Dick Nixon in San Diego, Joseph McCarthy in La Jolla

When Dick Nixon Came to Town

San Diego entrepreneur Arnholt Smith, one of Nixon’s earliest supporters, remembered a melancholy evening in the early ’60s when Nixon was holding a meeting and asked him to get Pat out of the way. “Pat was not feeling well physically, and even worse...mentally,” Smith said. “Dick sent word, ‘Could I please take her and hide her from the public, so to speak, let her rest her mind and what have you.’”

By Matt Potter, Sept 21, 2000 | Read full article

The Del Charro Set

In the summer of 1953, Joseph McCarthy vacationed at the Del Charro. Murchison supported the Wisconsin senator for a while. At night, guests sipped cocktails by the torch-lit pool. McCarthy, his glass always full of bourbon, “was a terrible bore,” Once, after “many drinks too many,” he began insulting his wife, Jean, then threw her, clothes and all, into the pool. The next morning, a Murchison aide told the senator to ‘pack your bags and get out.’"

By Jeff Smith, July 18, 2002 | Read full article

Taken by a Shark

State game wardens began hunting the beast by trailing cattle blood in the water, from their patrol boat, between Bird Rock and the Scripps Pier. They found no shark of the magnitude of the reported killer. A few days after the attack, a swim fin bearing what appeared to be shark teeth marks washed ashore on La Jolla Shores beach. From the initials carved into the fin, it was identified as having belonged to Pamperin.

By Ed Davies, June 15, 1989 | Read full article

The Polio Years

I began to wonder whether I would just be a cripple the rest of my life or permanently stretched out in an iron lung. While I lay moaning in the back seat on the way to Mercy Hospital, I tried to think who I was going to leave each of my toys to after I was totally paralyzed and couldn’t use them anymore. It’s funny when you think you’re a goner at seven."

By Gerald Shepherd, June 7, 1984 | Read full article

Take It from the Bottom

In the early days of scrap-diving, the city dumped all its sewage into the bay. Add to this, all the ships in the bay discharged their own sewage directly over the side, a very disconcerting thing when you were working downstream of a ship like a tender with a crew of several thousand. Visibility on the bottom was normally less than a foot. We contrived a Braille system: we could separate different types of metals by touch.

By Ed Davies, May 12, 1988 | Read full article

People’s Republic of Coronado

“I would go in the grocery store, and somebody would see me coming and go around another aisle, even an old friend. We, of course, got dropped from the cocktail circuit. It was a shattering experience for my husband. We had for years been in the dancing club...you know, we had done all those things that young couples do in little towns. We were suddenly just — gone! It was just incredible, the venom.”

By Bill Manson, Aug. 10, 1995 | Read full article