Roundup: March 8, 2017
Almansor Court – 700 S. Almansor, Alhambra, CA.
Social Hour: 5:00 PM
Dinner: 6:00 PM
Our Speaker: Thomas Pinney
Subject: Los Angeles: City of Vines; Winemaking in Los Angelse
Making wine in a coastal desert?? The role of the Los Angeles region in the history of viticulture and winemaking has almost been forgotten and has certainly been diminished. Los Angeles is where it all began, and where, for many years, most California wine originated. The entire California wine industry descends directly from Los Angeles.
Thomas Pinney has had a distinguished 35 year academic career at Pomona College, now emeritus professor of English, having previously held positions at Hamilton College and at Yale. He has published scholarly works on George Eliot, Thomas Babington Macaulay, and Rudyard Kipling. [“I say, ‘Do you like Kipling? I don’t know; I’ve never kipled’ ”.] Never having kippled, but most likely having tippled, Pinney has avocationally written about American wine history, including a two-volume History of Wine in America (University of California Press) and a forth-coming history of winemaking in the Los Angeles region, from which his talk is derived.
Factoid: Who was Mesnager and name more than one L.A. area feature named after him.
Roundup: February 8, 2017
Almansor Court – 700 S. Almansor, Alhambra, CA.
Social Hour: 5:00 PM
Dinner: 6:00 PM
Our Speaker: Darryl Holter
His Subject: This Land is Your Land: Woody Guthrie in Los Angeles, 1937-1941
Woody Guthrie was, and still is, one of the most beloved of all American singers and songwriters. Guthrie’s very productive years in Los Angeles at the end of the Great Depression forever changed his music, his politics, and greatly expanded his audience. Guthrie performed his own songs on his popular, KFVD Los Angeles, live radio show. They made him first a local, then a national, celebrity. With his lyrics about unemployment, homelessness, and inequality, Guthrie became the voice of thousands of migrant families who had fled the Dust Bowl in search of a new life in California. His songs also inspired political activists, intellectuals, and writers like John Steinbeck. Woody Guthrie, by common assent, was the most important precursor to the American folk music revival of the late 1940s and early 1950s. His powerful cultural legacy continues to grow in our own, 21st, century. Our February, 2017, Los Angeles Corral roundup will be a special treat, for our guest speaker will also be a guest singer, entertaining us with a selection of Woody Guthrie songs, accompanying himself on guitar. Don’t Miss It! We’ll See You There!
Darryl Holter is a business leader, historian, musician, and recognized authority on Woody Guthrie. He has a Ph.D in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has taught at the University of Wisconsin and at UCLA. Dr. Holter has written several books, two dozen scholarly articles, and has put out his own selections of historic Woody Guthrie songs as CDs/DVDs. Radio Songs is his fourth album. He is also the CEO of the Shammas Group, a family-owned group of automobile dealerships and commercial property in Downtown LA with nearly a thousand employees. He founded the Figueroa Corridor Business Improvement District in 1998 and served as its Chairman for fourteen years. But Darryl’s true passion is blending music with history, and no better nor more creative icon to focus both disciplines upon exists than Woody Guthrie. Dr. Holter is the first historian to explore, in depth, the legendary folk singer’s time in Los Angeles. His February, 2017, presentation will review Guthrie’s observations on the local scene from 80 years ago: his satires on local politics, the wealthy, and the future of Los Angeles.
Brian Dervin Dillon, Ph.D.
Newly-Elected Sheriff
Living Legend No. 61 – Dr. Abraham Hoffman
Westerners International Living Legend No. 61 Dr. Abraham Hoffman
Abraham Hoffman joined the Los Angeles Corral of Westerners in the Fall of 1973, at the invitation of renowned historian Doyce Nunis. Hoffman’s first presentation to the corral as a speaker was in 1976: his most recent of many outstanding presentations was in February of 2016, exactly 40 years later. Dr. Hoffman became the Sheriff of the Los Angeles Corral in 1997: his tenure in the top spot is still remembered as a high point of our long existence. Abe has persuaded numerous interested parties to visit corral events, and to become members, including Glenn Thornhill, and Brian Dervin Dillon. Abe became the Editor of the corral’s quarterly publication The Branding Iron in 1985, and ably served in that position for three years. Ever after, he has served as Book Review Editor for that same quarterly. He has also been a regular author of corral publications, including the two most recent Keepsakes, and over a dozen Branding Iron articles since 1973. His writing has been recognized through many awards over the past 40 years, including the Danielson Award (1976, 2008, 2012), The Fred Olds Cowboy Poetry Award (2011, 2016), and the Best Book Award for 2015.
In addition to his varied activities with the Los Angeles Corral of Westerners, Dr. Hoffman is also a member of the Los Angeles City Historical Society, the Historical Society of Southern California, the Organization of American Historians, the Western History Association, and Western Writers of America. The Historical Society of Southern California has awarded Dr. Hoffman the Donald H. Pflueger Award for “distinguished research and writing on the local history of Southern California.”
Dr. Hoffman was born in Los Angeles. He attended Los Angeles City College and received B.A. and M.A. degrees from Los Angeles State College (now CSU, Los Angeles), then earned his doctorate in History at UCLA. He taught in Los Angeles schools for more than thirty years and has been an adjunct professor at Los Angeles Valley College since 1974.
Abe’s books include Unwanted Mexican Americans in the Great Depression: Repatriation Pressures, 1929-1939 (1974), Vision or Villainy: Origins of the Owens Valley-Los Angeles Water Controversy (1981), An Oklahoma Tragedy: The Shooting of the Mexican Students, 1931 (1987), California Then and Now (1996), and Mono Lake: From Dead Sea to Environmental Treasure (2014). His latest book is California’s Worst Earthquakes (working title), due for publication in 2017. Hoffman also serves on the board of editors for Southern California Quarterly. He reviews books, and has contributed articles to many different history publications, including California History, California Territorial Quarterly, Journal of the West, Pacific Historical Review, Pacific Historian, Western Historical Quarterly, and Western States Jewish History. One of the most prolific historical writers of western America, by conservative estimate Dr. Hoffman has published more than 700 book reviews during the past four decades.
The Los Angeles Corral of Westerners is proud to claim many outstanding members who have made their mark in educational, literary, and bibliographical contexts, above and beyond their service to our organization. Nevertheless, a very few illustrious members stand head and shoulder over the rest of us. Dr. Abraham Hoffman is just such a Westerner, and all members of the Los Angeles Corral congratulate him upon being honored, in the 70th year of our existence, as Westerners International Living Legend No. 61.
Brian Dervin Dillon, Ph.D.
Deputy Sheriff,
Los Angeles Corral of Westerners
December 15, 2016
Living Legend No. 60 – Monsignor Fancis J. Weber
Westerners International Living Legend No. 60 Monsignor Francis J. Weber
Monsignor Francis J. Weber is one of the most active of all members of the Los Angeles Corral of Westerners. He was first persuaded to come to corral round-ups by the archaeologist and historian Mark Raymond Harrington in 1962, the same year he became the Archivist for the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Weber became a member of the Los Angeles Corral in 1969, and presented his first invited lecture to it in 1970. His most recent of more than a dozen presentations came forty-six years later, in 2016. Monsignor Weber threw open the gates of San Fernando Mission to the Corral in 1973, for that year’s annual Fandango. He has contributed more than a dozen articles to the Branding Iron, the Los Angeles Corral Quarterly, and was the editor of the Los Angeles Corral Brand Book No. 21 (1999), an amazing collection of no fewer than 73 contributions by members, friends, and other local historians. Weber served as the Los Angeles Corral Sheriff in 1995, and his leadership is remembered fondly by all members, especially its female ones, for finally making the corral co-ed.
Francis J. Weber was educated at the Catholic University of America and is the recipient of the only Honorary Doctorate ever granted to a priest by Azusa Pacific University. He has taught at many different ecclesiastical and secular institutions, including Immaculate Heart College, Mount St. Mary’s College, and the University of Southern California. Monsignor Weber has always been devoted to local history, and has encouraged many others, Westerners and non-Westerners alike, to take the plunge and get involved in research, writing, and publication. Foremost amongst such success stories is that of fellow Los Angeles Corral members Ken and Carol Pauley, who, after twenty-five years of research, published their magnificent historical volume (2005) on the California Mission most closely associated with Msgr. Weber: San Fernando, Rey de España. Weber, if not the only member of Westerners International to also be a priest, is certainly the only monsignor.
Father Weber has for more than half a century effortlessly navigated through both sacred and secular waters, offering guidance, leadership, and good fellowship to his diverse flocks, be they fellow historians or parishoners. Monsignor Weber is known to his many friends and admirers as “the Old Country Priest.” He is Archivist Emeritus of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, and by common accord the most knowledgeable living scholar of California’s ecclesiastical history. Ordained in 1959, since that time he has celebrated Mass at a great many California locations, including Santa Cruz Island, and has been a tireless and effective spiritual and intellectual leader at San Fernando Mission. Msgr. Weber, in addition to his many local duties, serves as an Honorary Chaplain to His Holiness Pope Francis. Few historians ever get to see a major research archive built to their own specifications, much less one with their own personal, built-in “research cave,” but for Francis J. Weber, this dream came true for him at Mission San Fernando, Rey de España, in 1980. He is still there at the Archival Center, thirty-six years later, accompanied by his faithful dog (Shelty No. 7) Wild Bill Cody, just slightly younger (in dog years) than the Monsignor himself.
Weber is widely published on Spanish Colonial history, ecclesiastical history, and the history of California and the West. His books include: The California Missions as Others Saw Them, 1786-1842 (1972), A Select Bibliography of California Catholic Literature, 1856-1974 (1974), The Life and Times of Fray Junípero Serra (1987), The Mission in the Valley: A Documentary History of San Fernando, Rey de España (1987), Century of Fulfillment: The Roman Catholic Church in Southern California 1840-1947 (1990), Prominent Visitors to the California Missions, 1746-1842 (1991), Memories of an Old Mission: San Fernando, Rey de España (1997), The Literary High Spots of Mission Hills, California (1998), Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels (2004), The California Missions (2005), Catholic Heroes of Southern California (2007), Blessed Fray Junípero Serra: An Outstanding California Hero (2008) and More Memories of an Old Country Priest (2011), to name just a few. Monsignor Weber is such a prolific writer that his 30+ years of newspaper columns were updated and republished in the year 2000 in an 1148-page volume (Encyclopedia of California’s Catholic Heritage, 1769-1999), and the complete listing of his early publications, the 1995 hard-cover book A Bibliographical Gathering: The Writings of Msgr. Francis J, Weber, 1953-1993 extends to a whopping 270 pages. In order to accommodate the 23 years of publishing since, a second volume is obviously indicated. Weber’s present writing task is the third volume in his Memories of an Old Country Priest series.
The Los Angeles Corral of Westerners is proud to claim many outstanding members who have made their mark in educational, literary, and bibliographical contexts, above and beyond their service to our organization. Nevertheless, a very few illustrious members stand head and shoulders above the rest of us. Monsignor Francis J. Weber is just such a Westerner, and all members of the Los Angeles Corral congratulate him upon being honored, in the 70th year of our existence, as Westerners International Living Legend No. 60.
Brian Dervin Dillon, Ph.D.
Deputy Sheriff,
Los Angeles Corral of Westerners
December 15, 2016
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