Pass away.

And uh so then we uh developed the corner, to uh took uh the houses out and uh station and have leased the property since then.

When uh I you're married.

Yes, and uh when did you get married after you got out of the service?

We were married in January 47.

January 47.

What is your wife's name?

Jane.

Jane.

And how about children?

I have two boys, uh, uh Tom and and Mike.

What did they do?

Tom is security officer with the uh Atari Corporation, and Mike uh is in Santa Paula and working for Atlantic Ridgeville.

Do they have any children?

Yeah, yeah.

The oldest boy, Tom, is married and has one child, 10.

Uh Michael's still single.

And your wife what does she do?

Uh she works at Hogue Hospital as a secretary.

Okay.

Was your family involved with you when uh you first got involved with uh political life in Huntington Beach?

Did they help you?

Did they assist you or the boys were quite small?

They were um, see, fifty fifty-eight, uh Tom was um about eight years old at the time.

Mike was uh about five.

Uh of course, wife um was active with me, supported it.

And of course, my mother was still alive and she was uh during the campaigns, why she was quite active.

One of the things that that I noticed when I first uh moved here was that there were some very active homeowners groups uh that uh that assisted with and from which individuals ran for the city council.

Did you have that sort of thing when you ran for the city council?

Were there homeowners' groups that were active?

That the I I as I I remember when I first moved here in 62 that I went down to Main uh down on Main Street to the post office, and I think it had a sign on the post office that said the population in Huntington Beach was right at twelve thousand in nineteen sixty.

So it was less than that, obviously, in nineteen fifty-eight.

So the boom hadn't hit yet, but uh what kind of a campaign did you run?

Well, in nineteen fifty-eight, uh uh the north area was just newly annexed, uh, primarily agricultural area.

Uh you did have some of the settlements of uh Liberty Park, Ocean View, and what we call Boulevard Gardens.

That's up close to the uh Huntington Center in that area.

Uh the in the population had jumped uh from a little over five thousand to about ten thousand with the annexation.

In those days you had to have uh you had to be a resident of Huntington Beach for two years before you could run for an office.

Well, after we were married, we uh uh built a house in inside the the old city limits of Huntington Beach.

So uh one night I belonged to the Ocean View Fire Department in the county then those days.

One night after the meeting got talking about the coming election, and they realized that no one in the north area was eligible to run for city council.

And all of a sudden they said, You live in the old section of town.

And I said yes.

And of course, my business was out there and I was raised.

So they said we want you to run.

I said, Well, if you'll help support me, why I'll go.

That's how I got uh that's how I got into politics.

I beat the uh well, former mayor and councilman.

Later on, he got back on the council with Ted Bartlett by 31 votes.

Or was there uh he was the incumbent?

I was just going to say that that in those days, I understand that and you mentioned Ted Bartlett.

I understand that uh some of the city business, uh at least on an informal basis, uh city council would uh sometimes meet or uh informally gather down around the Bartlett uh station to talk about things.

Were you a part of that?

No, that was that came in uh uh later on after Ted was reelected back in '66.

Uh prior to 58, yes, they were some of them were there.

But I was too busy with my business uh to uh linger around his.

So you were on the city council from 58 to 1966, and you served as mayor uh from 62 to 64.

That was a two-year term then.

Uh when when did that change?

That changed in '66.

Uh Don Shipley was the last mayor uh on serving a two-year consecutive term.

And then in 66 a new council came on.

They decided to change it to back to a one-year office.

The council was that when it was wasn't it expanded to seven members, seven members at that time.

There was a charter revision committee or something that worked back then to put this before the public, I guess.

That's right.

You mentioned Don Shipley, and uh it was kind of interesting that I noticed in looking back over some of the minutes that Don, who had been actively involved in a variety of ways prior to that time.

Uh you were mayor and you were responsible for appointing Don to the at that time the recreation commission.

This would have been in the fall of uh 63.

And then I noticed that Don was elected as a member of the city council and mayor in 64.

That was pretty quick.

Did you think when you appointed him as a member of the recreation commission that uh six or eight months later he was going to be sitting there with you on the city council as mayor?

No, didn't enter my mind at all.

Uh what were some of the issues that were involved during that eight-year period of time?

Uh some of the things that they're working on today deal with uh downtown redevelopment and uh the Bolsa Chica annexation and development and of course our park system and those kinds of things.

Were some of those things being talked about then?

We started the uh downtown study back in those days.

We brought the Urban Land Institute in make a study, make your recommendations.

Um we had the auto club come in and run a traffic survey, make the report on the traffic flow in the downtown section.

A lot of things started in those days.

Uh just a matter of uh trying to get things started.

We even tried to start a Citra City program, and uh 30 years later it finally materialized.

Was that the time or was that the first of parking meters downtown during that period of time, or had they been here before?

They had been here before.

Uh they had been on Pacific Coast Highway and on Main Street, and it'd always been a bone of contention with the merchants.

Uh then as it is now, uh running their business and but uh we still had it and I know you were also pretty actively involved uh with city council and uh as mayor in some of the early development of our park system.

Now our our the bond issue for the major development of the parks didn't come until the late 60s, but uh you were involved in uh in a number of things in buying land for Merty Park and we made a uh arrangement with uh Senator Murray for that park.

He donated some ground if we would uh uh gain title to the rest of it with the idea of making it a park.

We uh uh imposed on the the developers to donate uh certain amount of uh we rolled up in the subdivision code that uh ordinance that the uh they had to donate uh so much uh land for uh units of the or houses.

Um we prevailed on uh uh a couple of the developers uh to even donate uh sites for uh uh fire stations.

Uh so uh we we try to set out uh we worked very close with uh Norm or the and the recreation uh commission on and the school boards uh trying to locate our parks closer uh close to the schools so they could be utilized uh the year round and the school uh school property.

Uh we we were trying to look down the road uh to make a city out of it, which we can all be proud of later on.

I think uh I'm gonna pat everybody's back now that was on with me in those days that I think we did a pretty good job.

Well, I was thinking there was such a boom time in and the city was growing at 10 to 15,000 people a year at that time, plus annexing in some additional areas as you've indicated, and and uh to have some of the foresight that you've indicated as far as uh having the developers participate, utilizing school property or adjacent to school property for parks I I happen to have uh lived pretty close to the Wardlow area at that time and I remember that was sort of our park and we were always very happy with that and so uh sometimes we think in the city that uh park development really began in the in the 70s after the bond issue but there were a number of things that that the city council was doing uh at that time I know you mentioned involvement with the school districts too you were another uh person who uh who helped to revise I'm sure the uh parks commission so that it incorporated the school districts with membership they had a representative on and that hadn't been it hadn't been done before no that's great any other issues that uh you might think of I I one of the things I wanted to ask you about uh because I thought it was always kind of a neat thing and that is some of the surfing uh contests and taking advantage of that sort of thing back in the in the uh six sixties uh were you involved in the uh instituting of the surfing well really started with the uh uh uh with the lifeguard department and the recreation department working in conjunction and of course the city uh uh was sponsoring it and uh it was quite an uh quite an eventful affair they uh one year we had uh the uh the Duke over from Honolulu and uh it always drew a big crowd and there was an orderly crowd we didn't have the uh some of the stuff that's happening in the past few years but we have we we did have few riots back in those days too but it was kind of more of the the uh the atmosphere of the beach boys rather than uh some of the other things that go uh the oil companies had been around an a long long time and still are and I know that uh you were an advocate or I believe you were an advocate of uh encouraging the oil companies to do some cleanup of some unsightly areas uh do you remember anything that you were involved with that and what kind of pressures or repercussions we uh we had a we we hired one one man for a as an oil field inspector and uh he'd make reports to us on the uh violators of different ordinances we had along in conjunction with the fire department um we didn't uh most of the independents uh would reacted favorably with us the majors was was never any problem uh a few of the independents that um were very sloppy of their housekeeping and we felt it was time for the you know uh to uh clean up the city or clean up their area because we could see the particularly the downtown area uh out around the old rec center 17th and orange uh it was looking pretty bad out there and it took several years and perseverance and I think they uh came out uh very well in the long run it was a matter of just keep hammering away at them and we had uh they had an oil fuel committee uh meet uh a couple of countsmen meet with the representative of the different uh oil companies and some of the independents and we'd sit down around the table and work things out and it worked out very well I think were you involved in bringing any large industry or major businesses to Huntington well not not directly um um about the first big business came in and uh uh we had uh there's no one in the city had anything to do with that I know of but we welcome it with with open arms as the Douglas plant and that uh uh was started and uh dedicated during my time in as mayor.

We had uh vice president Johnson here that day for the dedication, and a week later he was a president.

Oh yes.

So uh that was the first uh big industry we had.

We had a few small ones.

We had uh a couple plastic plants move in.

But we were trying to welcome and try to try to bring industry in, but uh uh the Douglas moving in, then you could see uh later on what's what is happening in that area out there.

Yeah, as you mentioned Vice President Johnson, and a week later, of course we're talking uh November of 63, as I recall when Kennedy was shot, and so yeah that was tragic.

Uh some of the other names that were involved with city government at that time, city attorney I believe was Jerry Plunkett.

Well, when I went on the council uh uh Charles Bower was Charles Bauer, uh was the city attorney, was later appointed municipal court judge, later superior court judge.

Now he's retired.

Uh we appointed Jerry Plunkett in his place.

And Jerry stayed in office until 66.

And who was city manager?

Uh we didn't have a city manager, per se.

Uh before my time they had set up a ministrative form of government, and we had the the city clerk that time, John Henderson was the uh acting city administrator.

And uh it was getting to be uh quite a job for John and he indicated he wanted to retire.

So uh we uh contacted the state personnel board, and they provided several applicants, and we had an interview with them and we picked uh Doyle Miller, and Doyle was that was in '60 one, I believe, and uh and Doyle was there until uh his term was terminated.

I believe Doyle still lives in the city, he still lives in the city, he's quite active with the Metropolitan Water District now.

Uh who was the police chief?

Well, I went on the council and we had a device the days they elected the police chief.

Uh Ben Delaney was a police chief.

Uh Howard Rubadoo was a captain under Ben, and uh decided to run for chief, uh, got demoted because he was defeated back to patrolman, and uh year or two later uh Ben died uh and then we uh did the same thing, went out to the state personnel board to try to get us a qualified.

We had to to appoint somebody we'd try to get a qualified man to for an elected position.

We were always hoping to get a uh an appointed make it appointed, and we uh uh hired Clint Wright.

He was been a former police officer in Pasadena, deputy sheriff, especially with narcotics.

He was police chief in Westminster, so we hired him.

And and then he was in office about two years and came up for re-election, and Howard we would do defeated.

So we were back to the deal.

Then later on, Howard died, and they appointed we appointed John Seltzer then.

As you look back during your term of office uh as a member of the city council and as mayor.

What are some of your most favorite recollections and perhaps uh what's one of your biggest or any of your uh frustrations that you recall?

Well, nothing really frustrating as okay.

Um it was a good experience then.

It was a wonderful experience, it was good education.

Uh it's education worth a million dollars, but I wouldn't want to go through it again.

I was going to ask you if if you had it to all do uh to do all over again, if there's anything that you would have changed, or we'd have done everything just the same way.

Looking back, I think I'd have done been the same way.

I there's a lot of things I I feel that we did right, and um uh I think some of the present city council uh or got some of the same ideas I had, and uh I I can't see where I'd uh made any changes.

If you were to be asked uh to give some advice to the current city council, what would you say?

Well, I don't believe in giving advice.

Uh I uh I worked quite closely with a former councilman mayor, and uh it was only about two times in eight years he then I was on the council that I uh commented about anything about he'd done.

I thought we'll let him roll his own boat.

What are you doing now?

What have you been doing since you've uh left the city council?

Well, I uh uh got a position with uh with Manning Motors.

I'm service manager there.

And uh the eight years of Bob was on the council.

I uh he wasn't around the shop very long.

So I had to uh practically ran it for him.

Well, that's great.

I'm sure it was incapable hands.

So what about future plans?

What do you have in mind?

Well, in about another year, I hope to retire.

Uh the wife will be retiring, and we hope to do a little traveling that time.

Any particular place uh in mind, not really, not really.

Just uh like to see United States.

I'm not too uh interested in seeing Europe or some of those countries, but uh I think there's an awful lot to see right here in this country.

So you don't have any interest in running for city council again.

Not a bit.

Was there anything else that you might want to uh mention?

Anything that uh we haven't to ask you or you'd like to comment on.

Well, not really, Tom.

Uh I can say uh I look back and it was a lot of fun, a lot of work, and um, I enjoyed it at the time.

Well, the time when I get off the council, I didn't realize how tired it was.

I think I slept for a week straight.

But uh, it's it's time consuming, and I think it takes a younger person that has a stamina to to put up with it.

Of course, I I noticed somewhere in the minutes that you were getting paid 125 dollars uh a month or something.

Well, yeah, that was that's that was a lot of money that came in afterwards.

We started out at fifty dollars a month.

Is there and no expense money?

So uh then the people finally said, Well, you're putting in we plant we approached the people, and uh it was a ballot issue, and they increased our our uh uh wages, and it still didn't uh make up for the the time you spent or your your laundry bills and whatnot.

Well, listen, I really appreciate you uh spending some time with us and sharing some of your reflections here today, and and uh I know that our audience is going to appreciate uh these reflections as well.

And I I thank you for being here with us today, Bob.

Okay, thank you, Tom.

And thank you for letting us come into your home with this program, and a special thanks to our honorable former mayor, Bob Lambert.

This program has been produced by the City of Huntington Beach Cable Channel 3, and in the weeks to come, we'll be looking at highlights in the lives of other past Huntington Beach mayors.

We hope you'll join us.

This is Dr.

Tom Cooper bidding you good day.

Hello, I'm Fire Department Deputy Chief Eric McCoy, and welcome to this edition of Flashback.

Our iconic Huntington Beach Pier stands as one of the oldest and longest piers on the West Coast.

The city's first pier was built in 1902.

The wooden pier extended just a thousand feet into the Pacific Ocean.

In 1910, it was damaged by a severe storm that caused a large portion of it to plunge into the Pacific Ocean.

In 1914, the newly constructed pier was rededicated and set a record at that time as the longest and highest concrete pier in the United States.

More than 15,000 people attended the Piers rededication ceremony that featured legendary surfer George Friedh providing a surfing demonstration, and the beginning of Surf City was born.

The pier was damaged and rebuilt a for a few more times over the decades, but always rebuilt bigger and better than before.

Today it's a special place to watch surfers, fishermen cast their lines, visitors to stroll along, and has been the place for many wes wedding proposals.

Not to mention watching epic sunsets.

On this episode of Flashback, we found a historical piece of the pier from 1985, featuring the reopening and dedication of the pier and the pier's legendary restaurant, the End Cafe.

In this section of the pier and restaurant were destroyed in the storms of 1983, and this special reopening ceremony features the Ocean View High School marching band as well as two mariachi bands.

In addition, the video features historical information about the pier through the years.

From the early 1900s, the pier drew crowds traveling in the old red cars to watch motorcycle races on the beach or to dip in the saltwater pool that was located next to the pier.

Today, millions of visitors come to the pier to watch the U.S.

Open of Surfing as well as professional volleyball and still watching amazing sunsets.

We hope you enjoy this episode of Flashback.

Even before there was a Huntington Beach, the pier was the hub of a waterfront activity, beginning in 1903 when a wooden structure was extended, some 1,000 feet to sea.

Residents of the new resort community were joined by visitors from surrounding areas in the novelty of being able to stroll so far into the ocean on a pleasure pier.

Visiting the pier became easier on July 4th, 1904, when the first of the red cars of Henry Huntington, Pacific Electric Railway, rolled into the station of the tiny seaside community now called Huntington Beach, in honor of the railroad magnet.

With the big red cars running on frequent schedules, visitors came to the pier to participate in a variety of activities, including racing motorcycles on the sand, strolling along the boardwalk, swimming in the surf or at the saltwater plunge, and many came to relax in the sun while listening to the Huntington Beach City Band.

But the pier history has not always been one of tranquility.

In 1912, a severe storm sent huge surf roaring through the wooden pylons, causing heavy damage as the wooden structure was nearly washed away.

Coincidentally, the city council has been discussing the possibility of building a new pier and place a $70,000 pier construction bond issue proposition on the ballot.

Voters approved the idea, and a new 1,350-foot concrete replacement pier was built in June 1914.

It had the distinction of being the longest, highest, and the only solid pleasured pier in the United States.

From about 1914 to the 1920s, the pier had normal usage with an occasional large group meeting, spilling over from the nearby area known as Tent City.

But with the discovery of oil in 1920, the city's population went from 1,500 to over 7,000 in less than one year.

All was hustle and bustle in Huntington Beach as oil derries sprang up everywhere.

Ocean Avenue, now known as Pacific Coast Highway, was built in 1925 and extended to nearby cities.

Now visitors came to the pier by the carloads and their automobiles choked the highway and filled the parking area for blocks around the pier and main street.

All this attention and activity on the pier led to the extension of some 500 feet in the early 1930s to improve fishing and to provide a boat landing.

The extension, built of wooden pilings, was four feet lower than the older section and was known to sway a great deal when the surf was up or during storms.

The history of the Huntington Beach Municipal Pier has been one of the storms which have tested its ability to stand against the ocean, and in the late 1930s, the storm came again.

This time with the force of a hurricane, and during a 20-hour period in 1939, the inn 250 feet of the pier collapsed.

But the people of Huntington Beach repaired their piers again and again as the storms continued to take their toll.

In 1930, the Works Progress Administration, known as the WPA, began work on the pavilion building at the head of the pier.

It was finished in 1939 and served the community as a hall for concerts, dances, roller skating, and to this day as a restaurant.

The structure to the north of the pier, which housed the plunge and other beach-related uses, were also damaged in many storms.

But while the pier was constantly rebuilt, these buildings no longer exist.

People continue to use the pier as the center of attraction in Huntington Beach.

And at its entrance, a fun zone developed in the early 1940s, only to give away as the decade progressed.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Army took possession of the pier, occupying the structure until June 1945.

A machine gun emplacement was in the building at the end of the pier, while the Coast Guard was on the beach with a horse patrol.

But the war ended and the pier was returned to pleasure users.

The city's population continued to grow, increasing some 1,000% from 1950 through 1960, with the 5,000 or so of the early 1950s soaring to over 110,000 by 1970.

Beach and pier activity scored along with the population.

1958 through 1974, the pier was the host of the United States Surfboard Championships with thousands of surf enthusiasts watching the world's best amateurs surfers compete.

An exciting attraction was watching those skillful surfers ride their frail boards through the pilings of the pier.

Shooting the pier, it is called.

Not all the storms around the pier in those days were from the sea.

Huge crowds came to Huntington Beach in the summertime, particularly on the 4th of July, to watch the traditional fireworks display after dark.

The crush of sometimes unruly beachgoers became too much for the city's small police force, and some of the activities surrounding the pier, including the fireworks show and the surfing championships were ended.

Later, a new family crowd, because more common near the pier, and new attractions, including professional surfing championships, have made the pier again an important focal point of life in Huntington Beach.

Early 1983 was a stormy three-month period as a series of storms with high winds and large waves battered the pier.

In the early hour of March 3rd, waves from 15 to 20 feet high broke over the end of the pier, lifting and tearing decking, knocking out pilings, and destroying half of the fame in cafe.

Once the storms cleared, city officials could see that some 30 pilings had washed away.

4,000 square feet of deck was gone, and the inn cafe was destroyed.

Altogether, nearly one million dollars in damage.

But even as damage as was the pier, it withstood the onslaught of wind and waves much better than most piers along the coast from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

Many of which were nearly destroyed.

The future for the Huntington Beach Pier was brighter than for many of the other piers because of a bit of incredible foresight by the city risk management.

Our city was the only pier that was insured.

So in April 1984, after many studies, the city council approved the design of a 2,0900 square foot building to replace the inn cafe.

It was to be a two-story building to maximize benefit of the million dollar view.

It is to be rented for group use.

The first story was again leased to John and Alice Guffeson for his world-famous Inn Cafe.

John talks about the new restaurant.

Today we're getting ready for the grand opening and dedication, which will be on September 21st.

We have a brand new building.

And we will be featuring fresh baked goods.

We'll be baking all of our own breads and buns and cinnamon rolls out here.

So when you walk out on the pier, you'll be engulfed with the aroma of uh bacon frying and uh bread baking and cinnamon rolls baking, and it should be a rather pleasant experience for people coming out uh to enjoy their pier.

The Huntington Beach Pier has had a positive effect on the city and the beach, in addition to the many fishermen who frequent the pier each day.

It has created a wide beach by slowing up the currents along the coast and allowing the sand to settle around the pier.

The beach was less than 50 feet wide in 1913 and is some 350 feet wide today.

So fishing, strolling, enjoying the atmosphere, watching the contests or just enjoying the surf and the sand have kept the Huntington Beach Pier a place for all people who have a love of the ocean.

In a massive civic celebration, about 7,000 people jammed the Huntington Beach Pier to celebrate its reopening and dedication of the end of the pier cafe.

The end of the pier was closed after the March 1983 storms destroyed the end cafe and the surrounding decking.

The end cafe was rebuilt into a two-story 2900 square foot facility described as having the million dollar view.

While the Goodyear Blimp hovered a few hundred feet above the pier, the crowd was being entertained by two mariachi bands.

Of the hundreds of projects I worked on in my 41 years with the city, the Ruby's Diner Project was probably my favorite one.

I was the senior construction inspector for the project.

The entire team on the project was excellent.

The project manager was my boss Jack Miller, who had previously been the construction manager of the new pier a few years earlier.

The contractor was Varkal Construction, and they were very good.

The representatives from Ruby's, Doug Kavanaugh and Ralph Cosmeties.