A former mayor’s take on Surf City

JERRY PERSON

“Huntington Beach has expanded its boundaries nearly as far as it

can. We have the property we needed for industrial and residential

growth. What we need now is a sewer system to service the area.

Huntington Beach is really going to boom in the next few years.”

These were the words spoken by former Huntington Beach Mayor Earl

Irby, a building contractor, Irby 45 years ago. But these same words

could apply to what is happening to our city today.

In this week’s column we will look briefly at the man who spoke

those words.

It was in the small town of Chetopa, Kan. that our subject was

born. Chetopa is south of Pittsburg, Kan. and just north of Miami,

Okla. It was on Feb. 16, 1902 that this frontier town welcomed its

new arrival to this world.

Then, in 1904, the Irby family left the prairie to settle in the

Golden State. Young Earl received his early schooling in San

Bernardino and Redlands. After high school, while he was still in his

teens, Earl got a job as “key boy” at Frank Bundy’s old two-story

bath house in Santa Monica.

While he was there an earthquake struck and shook that old wooden

bath house so strong that the girls inside ran out onto the beach

stark naked. Bundy told Earl that we should have one of those

earthquakes every week.

About this time Earl found his life’s work in the building

business. He worked on the home that William Randolph Hearst was

building for his friend Marion Davies in Santa Monica. Earl spent

almost a year there just building the stairways in that mansion.

He and his wife, Mary, spent a good deal of their married life in

the Hollywood area.

Earl loved to play tennis and was state champion in 1921. But it

was the 1947 big building boom of Southern California that brought

Earl and Mary and their family to Huntington Beach to live.

By 1950 Earl was building custom cabinets, doors and windows from

his cabinet shop at 611 5th St. (which is 6th Street today), which he

called Earl’s Woodshop.

Earl built an apartment building in the 200 block of Acacia Avenue

and made one the apartments his home, at 209 Acacia Ave. and that

building is still standing today.

By 1956 he had given up the 5th Street shop and worked out of his

home. It was also in that year that Earl ran for the City Council and

won in the April election.

The First Baptist Church at 6th Street and Orange Avenue in

January 1958 decided to add a two-story Sunday school addition to the

church. The Rev. Lowell R. Spangler and the building committee chose

Earl to be the building contractor for the $50,000 addition.

On March 4, 1958 he began construction of a 17-unit motel on Pacific Coast Highway between 10th and 11th streets. He was building

this for himself at a modest $35,000 and his mother Grace and his

sister and her husband would manage the motel.

Earl and Mary raised four daughters, and for one of them, Lavina,

Earl built a new home at 620 Yorktown St.

At the April 14, 1958 City Council meeting Councilman Noble Waite

nominated Earl for mayor of Huntington Beach and this was seconded by

Councilman Robert Lambert. He was unanimously elected to the two-year

term.

One of the first pieces of business for Mayor Irby was to appoint

former Mayor Vic Terry as representative to the Orange County

Sanitation District.

Next on the agenda was a request by the Rev. Walter Barnard of the

Assembly of God Church, 611 11th St. on a controversial use variance

for a new Sunday School building. The council referred the matter

back to the Planning Commission for study.

The last item on that agenda was a petition signed by 31 Ocean

View residents asking that the raising of fowls, rabbits and other

obnoxious animals be forbidden within 100 feet of their residence.

And like today’s City Council, it took quick action and sent it back

to the Planning Commission for study.

He stayed on the City Council until May 1960.

While he was mayor, you could always find him and some of the City

Council playing golf on Wednesday afternoons on our links. Earl even

had a bowling team and each player wore a shirt that said “Earl’s

Woodshop” on the back.

Earl and Mary were active in the First Christian Church where he

served as deacon and treasurer.

It was this forward-minded mayor that guided Huntington Beach

through part of its golden age.

* JERRY PERSON is a local historian and longtime Huntington Beach

resident. If you have ideas for future columns, write him at P.O. Box

7182, Huntington Beach, CA 92615.