Photo by Dave Allen

Kate Sessions c. 1932. “She was a very forceful, dominant person. She had a strong voice. She was able to get across her ideas in a very forceful way.”

Why the mother of Balboa Park is the mother of us all

Sure, there’s a school and park named after her, and careless admirers credit her, rightly or not, with planting any large tree growing in the old parts of town, but the only official monument to Kate remains a state-issued historical plaque at the base of the Tipuana tree she put on Garnet Avenue. And that was almost taken down when the street was widened after her death.

By Phyllis Orrick, April 13, 1995 Read full article

Susan Golding and Brage Golding (right). Golding, daughter of Brage Golding, a former president of San Diego State University, was a young divorcée with two small children and precious little work experience but a burning desire for influence and money.

All in the family

Her relationship with Gorton over, Golding quit City Hall to become deputy secretary for housing in the state's Business, Transportation, and Housing Agency under Governor George Deukmejian. Her council salary had been $35,000; her new job paid $50,784. But there were said to be other reasons for the move. "Eager to run for higher office, Golding felt trapped behind young, apparently well-entrenched incumbents."

By Matt Potter, July 22, 1999 Read full article

Mandell Weiss says the ten or so investor/directors of the operation were convinced in the store’s early months that if they did a million dollars in sales the first year, they’d be doing well. ‘We wound up doing $4.5 million."

Mean Business: Sol Price and the FedMart story

“I’ll tell you what FedMart really meant in this town, and what the fair-trade battle meant to it, ” says the Democratic Party activist. “It meant a tremendous transfer of power from the downtown merchants, that downtown was going to crumble. It took traffic patterns away from downtown; it started the shopping center idea. And it meant a transfer of political power.”

By Bob Dorn, April 1, 1982 Read full article

Pete Wilson was Helen Copley’s Richard Nixon.

Photo by Joe Klein

The rise and fall of the Copley press

Shortly after he purchased the two San Diego papers, a dinner was arranged in Copley’s honor at the Hotel del Coronado. He rose to speak, assuring the crowd that his operating style was far different from that of the Spreckelses: “These papers are not to be personal organs of myself or anyone else. I have no political ambitions. I have no connection with any public utility anywhere and no connection with any other business than the newspaper business anywhere.”

By Matt Potter, Feb. 28, 2008 Read full article

Smith with Mrs. and Mr. John Bates, harbormaster. I got ahold of Johnny Bates, the harbormaster, and we told him what we wanted to do. So they went ahead and dredged and filled in the sandbar to the land. It made a little peninsula sticking out — Shelter Island.

Mr. San Diego, C. Arnholt Smith

NASSCO was just getting bigger and bigger. We started bidding on bigger ships, like freighters and tankers. Finally, we couldn’t handle it financially, so we formed a partnership with Morrison-Knudsen, F.E. Young Company, Edward Kaiser, and a couple of others. They said, “You guys run it.” And I said, “Jesus, we wanted you to run it.” “No, you’re on the home ground.” So we went on there doing millions and millions of dollars of work, and it just got too heavy.

C. Arnholt Smith, Neal Matthews and Linda Nevin, March 19 and 26, 1992 Read full article

"My wife's a terrific mom, meanwhile, to the boys ... but no, she’s no mere housewife, no Stepford Wife, no lobotomy case...”

The unbearable rightness of being Roger Hedgecock

I was at Santa Barbara, a junior in college, and I got appointed as the head of all social programs....We did Ray Charles, the Doors, we did a concert with Cream right after their Fresh Cream album came out, we did the San Francisco bands the first time they’d been that far south. When Janis Joplin was with Big Brother, for instance, we had them together, we had Quicksilver Messenger Service,

By Richard Meltzer, March 24 and 31, 1988 Read full article