Sausalito in the News: Jan. 26, 1957

By Billie Anderson

Alcatraz Birdman starts 41st year

Famed Alcatraz convict Robert Stroud will be 67 years old next Monday and start serving his 41st year in solitary confinement – longer than any known prisoner alive in the world. Eligible for parole in 1936, he has never achieved release.

The oldest federal prisoner today, Stroud was sentenced at 19 years on a manslaughter charge in frontier Alaska in 1909, and was placed in solitary. President Wilson commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment.

The lonely convict tamed sparrows, bred canaries and studied bird diseases under a microscope. He became world-renowned as a bird doctor and authored two books on avian disease. After an altercation with prison authorities in 1942, Stroud was separated from his laboratory and birds and placed in Alcatraz.

His book, “The Birdman of Alcatraz,” published by Random House, has recently been released in England and in Braille. Dutch and Japanese publications will be out this spring. He has not seen his recently published book.

A movie about Stroud’s life will be produced by Joshua Logan this year.

Don’t put that gun away

The news has never been a house organ for hunters because we like our birds on the wing. However, the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of Fish and Game and ranchers, whose fields are taking a beating from thousands of mud hens, are imploring sportsmen to take a bead on the coots – otherwise known as mudhens, tulehens and whitebills.

The federal agency has raised the bag limit to 25 birds per day for coots and has permitted California to extend the season beyond the regular water fowl hunting period to March 1.

Christmas wreath sale a success

James Muldoon reports that Sausalito Cub Pack 8 sold a total of 480 Christmas wreaths within 24 hours.

Water plans to be discussed

California’s water resources will be discussed at the League of Women Voters general meeting and tea on Tuesday, Feb. 5, at 1:30 p.m. Mrs. Charles Cross is the new president of the Sausalito League of Women Voters.

March on Polio

About 75 mothers will participate.

Snow trip

Boy Scout Troop 44, sponsored by the First Presbyterian Church of Sausalito, is getting a touch of snow at Chubb Lake this weekend.

At a glance

Yearly inflation rate: 3.3 percent

Average cost of new home: $12,220

Average monthly rent: $90.00

Average yearly wages: $4,550.00

Gallon of gas price: 24 cents

The King of Wolfback Mountain

By Steefenie Wicks - Sausalito Historical Society

For years, the Sausalito Historical Society has recorded interviews with people who have added to the history of Sausalito. The following is taken from an interview that was conducted by Dorothy Gibson, a local historian and former member of SHS. A resident of Sausalito since 1954, Gibson is the author of two books, “Sausalito Paths and Walkways” and “The Marin Headlands.”

“High above Richards’s Bay, high above San Francisco Bay, high above almost everything God willing, we are at the home of Fritz Warren on Wolfback Ridge.”

This was Gibson’s opening statement on the interview tape, recorded March 26, 2008. Francis (Fritz) Wreden Warren was born in San Francisco in 1927. In the interview, Warren makes it clear he was on his own at a very young age. He shipped out of San Francisco as a merchant marine when he was only 17 and, by the time he was in his 20s, he had sailed most of the world.

Courtesy of Julie Warren 

At that time Warren attended San Francisco City College and decided that he would return to the Bay to go back to school. He later attended Hastings Law School, but dropped out when he started working for British Auto Parts, a job that he would hold for the next 10 years

.

Warren spoke about taking a part-time job with Ernie Gain as a young student. At the time, Gain was fishing out of San Francisco on a 35-foot salmon trawler.

“In those days, there were public docks that the fishing boats could pull up to and sell their catch,” Warren recalled.” When we would get to the dock, Ernie would give me a dollar’s worth of nickels and send me to the nearest phone booth. There I would go to the restaurant page, start calling them, letting them know that we had just come in with a load of fresh rock cod that they had better come over fast before we sold out. Within an hour they would start to arrive.

“But soon I realized that this was not the way to make a lot of money. That’s when I got involved in auto parts sales.”

Part of Warren’s job was to travel to different areas, and, on one of his trips, he purchased his first boat. She was called the Truly Fair, a 72-foot yawl with what he called a “Sausalito” transom. He spoke fondly of his days aboard the Truly Fair and his life at sea with his wife, June.

“I met June in 1948, here on Wolfback Ridge,” Warren said. “I had come back to Sausalito. There was a listing in the newspaper about this piece of property at the top of Sausalito, so I came to see it. Walked around, could not get over the million-dollar views that this acreage offered, then saw a house, walked up to the front door and knocked.”

The door was opened by June, who, at the time, was living in the house with her soon to be ex-husband, Mario Corbett.

“Mario Corbett, an architect, had purchased most of this property in the mid 1940s,” Warren continued.

“June had been part of his public relations team. When they married, they moved to Sausalito. They had purchased from Sausalito Boulevard to the top of the ridge, they owned upper Spencer [Avenue] on both sides of the freeway, also a road called Ridge Road.

“At that time, there were no houses or structures up here except for the castle that was built in 1939 by Rudolph G. Theurkauf, called, ‘The Tower.’ It commands a spectacular view of San Francisco Bay.”

June eventually divorced Corbett. He kept land, she the house. A relationship soon developed between Fritz and June. They married, had three children and became involved in the political structure of Sausalito.

In 1977, he constructed his dream house high above the rushing traffic of Highway 101. It was in this house that the interview with Gibson took place.

Warren spent a lot of his time at planning commission meetings and was eventually appointed to the commission on which he would serve two years. He ran for city council, was elected to office for four years in the 1970s, and served two of the years as Mayor of Sausalito.

He would become known as a strong-minded mayor who had his own issues with not only the Sausalito waterfront, but also the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

At one point in the interview, Warren breaks his train of thought as he spots a hawk out the window. As he gazes at the large bird, he comments on how they don’t move their wings; they just keep working the wind currents up and down.

One can almost see both Dorothy and Fritz in that 4,000-square-foot structure, looking out over the Bay as they sat and spoke. I think both would agree that people do throw stones at those who live on the sides of mountains.

Shirwin Smith: Open Water Therapy

By Steefenie Wicks

Sausalito’s waterfront history is rich with the different types of people who have come here and made it their home or place of business.   Most of these transplants themselves have a connected background of being on the water, sailing, rowing --  starting at the early age of 8 or 10. This is the background that fits Shirwin Smith, who learned her rowing skills at that age on Lake Champlain in Vermont.   In 1973, her life took a change that would bring her to California.

“My first job was for the GGNRA in San Francisco at the Maritime Museum.  It was while I was working there that I moved to Sausalito in 1979. One day while reading the Marinscope, I saw an ad about the forming of a new Sausalito Rowing Club. I remember thinking, that’s for me,” she said.  She remembers that their fist meeting was held at City Hall with five people, led by Gordy Nash.

Nash was a builder of small craft, well known in Sausalito.  It was through Nash that she started to become serious about the idea of rowing and sculling. She tells the story of how she was part of the race Nash put together from Catalina Island to Marina Del Ray, a 36-mile event.  The rowing shells would be taken out on a larger vessel.  You then boarded your vessel and raced back. She would participate in this racing event 5 different times.

Then in 1985 she quit her job with GGNRA and started her own business, Open Water Rowing, which is now a 30-year-old waterfront firm dedicated to the art of sculling.  She is the first to tell you that what she does is kind of like the “mountain bike” of this sport that is very different from kayaking or paddle boarding. She was the first to open this type of water sculling, using a form of rowing shell that only weighs around 38 pounds and travels lean and fast over the water’s surface.  In 1985 this was a very different type of business. “I never felt that I was treated differently because I was a woman,” she says, “for me it was more like shock factor when people would find out that the owner was the ‘little gal’ over there.”  She continues, “It is always the same no matter who I’m standing with and talking to, someone will eventually come up and say, ‘hey do you know how I can find the owner’ and I would speak up and say, that would be me.”

Shirwin feels that when you get about a quarter of a mile off shore the world changes and you seem to change with it.  She tells stories of only pleasant encounters with other waterfront dwellers who anchor out on their vessels, also of how many have gone out of their way to return boats to her when they have gotten lost in a storm.

“All waterfront areas are different,” she says, “but the thing that makes Sausalito so special is the atmosphere created by this incredible body of water that surrounds us, takes us to another world of experience, then lets us row back to shore.”

She continues, “My grandfather was a rower, he was with the Harlem River Rowing Club that was founded by returning civil war veterans, back in 1873.  I never got to meet him but my grandmother gave me all the medals he had won; maybe I get my talent for this sport from him, I have wondered about that.”

I asked her about her early days in the Onshore Marine building which was demolished so that the new Schoonmaker marina could be built.

“Oh, ‘’ she says,” those were the days.  There were all of theses local waterfront business that all seemed to fit together in that space.  We shared the space and became a small supportive community for each other.  I can remember one night I was on my way home and one of the fishermen had come, in tied his boat up and he, along with some of the guys from the building, were out grilling fish from his catch.  As I walked by I commented on how good it looked, he told me to stick out my hand, in it he handed me a nice filet that I had that night for dinner.”

She feels this laid back attitude is part of being on the water and being part of that close water existence.  She mentions that one of her mentors on the waterfront has long been Hank Easom; she admires him as a business owner, a person of character and an awesome sailor.  When he closed down his boat shop he offered her space for her shells on his property. “He never seems to get upset,” she continues, “he instead has this attitude of ‘let’s just get it fixed and move on’, I like that.

“For the past 30 years the Sausalito waterfront has been a wonderful place for me,” she continues. “When I’m offshore moving along with the birds and the seals, this is another world. I feel that with this sport of sculling, you are taught to experience the Bay in a most personal way.  It’s a way of taking one’s first breath of Sausalito’s fresh air.”

Shirwin Smith outside Open Water Rowing Center

Photo by Steefenie Wicks

The Deadly Storm of 1982

By Larry Clinton

I moved to my first floating home, at Kappas Marina, just in time for New Year’s, and just in time for a killer storm. After getting 10 inches of rain in December, 1981, Marin got drenched with 13 inches on January 3 and 4.

A leak developed from my upstairs deck, which soaked my bedroom floor, causing rain to fall downstairs, and eventually to seep into my plywood pontoons.  Our parking lots flooded, and people had to brave the elements to move their cars to higher ground. Dealing with this “trial by water,” I learned a lot about houseboat living in a very short time.

But my problems were minor compared to some of the folks in the hills of Sausalito.

Here’s how Cindy Roby reported on the storm for this paper almost 33 years ago:

It started off like just one hell of a rainstorm. While the 49ers slogged their way to victory at Candlestick on Sunday, the rain grew heavier. It pelted the county all night and by mid-morning Monday, serious flooding was reported throughout the county. Noon news showed submerged cars, slow traffic and a make-the-best-of-it-fellow windsurfing on the floodwaters in San Rafael.

And still it came down, and the news turned frantic and ominous. The word "disaster" was substituted for "storm".  . .Attention turned to Sausalito Monday night with news of a large landslide which fell onto the southbound lanes of 101 on the Waldo Grade. Homes on Wolfback Ridge were watched carefully. The bridge was closed and helicopters circled ominously.

Early Tuesday morning the rain stopped. It was cold and gray and grim. The bad news continued to pour in while the cleanup began. All day trucks worked to clear the southbound lanes of Waldo Grade. Sausalito residents hung over the overpass and cheered the first cars traveling north about 4:30 p.m. And they wandered down on Bridgeway as residents of several buildings evacuated their homes that had been damaged by a mudslide and stood in further peril from above where the house at #6 Bulkley had begun to show signs of strain. Crews cut the gas and water lines and monitored Bulkley Avenue where a huge crack grew and the downhill roadbed sank lower with the strain. But by Tuesday night it all seemed stable. Over with. The general consensus was that Sausalito had been pretty lucky.

But that assumption was terribly wrong. In the clear quiet of Tuesday night, the steep hillside, covered with Scotch Broom that lies just 40 to 75 feet south of the Spencer Avenue-Monte Mar exit sign was silently reaching its tolerance. The hillside — actually landfill placed there to support the northbound lanes of 101 when they were built some 25 years ago — had been saturated to the breaking point. And at approximately 9:30 p.m. the hillside gave way, releasing tons of mud that roared downhill smashing the duplex at 466-468 Sausalito Blvd right off its hillside perch. This two-story structure sheared through 85 Crescent killing its sole occupant, 46-year-old Sally Baum.

Nearby residents describe these few awful moments as punctuated by the sound of a woman screaming, trees cracking and the dull gurgle of mud as it descended. The lights went off. Then there was an eerie awful silence.

Within minutes, the fire and police departments had responded to the scene. They assessed the enormity of the disaster and began to evacuate the stunned and disoriented nearby residents. Police and fire personnel went door to door. Banging on doors, beaming flashlights in darkened windows, yelling through bullhorns, and literally pulling some people from their own homes. Later a CHP helicopter was brought in to bring the same message to people in a wider area of neighboring streets ranging from up on Prospect and Cable Roadway down to Crescent, Lower Crescent, Sausalito Boulevard and Main Street, reaching all the way down to Third and Fourth Streets. Police checkpoints informed them to go to an evacuation point at Martin Luther King School at the other end of town. Fire Chief Steve Bogel and Battalion Chief Fylstra started looking through the wreckage. “We understood someone was in the house, Chief Bogel reported. “Fylstra saw the body and together we pulled it out."

According to later reports, Sally Baum, a young widow, had just returned home from dinner with neighbors when her bedroom was struck. She was probably getting ready for bed when the slide hit. Ironically, the living room and kitchen of her house remained intact, with Christmas gifts still under the tree.

Sally Baum, who lost her life in the 1982 mudslide.

Sausalito In The News: Dec. 12, 1914

By Billie Anderson

Local briefs

• County officials, who are in a position to know, claim that the population of Marin County is now hovering around the thirty thousand mark. In comparing Marin County as a place of rapid suburban development with the East Bay, more trains and boats are needed.

• Lack of industries and manufacturing establishments in Marin County will force a greater percentage of future growth from the metropolis. In other words, it is the commuting public that will prove to be the backbone of development. The possibilities of rapid growth are most flattering.

• In glancing over Sausalito, we see constructive work on all sides. Streets are being improved, new sidewalks laid, lots and yards cleaned up, good houses under construction, not to mention two railway enterprises that are in the making. Trains now operate between Sausalito and Eureka.

Quiet in Mexico reported

Washington – Provisional President Gutierrez and General Villa are in Mexico City and several of their military chiefs have gone to Cuernavaca to discuss with General Zapata and his officers the distribution of forces in the vicinity. It was reported in official dispatches to the State Department that conditions in Mexico City were quiet.

“Zapata soldiers, very poorly clad, some being barefooted, patrol the City,” said an announcement from the State Department. No further molestation of foreigners has occurred and fair order is being maintained. Thus far there has been no friction. Brigadier General Bliss reported bullets from Mexican snipers.

Sanborn addresses Mother’s Club

Mrs. Julia Sanborn of Berkeley spoke at length of the different aspects of the terrible European war and showed how very ignorant we are of the causes. One of the most awful sights Mrs. Sanborn pictured was to see 100,000 idle men marching the Streets of London. She pointed out how the greatest minds on this economic subject have come to one conclusion: Federal Aid in road building and all public improvements so as to remove this crying need.

Report on food products available

It is frequently noted in the daily press that the average length of life is increasing and this leads many of us to go very complacently about our business. If we were living a life that even approximated the normal, there would be little danger. But under the highly artificial conditions of modern urban life so many of our foods are now distributed in sterile packages, “predigested” and otherwise processed in order to preserve them. We are so far removed from the point of origin of our food that increasing numbers are losing all idea of the normal appearance of natural foods.

It becomes the personal duty of each individual to know what to eat, how to eat it and why to eat it. Bulletin No. 28, United States Department of Agriculture, being “The Chemical Composition of American Food Materials,” should hang in the kitchen of every home in the United States. The bulletin can be bought from the Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C., postage prepaid, for ten cents.

Community enhancement planned

Despite the very inclement weather, the Mothers’ Club held its regular monthly meeting at South School. Six dollars was received toward the Scholarship Fund founded by the Club last August. The Garden Committee reported the placing of window boxes that will later on be planted in red geraniums. It is planned to fix up the basement of South School for classes of dancing and sewing at present. Later on, gymnasium work, gardening, swimming will be considered.

In The News: December 1914

Dec. 12 – The largest one-day percentage drop in the history of Dow Jones Industrial Average, down 24.39 percent.

Dec. 16 – World War I: German battleships under Franz Von Hipper bombard the English ports of Hartlepool and Scarborough.

Dec. 25 – Legendary “Christmas Truce” takes place on the battlefields of World War I between British and German troops. Instead of fighting, soldiers exchange gifts and play football.