Category Archives: History

Another flashback to Kahala Elementary

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Okay, here’s another one from an old photo album. It’s the “official” photo of my 5th grade class at Kahala elementary School in 1958. Our teacher was Mrs. Lau.

This is a repeat of a post that first appeared here almost 12 years ago.

The terrible thing is that I don’t have any recollection, good or bad, of Mrs. Lau. That contrasts with my vivid memory of Miss Yamasaki, my 6th grade teacher, who told me I would “never amount to anything” because I was lazy and didn’t work hard on my homework. She was right on the last count. I was bored and didn’t spend much time on homework. But I was avidly reading and asking questions about how things work that my mother would deflect by pointing to the set of World Book encyclopedias where I was supposed to look up the answers. And, as I recall, I did. But homework? Not so much.

But back to the class photo. I’ve attached the somewhat incomplete list my mother typed at the time identifying most students in the class. She luckily saved it with the photo, and I found it many years later. .

I’m sure you can find me without resorting to the crib sheet. Or can you?

And maybe someone knows others whose names are missing? If so, share some info about them, please.

Click on the photo to see a larger version.



1958

Site of 1938 surfing contest in Long Beach designated a historic site

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I learned this week that the State of California has now officially designated the site of the First National Surfing Championship held in November-December 1938 in Long Beach, California, as an official Point Of Historical Interest

The historical designation was approved by Armando Quintero, director of the California Department of Parks and Recreation, in April 2024.

My dad, then a 23-year old active in the Long Beach Junior Chamber of Commerce, was one of the key organizers of the 1938 event. He learned to surf while a junior lifeguard in Long Beach. At the end of his life, he told me he had never been a good surfer. But he was an excellent and enthusiastic organizer who pulled together the Long Beach Surf Club and then drew the Junior Chamber into sponsoring a forward-looking First National Surfing Championship held in Long Beach in November and December 1938.

Conducted over two days in November and December 1938, the contest was the region’s first surfing and paddleboard competition billed as a national event. The Championships was both a successful visitor attraction for the city and a notable contest for Southern California pre-war surfers and paddleboarders. The event brought 50,000 visitors to Long Beach’s West End shoreline to watch more than 100 competitors.

Check out more of my dad’s photos of the 1938 event.

There were no waves, at least on the first day of the event, but as the caption on one of his photos of the event noted, it was “a good day for paddling,” and they made do with surfboard and paddleboard races and other events. And with major press coverage by the Los Angeles Times and the Long Beach Press Telegram, the event drew crowds!

Congratulations to the sponsors of the historic designation, the San Diego-based nonprofit Sea of Clouds, and the Surfrider Foundation, Long Beach Chapter.

The Meda List, continued

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I thought that my post over the weekend, “The Meda List“, had found the answer to the origin of my wife’s name.

Of course, I gave myself some wiggle room, adding a suggestive sentence at the end of the post:

I haven’t started to claw my way back through the next generation or two of the Morgan and Bishop families, looking for more appearances of the names Almeda or Meda that would further confirm this new origin story.

I was itching to peel back another layer, but instead of starting on the Morgan and Bishop families that had married Menardi men, I decided to take a look at the first Menardi to come to the U.S., Joseph Sebastian Menardi, who sometimes is referred to as Giuseppe Sebastiani Menardi. Late in his life, he married Harriet Granger, who was considerably younger.

And I quickly learned Harriet Granger was the daughter of Roderick Granger Sr. and, are you ready? Almeda Dunlap! Suddenly there was another independent “Meda” to add at the top of the Meda List, challenging my initial answer.

Here’s my problem at this point. There is a lot of potential slippage in this whole story. The genealogical sites use their own search algorithms that don’t always return the same result when the same search terms are used. This makes it harder to replicate findings, or to find bits of information that I recall seeing but didn’t think important enough at the time to include in my notes. Searches in Newspapers.com are subject to similar frustrating peculiarities.

I’m going to have to set this aside for a while until after my upcoming surgery. But I’m sure my curiosity will lure me back to it over the next couple of months.

The Meda List

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I’m choosing to stay at arms length from digging into current events and issues that I would normally be eager to investigate. Somewhat fragile health is frustrating, and I’ve decided to reduce the stress and anxiety by just putting these things aside for a while and looking elsewhere for puzzles to challenge my curiosity, chasing questions of less social consequence.

Here’s an example.

Meda, my wife’s name, is unusual, and I have to admit that we have never known much about it’s origin.

Meda was named after her maternal grandmother, Meda Mendardi Renton.

Given Meda Menardi’s Italian heritage, we long held the belief that “Meda” was an Italian name. It sounds Italian, and it’s easy to imagine it rolling off the tongue in an Italian accent.

But as I was fiddling around this week, I asked several AI assistants if “Meda” is an Italian name. There was general agreement it is not considered Italian nor found much in Italy.

Meda is named after her grandmother, Meda Menardi, shown here with her husband, James Lewis Renton, on their wedding day in Sept. 1921.

Then I found a list buried in one of my digital archives in which Meda’s grandmother, prior to her death in 1980, wrote out the names every “Meda” in the family that she could remember. She placed herself as #3 in the Meda list, which appears at the bottom of this post.

In the #2 spot was her aunt, her father’s sister, Almeda Menardi (married name Rising). So she was likely named for this aunt, still consistent Meda being a traditional name in her Italian family.

I then tracked back to the first Menardi to come to the United States, Joseph Sebastian Menardi, sometimes identified as Giuseppe Sebastian Menardi. I’ve had trouble dating his entry into the United States, but it appears to have been in the late 1700s or early 1800s. Family lore has it that he was drawn into late 18th century Italian and European revolutionary movements at the time of the French Revolution, and was ultimately forced to flee. Whether that’s true or not is, well, unsettled.

Genealogical records suggest he joined other early pioneer settlers of the towns of Wysox and Towanda, Bradford County, Pennsylvania, located in the Susquehanna River Valley along the New York line, and his descendants intermarried with other pioneer families in that part of Pennsylvania.

But then a noticed a problem with the Mendardi origin story.

Joseph Sebastian Menardi had a son, Andrew Elijah Menardi, born in 1826. Andrew was the grandfather of Meda’s grandmother. Is your brain having trouble with the generations? It took me days to wrap my head around the information without getting hopelessly confused and losing track of generations.

But here’s the thing. The name “Meda” doesn’t appear to have been handed down within the Menardi family, but from the family of Andrew Mendardi’s wife, Mary Lemora Mendardi, born Morgan.

Mary Morgan Menardi had a sister, Harriet Almeda Morgan, born in 1818 to parents Harry Morgan (1790-1872) and Harriet Bishop (1794-1868). And Meda’s grandmother identified this Harriet Almeda Morgan, whose married name was Fowler, as the first Meda.

I haven’t started to claw my way back through the next generation or two of the Morgan and Bishop families, looking for more appearances of the names Almeda or Meda that would further confirm this new origin story.

It was only at this point that I recalled an aside suggested by one of the AI assistants that I had initially discounted because it was inconsistent with the Menardi thesis.

In English-speaking regions—particularly in the 19th and early 20th centuries—Meda became a popular diminutive for Almeda. Parents would often name a child Almeda on official records while using Meda as the “call name” or everyday nickname. This pairing was especially common in American pioneer and rural communities, where Almeda saw its peak popularity.

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