Bob Wilson may have written the...

Bob Wilson may have written the book, “From Goat Hill to City of

the Arts: The History of Costa Mesa,” but the experiences over his

85-year lifespan have not been limited to the 23 years he spent on

the city’s Planning Commission and City Council, not to mention his

lead role in incorporating the city in 1953. The three-term mayor

served as director of the California League of Cities and was a

member of the National League of Cities. He was also very involved in

the creation of Fairview Park.

Wilson and wife of 64 years Maryalice once became hostages for

eight hours while in Beirut, Lebanon. The 55-year Costa Mesa and Goat

Hill resident boasts of visiting at least 56 nations over the years,

as well, and continues bringing his family on cruises for

enlightenment. And Wilson spent countless hours with once-frequent

area celebrity residents and guests John Wayne, Ronald Reagan, James

Cagney and Buddy Ebsen.

On Friday, like it was yesterday if you will, Wilson recounted a

select few of his many experiences when he sat down at the Daily

Pilot with City Editor James Meier.

What are your earliest memories of Costa Mesa?

Driving through Costa Mesa in 1936 [was the first time seeing the

then unincorporated area]. My wife’s folks lived on Lido Isle from

1940 to 1962. [So his first memories of Costa Mesa were] nothing. It

was Goat Hill all right.

Was there much here other than goats?

Yes, you had Alpha-Beta, Safeway, Pinkley’s Drug Store and Carr’s

Feed Store, which is the Triangle Square center now.

We had terrible water. The water was brownish and you weren’t

surprised if when you started drinking your glass of water and found

a worm in there waiting for you. It smelled like rotten eggs.

And when you did laundry, your sheets probably came out slightly

brown when you hung them out to dry. You could see it if you had a

white sheet. I don’t want to exaggerate too much to say everything

came out brown. A brand-new sheet would come out a different color.

You served 16 years on the City Council and seven on the city’s

first Planning Commission. What kept you going those 23 years?

Egotism. I’m an egotist. We like to accomplish things. We’re a

different breed. We’re the guy who invents the airplane, automobile,

rocket and so on. We do it because we have something inside of us

that says “Hey, let’s do it.”

You see, there was always something that needed to be done. I got

involved with the Home Rule group when I discovered that I was the

only one who could really put it together and then incorporate the

city because it had failed before. And we were successful.

And the next thing was to get things established because we used

to call ourselves the Costa Mesa Salvage Commission, not Planning

Commission, because the county had done so many bad things to us

before we were Costa Mesa. They didn’t care if you had an outhouse in

the middle of downtown.

We were really just a stepchild and, since Newport Beach was so

wealthy and powerful, they just walked all over us. We were really a

stepchild. We knew what it was to have prejudice. We were second rate

to everybody.

Do you think that’s changed?

Oh definitely. Costa Mesa is the gem of Orange County. This is the

richest city in the county per capita. I’m not talking about the

houses in Newport Beach. I’m talking about the average person, what

they have in their properties and savings accounts. And industrially

and from a business standpoint, we’re extremely rich.

What sparked you to write the book, “From Goat Hill to City of the

Arts: The History of Costa Mesa?”

I’m not really a writer. It’s just that I felt somebody should

write about the history of Costa Mesa. Who better than me? I was the

only person who really was alive and I knew all of the people who are

in the book. All of those people were personal friends of mine.

So will you write an updated edition?

When you’re 85, it’s hard to say.

What was most fascinating to you while researching for the book?

The fact that the best leaders of our city, such as George

Argyros, Don Koll, Henry Segerstrom, were all self made. Don Koll was

a carpenter. George Argyros worked in a grocery store. Henry

Segerstrom, even though he had his Stanford education and sort of

came from a silver spoon family, had to work to become manager of

South Coast Plaza and so on. His first job was to lease some property

in Costa Mesa that no one else could do and he did so successfully,

so the family gave him more.

What do you love most about the city?

Climate.

Warmer than your native Tacoma, Wash.?

Oh yes, warmer and drier.

What keeps you going today?

I have to. Either I die or I live.

I don’t know how to answer that really. I have a wonderful family.

As a matter of fact, you may have noticed in the Pilot in December a

picture of my whole family. I take my family on a cruise about every

other year. This year, I took 21 of them on a cruise around the

Hawaiian Islands. I sent them through the Panama Canal last year.

I have traveled to at least 56 foreign countries and I want my

kids to understand that people are people. No matter where you go,

color may be different, politics may be different, religion may be

different, but they’re still people. The more I can introduce them,

while I’m alive, to places I’ve been to before -- for example, if you

go into the Caribbean, you’ll see some ebony blacks who speak

absolutely gorgeous English. So my kids are beginning to understand a

lot of things.

Another thing is table manners aboard ships. When you go to eat

there, you have a lot of courses and the kids learn a lot of manners

that they normally may not learn at home.

Oh, and my wife and I were hostages in Beirut in 1973, I think. It

was only eight hours for us and then we were released. They just

shoved us in the [airport] terminal and kept us there. There were

armed guards everywhere. Evidently, they looked at all of the

passports and decided we could go.

So we went from there to India, where we got to see wedding where

the bride never had seen the groom before in her life. He was about

old enough to be her father. And we went to Tehran, where the Shah’s

twin sister invited us for tea, which was pretty important.

Another one of our trips was in Rome, where I got to meet Pope

Paul personally. It was very interesting. When John Paul, the current

pope, came to Los Angeles the first time, they asked him a question,

“Are you going to change” the following.

Well, Pope Paul had his hand on my hand when he was talking to two

other popes, one who had a church in the Philadelphia area and

another going to seminar in Rome, and this is what he was saying:

There are three important things I must make a decision on. One was

pornography, another was smoking marijuana and the third was the

birth control pills. He asked them to go out in civilian clothes and

investigate and come back and tell me all about this. And they did

evidently.

So then John Paul was asked if he was going to stay with the three

decisions that Pope Paul made on marijuana, pornography and birth

control. And he said he wasn’t going to change a thing. So what makes

it so important was that Bob Wilson was there with the pope, holding

his hand, when he made a world decision that affects millions of

people. That was one of the highlights in my life.

I knew Ronald Reagan fairly well and John Wayne. I can throw all

kinds of names out ... [With the pope], I though that was a big deal.

Of course looking down the barrel of a gun in Beirut was a big deal,

too.