture is Betty St.

Clair.

And what was Betty's job?

She wasn't a library.

She was the secretary of the for the lifeguard.

Oh, I see.

Okay.

So um she helped run the department.

And then uh right above her and to the right of your screen there above her is uh Eddie Brown.

Down below is Vern Seltzer.

Who was the daughter, I mean the son of the pol uh eventually the police chief.

Um Vernon was 17 years old there, and she was killed shortly thereafter on the curve at Main Street.

Oh my Yorktown of Maine.

And above him, of course, uh a face that was well known in Huntington Beach for many, many reasons.

Bud Higgins.

Yeah, former city historian.

All right, lifeguard for many years, and uh we tell a little story about Bud right after.

Right down below him is uh Harlan Lobard, and uh Harlow was uh is well known, and certainly the name Labarde is well known because that's the same as Orange County Stadium, football stadium is Lobard Stadium.

And uh just to the right of him is Lauren Thornton, and these were the Huntington Beach lifeguards from 1944.

Now, if people don't know it, on the 4th of July, old uh Bud used to get out there at the end of the pier, and he used to to uh cover his face with petroleum jelly, his hands and so forth, douse himself with alcohol, light the alcohol deal, and dive into the water, and that would set off the fireworks.

That was the opening to the fireworks in in back in those periods.

Call it a self-starter.

So or going down in flames or something like that.

But old Bud was quite a character, and uh, we've got some further shots of Bud Higgins a little later on.

Let's take a look at uh some of the other things that were happening.

Uh there's Bud right there, and look at that, look at that vehicle.

Now that's a that's a World War II Dodge that's been converted into civilian use.

You look at the tires and the the old World War II tires and everything, and uh uh painted red.

And we've got another shot coming up a little later that has the original Huntington Beach logo, not the HB on there, but the original logo.

And that's old Bud Higgins with its faithful dog spot.

One big spot, one big spot on the tape.

Uh but you know, we were known because of the reopening of Pier Plaza, but we're not that original because something had happened way back, Connie, and you'll probably remember this too.

The original Pier Plaza was at the south end of the Pavallon, and we had a huge amphitheater there, and uh now we have the grassy area.

We had some bleacher seats that were all set up, and we're gonna come up with that in just a second here.

But uh, that was the original Pier Plaza right there with a Pavallon in the background, concession down below.

And look at those bleachers all set up.

Now they would set up a stage, wouldn't they?

Uh right down here in front of us.

Yes, you could see the step to the platform.

And I know that Bill Gallian had had a lot to do with with some of the activities there, including the uh twins contest.

Yes, and the beauty contests.

Yeah, I can see the beauty contest, not too shabby.

And so there we are.

There's Pier Plaza as it existed before Pier Plaza was built.

The original.

Right, there's the original.

Um I think we have a shot coming up now in just a second of the uh lifeguard truck uh which would go back.

And if you look right in the center beneath the G, there's the original logo, and you can see a spot in the center.

That's the sun going down over California.

Over Catalina.

Now, this was the original logo for the city of Huntington's beach, and is on our city charter and seal.

So that's the official one right there.

And uh as this comes out a little bit more, you see we've changed from the 1947, eight Dodge trucks that were retreaded from World War II to a Jeep.

You know, Jeep also was well known during World War II, but there's quite a change on this one, and you will never identify that as being the type of jeeps that you saw during World War II by a long shot.

But there we are, south of the pier, right outside of uh tower number five.

Well, I think uh the city of Huntington Beach is probably best known for um uh the surfing contests, and these all started back in the in the 50s, and we're gonna bring up some shots now uh of some surfing contests and bring in some people that are well known, not only aquatically, well, I guess primarily aquatically, but uh internationally known.

There's some of our first uh and that must be during the 50s when she started.

5959 put on that was sponsored by the rec recreation department, Normworthy.

Uh-huh.

And the officer there is And it's Gary Davis.

Yeah.

And uh the little Grimmy that's uh down underneath the ropes there is Corky Carroll, if you look.

Just kidding.

He was probably there somewhere.

And here they come out of the surf after one of the one of the contests.

And as was typical, I mean, we had those surfing contests where you didn't get much as far as waves are concerned.

If you look out there, they're they're pulling in probably two to three footers as opposed to some of this that we see now during the El Nino.

But you can see the old pier with all of the people seated up on top of the pier looking southwardly toward uh the ocean in the contest that was taking place.

This is a person that that many people never had the opportunity to meet, myself included, but have heard about so much when it comes to surfing.

And when you talk about surfing, the name that's synonymous is Duke, Duke Comunimoco.

And there he is his young man.

And we figured out he was over here in the early 30s with the Olympics with the 32 Olympics at uh up in uh Los Angeles.

So it's probably taken shortly after after that.

Well, this actually was taken in 1921.

Oh, really?

Oh my gosh, he was young then.

And a couple other people here that are really well known.

There's the Duke a little later on in life with Tarzan, Johnny Wisemiller.

Came down from Hollywood for one of the surf contests, met with Duke to Kamonomoko, and and both of them were the Olympics, uh both in swimming.

Correct.

And this was taken just the year before the Duke died.

Oh, is that right?

Boy, he sure was a hale and hardy fellow, right?

And this was the summer before he died in January.

We've got a shot now that people won't really recognize as being Huntington Beach, but yes, indeed it is.

Now, whereabouts do you think that would have been taken, Alicia?

Well, it looks awfully narrow, but it looks like the coast highway at 38th Street, which is now Sea Point.

Oh, yes.

That would have been the old 38th Street Pier.

Yeah, and the pier is not much left of it, and you can see people down at the beach there.

In addition to that, then a little later on, we've got a shot coming up here, which I think is probably where Shell now has their uh storage area and so forth, which would be just before you start going down the hill, Pacific Coast Highway, and that's a long shot.

And I was trying to think now, is that the old school, but it wasn't.

I think that's at the very top, just some.

I think it's a refinery on the Golden West.

Right.

I think you're right.

I think that's where Golden West comes out right there.

But you can see uh PCH now has been widened.

It has four lanes with a median in the center, so we figured that would probably be what, about the 60s, somewhere in that time frame.

Right, 50s, late 50s, early 60s, probably.

One of the oil derricks all made out as a Christmas tree, and it looks like they have small Christmas trees attached to that, baby.

That and Santa and his reindeer are on the rocker arms of the wells.

And they went up and down, which made it very exciting.

It it pretty much stopped traffic.

It did.

That's why they finally discontinued.

It was too much.

Yeah, well, they finally had to say no more.

We have to get traffic through there, and we just can't have it.

But people are coming from all over Southern California to look at those.

The smaller pumps that you know we went to as we modernized the city and as things started changing, we went to a different type of pumping system that system that we'll see coming up now.

So instead of the old steel or wooden derricks, we had gone to these.

They were supposed to be quieter in operation and uh more economically feasible for the extractors.

I don't know how much the people next door thought that those were quiet, but it depends on whether it was their property or not.

So let's take a look at the old city hall.

There it is right there.

City hall in front, right?

Right.

And Memorial Hall building behind it.

Yeah.

Fire station behind that.

Right.

There's a fire station almost up at the corner.

And the library property is the triangle up there on Main Street.

And if you look at the very, very tip top up there, very top, you'll see uh just about where well a little further up would probably be where the new room.

Yeah, the new uh civic center would be built.

The site going out main street.

Going up down to the left here.

There's 17th Street.

17th, cutting through right there.

There's the City Hall property.

There it is right there.

And that center spot is right about where City Hall is built, right?

Right.

Where with it, I don't know if there's trees or if it's rubble.

Huntington Beach Company out north of that.

And Huntington Beach High, right across the street.

Yorktown, uh mansion at that time.

Yeah, it's not through, is it?

No.

Yeah, it stopped at Maine.

Uh York, Yorktown.

Something was down on Lake Street about that.

The subway.

Subway.

The underpass they called it a subway.

The railroad tracks went over the top of that and it went down into it.

Yeah, it was very dangerous.

It was a abutment in the middle of the road, you know, for and so it was very difficult for oil trucks to maneuver.

I can imagine.

And a lot of it bad accidents down there.

And a lot of it uh the city of Huntington Beach was built more for the oil trucks in the oil industry than it was really for passenger vehicles and so forth.

Originally, yes.

Yeah.

Um before Adventure Playground became adventure playground and and uh Parks and Rec took it over, we had a real wild uh adventure playground.

Let's take a look at that.

I think this is where people brought stuff and uh lumber and all that stuff, and the kids just kind of informally got together down there.

Where would this be?

Uh same places, isn't it?

Calvert and Gothard.

Uh it's the property that was eventually filled in with the inert material across from the library, and a lot is being used for parking for the library right now.

I see.

Wow.

That was when kids could be kids and just go out and do things.

They had fun.

Yeah, damn sure they did.

Um getting into the more modern era now, we're going to be moving to a shot that uh is really uh a golden shot, you might say, because it's Golden West College.

And that was just as it was being built.

Now, do you recall offhand when that uh 35 years ago?

35 years ago.

I don't know if there's students on campus or if it's I see some looks like some people there, but yeah, it was all a new growth.

Yeah.

Now you can't see the school further trees.

That's right, that's right.

And as Golden West College was being built, there was an area area down.

Um