The biggest San Diegans, part 1

Copleys, C. Arnholt Smith, Roger Hedgecock, Kate Sessions, Susan Golding, Sol Price

Author

Publish Date

June 30, 2018

San Diego Mayor John Butler, Mrs. Robert Vogeller, Smith, c. 1953. By the late ’50s I felt I had to get rid of some of the damn things I was running. I think I got a bigger kick out of building and creating things than running them.

San Diego Union building, 4th Street, south of Broadway, 1872

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

C. Arnholt Smith, c. 1963. The San Diego Union once declared him “Mr. San Diego of the Century.”

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.

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

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.” (Dave Allen)

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

Richard Silberman and Susan Golding, 1984. Even though they were divorced in 1990 after Silberman's conviction in a federal money-laundering case, there are still financial, emotional, and political ties between their families. (Joe Klein)

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

Sol Price (Tom Voss)

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