San Diego's least-remembered great man – U.S. Grant Jr. On a Sunday in September of 1929, 15 members of San Diego’s elite gathered to carry the coffin of an old friend. Among the pallbearers were …

La Jolla 1962 Dressed in long trousers and boat shoes and a white Lacoste tennis shirt, I accompanied Toby across Vista del Mar and Neptune Place to the Pump House and down concrete steps to …

Misty of Chincoteague author ends up in Rancho Santa Fe When Marguerite Henry died last month at the age of 95, a relationship that began for me more than 35 years ago came to a …

Olaf Wieghorst trusted the wrong man Almeida got his start at George Thackeray’s gallery in the late ’50s. He and his wife Grace agreed to talk to me at their house in Ocean Beach, a …

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 …

Bushwhacked We look at a Wieghorst painting called Spring Rain, a dark, impressionistic work, one of about a dozen Wieghorsts on the walls. Thackeray can remember when Wieghorst painted it. “It was raining cats and …

Cave Johnson Couts Ysidora's brother-in-law, Don Abel Stearns, gave her the Guajome land grant surrounding Mission San Luis Rey. Couts resigned his commission with the Army and built a ranch on land that “had neither …

Kemp and the Fugitive Fotomat also gave Graham a political base. One of the first beneficiaries was Jack Kemp. On May 23, 1968, the San Diego Union reported that Kemp had “joined Fotomat Corp., La …

How Alex Spanos Made Off with the Police Building Fund “Yeah, that’s right, they’re going to steal the money for Alex’s Chargers training field from the cops’ pueblo land fund. A big chunk of their …