Category Archives: John Lind Collection

Documents, photos, and notes in the collection of my dad, John M. Lind, who turned 95 on Dec. 7, 2008.

Two views of a Long Beach landmark

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Here are a couple of photos taken in Long Beach, California, nearly a century apart.

I took the top photo while we were in Long Beach earlier this month. The building on the left with the unusual green spire is the Villa Riviera, now a condominium that is on the national historic register. It was originally build in 1928-1929 as a luxury residential cooperative, but has seen different uses over its lifetime.

Wikipedia has an entry on the building that provides a quick history.

From Wikipedia:

Built from 1927 to 1929 at a cost of $2.75 million, the Villa Riviera is a 16-story French Gothic Building. The steel-framed[3] structure is topped with a steeply pitched verdigris copper roof. The building was designed by architect Richard King who won a grand prize at an international contest for the design that he referred to as “Tudor Gothic.” The structure features fierce-looking gargoyles perched along the ridges of the higher floors. The building was also equipped with luxurious features, including a ballroom, Italianate roof garden, lounges, high-speed elevators, “vacuum-type heating,” and a 100-car garage.

It was the second tallest building in Southern California until being surpassed by new construction in the 1950s.

The same building dominated the Long Beach skyline in the second photo, which was taken somewhere around 1930-31, soon after it was completed.

The woman on the left of the photo is Betty Peabody, who was my dad’s girlfriend when he was still a student at Wilson High School, somewhere around 1930-1931. Peabody’s family had a farm in Birmingham, Michigan, near Detroit, but they met when she she spent a summer with a relative in Long Beach.

See:

In search of Betty Peabody, iLind.net, October 10, 2016

In search of Betty Peabody, Part II, March 18, 2017

How far would you drive for a few hours of surfing?

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Here’s a bit of history.

I received an email last week from an author working on a book about beach culture during the Great Depression and World War II, to be published by the University of Illinois Press. He was seeking permission to use a photo from my dad’s collection, which I gladly provided, along with a higher resolution version of the file.

A couple of days later, he responded with an attachment.

While I was doing research for my book, I started reading through Doc Ball’s newsletter for the Palos Verdes Surfing Club. In one issue from March 1939, he mentions your father and took a picture of him surfing Bluff Cove in Palos Verdes. But the story is even better: Lind drove all the way from San Francisco for a session, then drove back.

Here’s a bit of background to that story, drawn from rough notes my dad wrote in 2003, seventy years after he started working for the company that took him to San Francisco and, in a few months, to Honolulu.

After graduating from high school in 1932, my dad–John Montgomvery Lind– spent much of a year as an oiler on a freighter that made its way down the west coast, through the Panama Canal, and then up the east coast, and back.

Then in 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression, he landed a job with the Long Beach branch of the Dohrmann Hotel Supply Company, a large company based in San Francisco. He started as a stock room clerk in 1933, then became a delivery driver, and through a lucky break got into sales. He was apparently a good salesman, and did whatever he could to get ahead. He credited joining the Junior Chamber of Commerce with providing new skills and contacts which, along with his hard work, paid many dividends.

In 1938, got a tip from a factory representative of the Hobart Company that Dohrmann was was looking for someone to assist the manager of its store in Honolulu.

So my dad decided to write to the president of the company, a Mr. Sullivan, requesting an interview, using the a speech about the company he worked for as part of a Jaycee’s group he had joined.

Writing that letter to the head of the company was a big deal for him, and he knew he needed help. He turned to “a college graduate” he had met on his salesman’s rounds, Barbara Chadwick, the cafeteria manager and dietician for the Chadwick School in Palos Verdes.

She was college graduate from Boston who, when learning of my inquiry, volunteered to check it over. The letter was finalized, and as a p/s, she suggested adding, “if you ever need assistance in your Honolulu store, I would appreciate consideration.” Within a week after the letter was mailed, a phone call had been received by the Long Beach office requesting I be at the San Francisco office for an interview with the company president. This meant an overight train trip to San Francisco that was hastely arranged. I spent about two hours with Mr. Sullivan and as a result was told to return to Long Beach and wait for further instructions.

He ended up being offered the Honolulu job, but to prepare himself, the company wanted him to spend three months in San Francisco learning about all the parts of the business. So off he went.

The supposed 90-day training period turned out to be over six months. My main assignment was to work in every department of the company, a week or so in each department. I doubt if any young employee had ever received such a break and opportunity, but I was anxious to move on and made every effort to gain as much knowledge as possible.

Incidentally my speach at the Jaycee Forum was surprisingly well accepted.

My salary did not cover my living expenses in San Francisco, but I was able to squeeze by without asking for more money. My parents had close family friends in San Francisco who arranged to make a room available for me, assuring me of a safe place to reside while in training. Dohrman officials were also very gracious and kept me entertained on week ends as the work day was 7:30 AM till 5:00 p.m. daily.

It was a great experience and following the training period I was given a one way first class ticket to Honolulu on the liner S.S. Lurline. I was able to spend the last week in at home in Long Beach and sailed from the docks in Wilmington.

I had purchased another new 1939 Dodge at the factory in Detroit but arranged to have a friend living in Birmingham, Michigan, and another friend, drive the new car across the country to California. When the car was loaded on the Lurline it had two surfboards tied on to the top, and a trunk and suit case in the boot of the car. That was it, bag and baggage, and I was twenty-five years old and moving on to a strange new environment.

The voyage on the Lurline called for dress at dinner, with white coat. A rare treat as I had n ever been in a tux beffore . It was a five day trip and one of the greatest experiences any one could possibly enjoy.

For Fathers Day: Photos of my dad in 1937

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My father was among the throngs of people who converged for the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge in May 1937, two years before he arrived in Hawaii, and a decade before I arrived in this world.

He was 23 years old, and was working for the Dohrmann Hotel Supply Company in Los Angeles. The company had a headquarters in San Francisco where he went for training, and where he lobbied for a transfer to a small Dorhmann office in Honolulu.

He eventually succeeded in getting that job in Honolulu and boarded an island-bound ship at the end of April 1939. He arrived on the dock in Honolulu on May 1, 1939.

Happy Fathers Day! Almost everyone misses their father, even if your relationships were complicated, and I’m no exception. In October, it will be ten years since his death. It doesn’t feel that long. And it feels like forever. Life is like that.

Golden Gate Bridge c.1937

Looking back to the founding of the Molokai-Oahu canoe race

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Yesterday was the annual mens Molokai to Oahu canoe race, now known as the Molokai Hoe. Yesterday’s race was the 67th in a competition that began with just a few canoes in 1952.

And every couple of years, I repost about my dad’s role in the founding of this now famous event. My dad, John M. Lind, passed away in October 2010 at the age of 96. He was about six weeks short of his 97th birthday.

In my dad’s own recollection of the founding of the annual Molokai- Oahu canoe race, he described his extraordinary involvement during a key period of Hawaii history.

“On a personal note, I feel as close to this event as any one could be. In 1952 I was serving as president of the Waikiki Surf Club, president of the Hawaii Canoe Racing Association, chairman of the aquatics committee of the Junior Chamber of Commerce Oldtimers, sponsor of the first Molokai-Oahu race, and was busy organizing the first International Surfing Championships at Makaha in conjunction with the Waianae Lions Club. And, at the same time, I was manager of a mainland hotel and restaurant supply company that required at least ten hours days, usually seven days a week.”

1952

What follows is a repeat of an entry first posted back in November 2009.

In 2002, my father was asked for his recollections of the founding of the Molokai to Oahu canoe race on the occasion of its 50th anniversary.

It became an opportunity for him to record some memories of that period in the history of Hawaii’s competitive surfing and canoeing.

I’ve found several drafts of his short history, each containing different details, names of people and descriptions of events.

The race was started as part of Aloha Week by the Junior Chamber of Commerce “Oldtimers”, a group of men, my dad included, active in the Jaycees who had aged out of the organization.

He recalls Harry Nardmark, the group’s first president, and several others, who threw themselves into organizing of a range of events, along with the members of the Waikiki Surf Club, which had a committee for surfing and canoeing which was headed by Wally Froiseth, assisted by George Downing.

“Toots” Minville had been talking about the potential for a Molokai-Oahu race for years, based on his experience of conditions in the channel.

His idea was picked up by the “Oldtimers”.

Toots was called in and he went to work in an effort to get organized clubs with outrigger canoes to participate. Outrigger and Hui Nalu were the only organized clubs at the time, other than the newly organized Waikiki Surt Club. Wally Froseth, the head of the canoe committee of the surf club, relished the idea of the event and was the first to volunteer and entry. Henrietta Newman, a resident of Molokai, also was interesting in competing but did not have a canoe to paddle–Toots went to work and obtained the use of an outrigger owned by Doris Duke Cromwell that was loaned for the event.

And so it went.

Canoe owners were reluctant to allow their boats into the race, fearing damage from the often treacherous conditions of the Molokai Channel.

The Outrigger Canoe Club declined to loan its equipment to others for the race, but George “Dad” Center, a prominent Outrigger member, personally offered his 40 foot Koa racing canoe, the “Malia”, to the Waikiki Surf Club.

There’s a funny story unrelated to the Molokai-Oahu race.

When my dad arrived in Honolulu in 1939, he needed a place to store the two surfboards he had brought with him from California.

He quickly found out that the only place on the beach was the Outrigger, but its facilities were available to members only. Membership at the time was $10, so he applied for membership and two lockers for his boards, a solid board shaped by Hoppy Swartz of Venice, California, and a 17? hollow paddle board.

When I took the boards into the Outrigger Club area, a little dark skinned Hawaiian boy greeted me with, “Hey, haole, where you goin with the ‘Pineapple barge’?”

This little guy was Blue Makua, my first introduction to Waikiki. Blue must have been around 12 years old at the time (maybe younger).

Of course, Blue Makua went on to become one of the best known of the Waikiki beachboys.

In any case, it all makes for interesting reading.

A September 1953 editorial clipped from the Star-Bulletin or Advertiser lauded my father’s role in promoting surfing and canoe racing in the post-WWII years, among other things as a leader in organizing the Hawaii Surfing Association before the outbreak of WWII, and after the war being among the founders of the Waikiki Surf Club and the Hawaiian Canoe Racing and Surfing Association.

The editorial quoted from the 1953 season canoe program:

Lind’s indefatigable perseverance, organizing ability and great interest in preserving the art of canoe paddling has, with the help of many devoted members of the association, made possible the carrying on of the 1952 and 1953 races.

He has been gone nearly six years,but he left his mark, didn’t he!