A LOOK BACK: Where are the oilmen of yesterday?

Today marks a couple of milestones in my life.

It was on Aug. 3, 1995 that the first column of “A Look Back” appeared in the Independent, and on this day I grew a year older.

There are some days I wish we were still an oil town, along with Brea, Signal Hill and El Segundo — then maybe the price of gasoline would come down.

There was a time when being part of that industry was something to be very proud of.

In a letter sent to Huntington Beach Mayor Marcus McCallen and our City Council in 1941 by J. Barton Hutchins of the Oil Producers Agency of California, Hutchins stated that his agency was proud that oilmen governed Huntington Beach.

I, too, am proud of all the people who have worked in our town’s oil industry.

The life of an oil worker during our oil boom years was not a picnic, but a hard life for any young man.

This week, we’ll look at two oilmen who trace their history to our town and its black gold.

It was in 1897 that Lemuel “Lem” Berry was born in Lebanon, Mo., and by the time Lem had reached his second birthday, the family moved to Topeka, Kan. When Lem celebrated another birthday, the family moved to Fort Gibson in Oklahoma, a trip of 100 miles that took the family 30 days to complete. The family farmed in Fort Gibson until the big freeze hit in 1901. The family moved again, this time to the town of Guthrie, Okla., but after one of that state’s big twisters blew through, the Berry family moved to Muskogee, Okla., and it was there that Lem first saw his first streetcar.

Several years later, the family moved to Idaho, but the weather there was so cold that Lem moved to sunny California.

Before coming to California, Lem married his sweetheart, Christine, and in no time their daughter Anne was born. In 1935, his family moved to Huntington Beach, where Anne attended Huntington High and the family lived at 601 Seventh Street.

During the early 1940s, Lem worked for the Lucky Strike Oil Co., located at 18892 Goldenwest Street in Huntington Beach.

After he left that oil company in the 1950s, Lem became manager of our Municipal Trailer Park on Pacific Coast Highway, where he and Christine now lived.

Our next oil person had worked as a production superintendent for Texaco Oil.

When Robert L. “Bob” Davis was born in 1898 in our Golden State, his father hitched up a team of horses to his Studebaker wagon and headed north across the Tehachapi Mountains to the town of Bakersfield, where Bob would live until 1913.

Oil had been discovered in that area, and Bob became fascinated with oil. When he grew a little older, he moved to McKittrick to work in that oil field. But this was back-breaking work for a young man, and Bob yearned to see the world. He tried to enlist in the Navy, but he was too young.

Bob packed his belongings and headed for Los Angeles, where he received employment at the Cudahy Meat Packing Co. in Vernon. Traveling around the country for the company, Bob landed at the Taylor ranch in Arizona.

Bob thought that punching cattle was for him, but the war in Europe was coming to America, and Bob still yearned to see the world. He enlisted in the military at San Pedro on April 1, 1917, but being stationed at Fort MacArthur, Bob began to think he would never see other countries.

But just before the Armistice was signed, Bob was assigned to a trench mortar battalion and shipped out to the Dijon-Belford region of France.

Upon returning home, Bob found employment at the Pierson Grocery in San Pedro, but this was too tame for Bob, and he moved to the oil fields of Coalinga to work at the Petroleum-Midway Oil Co. in 1921. Bob would continue to work at the company after Texaco purchased the company.

In 1943, Bob and his wife Hazel moved to Huntington Beach to work for Texaco here in our oil field.

Bob became interested in our city’s government and joined several local clubs and our chamber of commerce.

In future columns, we’ll look back at more of the people whose lives were shaped by the flow of our black gold.