230 W. Ridgecrest Blvd. ● P.O. Box 2001, Ridgecrest, CA 93556 ● 760-375-8456 Vol. 35, No. 3 March 2020 To see our schedule of events, visit us at hsumd.org or on Facebook at HSUMD

In March, Nick Cataldo will return to give a presentation about the Cajon Pass at the Society’s regular monthly meeting. Nick came last year to tell us about the Earp clan in . The meeting will take place at the Historic USO Building at 230 W. Ridgecrest Blvd. at 7:00 P.M. on Tuesday, March 17. Thousands of motorists travel along Interstate 15 through the Cajon Pass each day. Many of them see this corridor which connects the Mojave Desert with the as nothing more than a necessary evil potentially slowing them down as they hurry south to the airport or to do a little big city shopping or north on their way home from work or to make a "killing" in Las Vegas - not as a historic landmark. The truth is, the Cajon Pass has played a prominent historical role since prehistoric times. Indians, explorers, trappers, loggers, land speculators, rail passengers, early day motorists and the military have all passed through the Cajon Pass on their way to or from the desert, making this an important gateway in Southern California. Nick graduated from California State University, San Bernardino with a B.A. in Psychology and Social Science in 1977 and M.A. in Education in 1983, and retired in 2014 after 36 years as a special education teacher. He taught classes pertaining to the history of the San Bernardino Valley through San Bernardino Adult School (1995-2000) and has been teaching local history courses through Cal State San Bernardino’s Office of Extended Learning since 1995. Nick has been a member of the San Bernardino Historical and Pioneer Society—having served as president, editor of its publications and program chairman since 1980. Nick is a member of Western Writers of America and is a contributing western history writer for the Tombstone Epitaph, Oregon-California Trails Association and for Wild West Magazine. He is the author of Images of America: San Bernardino, co-author of both Pioneers of San Bernardino: 1851-1857 and The Earps of San Bernardino County, and also writes a local history newspaper column for the San Bernardino Sun. His most recent book, entitled The Earp Clan: The Southern California Years was released in October of 2006. Nick is currently writing two more books- Creating the Gate City: San Bernardino, Ca. and Nicholas Porter Earp and Sons. The Society meets on the third Tuesday of most months. Meetings are free and all are welcome to attend. For more information on this or future meetings, call the HSUMD at 760-375-8456. - Andrew Sound

Vol. 35, No. 3 March 2020

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March, the month named after Mars, is a month full of things to observe, celebrate, and enjoy. Let’s start with the beginning of Daylight Saving Time, beginning on Sunday, March 8, when we all spring forward. We’ll observe International Women’s Day, the Ides of March, my son Mark’s birthday, St. Patrick’s Day, the spring equinox, and the Full Worm Moon (this year’s first supermoon!). And, in March, our Historic USO Building will have all of your favorite events that HSUMD volunteers regularly offer to you – Classic Movie Nights, Open Mic Nights, Concerts on Film, Veterans Breakfast (on the third Thursday morning, the 19th), meetings of our Veterans Peer Support Group, and several special events that appear on our on-line calendar (use the Internet to go to hsumd.org, and then hit “Events” at the top and then hit “Calendar”). And, too, Joe DePina will have our Book Store open with great books, gift items, and always See’s Candies for sale. Our doors are open from Tuesday to Saturday, 11:00 am to 3:00 pm. And our arms are always open to you! - Tex Hoppus

The Veterans Memorial Building is in need of exterior repainting and all of the exciting prep work (sanding, cleaning, caulking, masking) needed to make a good paint job. If you would like to volunteer, please call Bob at (760) 382-8735, or send an email to [email protected]. You just can’t get quality fun like this anywhere else, so hurry and call now! 2 Vol. 35, No. 3 March 2020

The surplus book sale went well and we were able to add $250 or so to our publishing account for future publications. Thank you, members and other interested folks, for your support. I hope all those who attended the "Doc" presentation enjoyed it as much as I did. A side benefit to HSUMD is we now have a complete copy of the wonderful scrapbook that Maris Lueck put together for Doug Lueck. She started with the first pieces of paperwork and kept every paper and a huge array of photos. She allowed my archive workers to scan all her papers and photos so we would be able to have a copy of the scrapbook in our collections as well as a digital copy. Thank you to the Lueck’s for this contribution. This month Liz Babcock has also donated several items that she thought would enhance our collections. It is great to have Liz keeping an eye out for us. With her knowledge of the area history and photographic capabilities she is an amazing resource. Monica Ames, a graduate student who has selected HSUMD as a resource for her master’s work is a real help with references on where and how to make our collection useable for researchers. Monica is now joined by another grad student, Samantha Wacker, to team up to form a plan for Fire Protection & Preservation and a possible visit from a professional grant consultant. We now have a collection from the Pina family whose father was a Pearl Harbor survivor and long-time China Lake Police Department (C.L.P.D.) officer. The collection includes many pictures and items representing his many years of service. A fresh boxful of local history for our volunteers to look through and appreciate. At right is a sample from this donation showing (clockwise from left) Sgt. Pina’s C.L.P.D. uniform hat, and photos of: the C.L.P.D., a Pearl Harbor gathering for wives, widows and veterans, Sgt. Pina's award ceremony, and a ship that he served on. Should be interesting to see what else we discover! We are pleased that so many families share their memories with us. Thank you for your donations. - Carol Porter

The Flag Code dictates that excessively worn and tattered American flags should be disposed of in a dignified manner. To help with disposing your worn, faded, or wind torn flags there is a U.S. Flag disposal box at the southeast corner of the Historic USO Building near the flagpole. The box, an Eagle Scout project, looks a bit like a mailbox, but if you deposit your worn U.S. Flag in the box it will be properly handled and disposed. And then you can proudly raise your new flag!

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As if you weren’t familiar with this film legend, take a look at the lengthy Wikipedia entry for James "Jimmy" Stewart, an award-winning American film icon and decorated military officer (both World War II and Vietnam). He is among the most honored and popular stars in the history of motion pictures with a film career that spanned over 55 years and 80 films. His list of awards includes five Academy Award® nominations with a Best Actor Oscar® win in 1941 and an Honorary Award in 1985, two Golden Globes, awards from the Kennedy and Lincoln Centers, Screen Actors’ Guild Award for Best Actor and several medals of distinction from his service in the United States Army Air Corps. Having risen to the rank of brigadier general in the United States Air Force Reserve, Stewart was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan in 1985. Classic Movie Night’s tribute to this icon of motion pictures, “Jimmy Stewart: Everyone’s Favorite Leading Man” will be a lengthy one—seven features from the various periods of his acting career. On March 4 at 7 p.m., see Jimmy in one of his very first outings at his early home studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In this 1936 feature, he gets to demonstrate his versatility as one of the suspects in the second of the studio’s famous yarns featuring the detective man and wife team, Nick and Nora Charles. He is part of an impressive ensemble…all acting a bit guilty of the murder of the philandering, parasitic husband of Nora’s niece. Based on characters created by Dashiell Hammett, this sequel to the 1934 mega hit is every bit as entertaining as the first yarn…. but produced on a much larger budget. The film’s twists and turns and multiple bad guys make for exciting and humorous entertainment. On Wednesday, March 18, at 7 p.m., Stewart shows a definite flare for comedy in Frank Capra's smash hit film version of the very successful, Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. The Academy Award® winner for Best Picture of 1938 is about a man from a family of rich snobs who becomes engaged to a woman from a good-natured, but decidedly eccentric family. Eccentric is putting it mildly! Various artists, a wannabe ballet dancer, inventors, a suspected anarchist, and a blatant tax evader (the family's patriarch) populate the strange house that sits on valuable land and has developers drooling and scheming. Jean Arthur, Lionel Barrymore, Edward Arnold, Spring Byington, and a very young Ann Miller co-star in this wild and wonderful comedy hit. Five more Jimmy Stewart classics will follow in April and May, and the series will conclude just in time for our eighth annual “Summer of Movie Magic,” featuring 10 family friendly film features…beginning in June and screening every Wednesday through early August. Admission to all movies is donation, only…but you know how much we appreciate those donations! Our thrifty Snack Bar opens up at 6:30 p.m. to serve delicious snacks and beverages to hungry, thirsty movie lovers! Films screen at 7. For titles, call 760-375-8456 Tuesday through Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., or stop by for a current film schedule. MOVIES...bring us together...all year 'round! – Nick Rogers 4 Vol. 35, No. 3 March 2020

Concerts on Film are on Thursdays on the same week as Classic Movie Night. Doors open at 6:30 pm and the show starts at 7:00 pm. Thurs 3/5 James Taylor and Carole King- Two old friends play a collection of their songs in a classic LA venue in this intimate concert. Songs include: You’ve Got a Friend, Up on the Roof, Fire and Rain, Sweet Baby James, and more. A must see event! Thurs 3/19 Eric Clapton- The master of the electric guitar plays some of his hits and some great blues in a concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Set list includes: Pretending, I Shot the Sheriff, Layla, Tears in Heaven, Let it Rain, Wonderful Tonight, and more. April Concerts on Film include a concert by country superstar Garth Brooks, and a concert by Neil Young. Film schedules can be picked up at the Historic USO Building- next to the Classic Movie Night schedules. Suggestions for future films are welcome- you can contact us at [email protected]. Refreshments will be available, including drinks, popcorn, chips, and hot dogs. Admission is free- but donations are always gratefully accepted. Come enjoy music history at your Historic USO Building!

On January 17, 1946, Rosemary Gatchell (now Galvin) town. Sherm needed a good cook for his new restaurant, and her little sister Janet came to Ridgecrest with their and his sister Rita was willing to help. parents, Rita and Roy. They came by train from Ohio to Shoaff’s Café had been built a year or so earlier by Barstow and Uncle John “Sherm” Shoaff (Rita’s brother) Sherm himself, using bricks given to him by Ridgecrest picked them up in his car and drove them up to our little pioneer Joe Fox. It was located across a dirt street from the new USO Club and its neighbor, the Victory Market. (The dirt street – Ridgecrest Boulevard – is now paved.) A month after arriving in young Ridgecrest, little Rosemary and her family walked across the dirt street and watched as an F4U Corsair fighter aircraft recently parked off the southeast corner of the USO Club was formally dedicated to the community as Kern County’s War Memorial No. 1 in a big street-side ceremony. (Rosemary’s parents would go to dances and parties in the USO Club, and Rosemary and her sister would sometimes go with them, take their shoes off, get a running start, and slide across the auditorium floor in their stocking feet; it was great fun!) Behind (or south of) his café, Sherm had built his house. Behind that was Sherm’s mother’s house, and behind that was a duplex where Rosemary and her family lived. Their side of the duplex had a single bedroom, so the girls slept in that bedroom and their parents – Rita and Roy slept on the living room couch. Rita started cooking in the café immediately, and her happy customers quickly realized that Shoaff’s Café was the place to eat. 5 Vol. 35, No. 3 March 2020 If you look at the accompanying photo of Ridgecrest bottom of the photo, on the southwest corner of Boulevard in the late 1940s (the dirt street runs from the Ridgecrest and China Lake (where the Bank of America dirt China Lake Boulevard at the bottom left, westward sits now). toward the upper right), you can see Shoaff’s Café across At the very bottom, on the east side of China Lake the street and east a few buildings from the new USO Boulevard, is part of a dirt turn-around where a bus from Club. You can see Lukens Trailer Court to its east. The the Navy base would come to pick up workers and take cluster of five buildings west of the café – some of which them back to the base; that’s where Rosemary’s dad are Quonset huts – was Ridgecrest School, where would walk to catch the bus in the morning and go work Rosemary and her sister would go to elementary school a for the Navy until coming back in the evening and little later. In the upper right of the photo was the home of working as a waiter in Shoaff’s Café. our area’s first deputy sheriff, Jerome “Mac” McKernan, where Rosemary would later ride horses when she had a Later, when Rosemary was a teenager in the early chance (and where the Indian Wells Valley Water District 1960s, Sherm got a license to sell beer and put in some now has its office); the late Don Joe McKernan grew up tables in the back of the café for people to play draw there. Victory Market was the large Quonset building just poker, and changed the name of the café to the Drawing east of the USO Club. Bentham’s Corner was at the Room (get it?). But good food – prepared by Rosemary’s mom Rita – was always the real “draw” for people to come by. After the USO Club became a Kern County Building, the people working in the building, from the judge to Chamber of Commerce folks to clerks, would walk across the street daily to enjoy a good lunch – and sometimes dinner, too! The Drawing Room closed in July 1997, after Rita found she had cancer. She had cooked for the café for 51 years. Rita, though, survived her cancer. Roy had died in 1985, and Rita passed in 2005. Sherm himself died in 2000. – Tex Hoppus Sources: Interview of Rosemary (nee Gatchell) Galvin, 2020; and The Historic USO by Elizabeth Babcock, found in the HSUMD Book Shop

In Memoriam- Don Joe McKernan Showing his dedication to renovating the Old County Building (now the Historic USO), Don Joe McKernan prepares to haul branches to the dump during a July 2006 HSUMD work party. Others putting their backs into the work include Bill Nevins (on the ladder) and Jim Kenney (just behind Don Joe). One of the valley pioneers who devoted time, money, and energy to the effort- and to many other community projects- Don Joe died this Jan. 20. He moved here with his parents when he was only five years old. If you’d like to honor his memory, the family requests that donations be made to Ronald McDonald House Charities (www.rmch.org). - Liz Babcock Photo by Liz Babcock

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Member Categories Welcome New Members! HSUMD has three membership categories- all very important to us. Our regular memberships are $35 per individual or family. Our business Mike Kinkennon memberships are $45 each. We also have a special category: Life Member, Don & Judy McCauley which is an honor the HSUMD Board bestows only on members who have supported the HSUMD in sustained and special ways. Our Life Members’ Margie Williams names are shown on our website: hsumd.org!

Ale’s Steakhouse and Bar Genealogical Society L & N Properties Anna Marie Bergens, Realtor Phyllis M. Hix, Attorney Ridgecrest Chamber of Commerce *Baxendale’s Inyokern Chamber of Commerce Ridgecrest Moving and Storage Best Western China Lake Inn IWV Premier Landscaping Ridgecrest Regional Hospital Bob & Ardyce’s Bicycle Shop *Dana Lyons, Best Realty *Ridge Writers *Cathy Kline’s Floral Accents Kern Antelope Historical Society *Ridgecrest Cinemas China Lake Photographic Society *Roaming Dog Kitchen *Center Pharmacy Pleistocene Foundation Rodeway Inn Clarion Inn *Maturango Museum *Romancing the West Comfort Inn MOAH *S&M Coins & Collectibles *Cordell Construction Co. Mohave Historical Society Searles Valley Historical Society *Cosner-Neipp Computing Mojave River Valley Museum Shoshone Museum Association Desert Empire Fair Motion Tire & Wheel Starbucks Diana Said, Vaughn Realty *Museum of Western Film History Gary P. Staab & Associates, Inc. Earth Landscaping Needles Regional Museum Tehachapi Historical League Eastern California Museum The News Review *Tender Cut Meats Econo-Lodge Rand Desert Museum Vaughn Realty The Flower Shoppe *Red Rock Books *Warren’s Automotive Edward Jones Investments- Allen County Public Library, *Kathy Walker’s Window Tinting Brook H. Andreoli Genealogy Department Community Light Opera & Theatre *Ridgecrest Area Convention & Wrightwood Historical Society Assoc. Visitors Bureau

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Tex Hoppus, President Newsletter Editor 760-382-1852, [email protected] [email protected] Doug Lueck, Vice-President Joe DePina, Gift Shop Manager 760-375-8202, [email protected] [email protected] Richard Hendricks, Secretary-Treasurer Marti Hoppus, Bookkeeper [email protected] 760-382-1852, [email protected] Andrew Sound, Programs Jim Kenney, Historian 760-608-7296, [email protected] 760-371-2458, [email protected] John Abbott, Building Mgr., Bldg. Rental Craig Porter, SEEP Coordinator 619-808-2223, [email protected] 760-446-3400, [email protected] Chuck Cordell, Building Alan Bailey, Field Trips Coordinator [email protected] 760-977-6806, [email protected] Carol Porter, Accessions and Exhibits 760-446-3400, [email protected] Nick Rogers, Publicity, Movie Night IMPORTANT REMINDERS 760-375-8456, [email protected] Annual Dues are $35 (family) and $45 (business). Matthew Zubia, Fundraising 760-793-8152, [email protected] Please remember HSUMD in your wills, trusts, and other gift giving. HSUMD is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.