by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Thomas E. Workman (1890-1972) was the youngest of the seven children born to Maria [pronounced Mar-aye-uh] Boyle and William H. Workman, and we’ve seen his name referenced several times in this post, especially concerning his role in helping to manage the estate of his father, after his death in February 1918.
On 11 December 1966, a 36-page memoir was completed by him, with the note that his contribution to the “Loose Leaves from the Family Tree” binder, compiled almost three decades before for the Christmas holiday of 1937, was, however, “for family use only.” Here were are almost six decades later, sharing this material thanks to a donation to the Museum of Mary Workman Dugan’s copy by her grandson Vincent Hurteau and his family.
To begin his reminiscence, Thomas wrote,
The home place at 357 South Boyle Avenue, Los Angeles comprised an entire block; Boyle Avenue on the east, through and down the bluff to Brodie Street on the west [where Interstate 5 runs today], Fourth Street on the south (not cut through until later) and Third Street on the north. The house stood about 200 feet in from Boyle Avenue and from Fourth Street. The north half was a family farm with two or three cows, chickens, two horses, a work mule and machinery. There were two large barns for hay and stock, one just north of Grandfather Boyle’s home . . . and the other with a hay loft above and chutes to the stalls below. Connecting on the south was the carriage house for the surrey (later garage [for cars]). The man in charge of the horses lived in the old house. Two of three men worked around the place. A room at the north end of the old house was a creamery with pans of milk for skimming.
He repeated what was previously said about the cellar under the Boyle House, which was torn down to the foundation and rebuilt on the foundations by Thomas’ brother, William, Jr., in 1910, and added that “immense wine vats still stood” in it. For a child, “it was a dark, spooky place” including remains of bugs everywhere.’
Thomas identified some of the neighbors, including the son of William Mulholland, famous for his work on the Los Angeles Aqueduct as well as local dams and reservoirs, and he talked about games he and friends played, as well as a shooting accident in which he was hit in the thumb. When he noted that east of Brodie Street and under the bluff (the paredon that was part of the area’s original name, Paredon Blanco) was the old zanja, part of the original water distribution system from the pre-American era.
West of this to where Clarence Street still runs today, were vegetable gardens tended by Chinese farmers, though Thomas confessed to shooting lead slugs in slingshots to hit the tin roofs of their houses and confronted a man, knife in his teeth, which led him to flee and seek a hiding place under his family’s house—this a late 1870s residence constructed by his parents.
With respect to the family compound, Thomas noted there were “a beautiful garden with lawns, tennis and croquet courts, and many large trees, palms, magnolia (some still there), many peppers and rubber trees and a rare cork oak. There were orange and lemon groves and a summer house on the south.” He added that “this was Mother’ domain especially the roses and she knew her subject.”
As for William H., Sr., Thomas remarked that “my Father was the world’s best proponent of ‘Do It Now Living” and that “he was a man of action to the end.” While seeing the elder Workman in poor shape just prior to his death, Thomas added that “he had a great voice with [President Harry] Truman-like gestures and often prefaced a remark with ‘My God’ as ‘My God Mary Julia where’s my (towel?'” and this “was the nearest I ever heard him come to swearing,” though usually it was offered “with a smile and never offended anyone.” While 6 feet tall and some 200 pounds, William H., Sr. “was always warmhearted and enthusiastic especially with the children of relatives.”
Maria “ran the house with the help of the girls [daughters] on weekly cleaning and dusting, especially Mary Julia,” while she was deeply invested in canning and preserving. Briefly mentioned were Chinese cooks, who were recalled as “loyal and honest often remaining for years at one place” and “they were good cooks and did not mind large families.” When it came to dinners, William H., Sr. was remembered for “lively conversation about current events,” while after meals, “mother played the piano beautifully, rolling off great chords of Irish songs,” with an upright in a rear parlor “and she would come down dressed for dinner and play with a strong touch.” She spoke Spanish fluently and was skilled in riding and driving horses.
Other recollections concerned the neighbors and a great-grand-aunt, related to his mother, who regaled Thomas with stories of a family plantation in British Guyana, now Guyana. Also remembered was Gilleta Workman, daughter of his Uncle Elijah, and her avid interest in the outdoors, including vacations and hikes, which Thomas enjoyed taking with her. As for her father,
Uncle Lige was a great lover of animals and trees, planting all of those in Central Park (Pershing Square) and hauling water in large cans from his home at Eleventh Street and Broadway. Some of the trees remain. He was the silent type. He used to come down from his home on the east side of Boyle Avenue [where he moved in the 1880s after selling his aforementioned place] between First and Second and sit in the large rocker on the front porch, rocking and tapping his high boot with his cane. Father would talk with him awhile and then he would abruptly leave, Father calling after him “What’s your hurry Lige? He might wave his cane.”
Thomas remarked that he attended Second Street School, located east of State and still operating next to Interstate 10, not far from his home, through the sixth grade, after which he went to St. Vincent’s College and its “little side” of the campus, basically completing junior and high school studies there and graduating in 1910. The next year, the campus was closed and it became part of Loyola College, now Loyola Marymount University.
He then returned to the Workman estate by remembering,
Held on the tennis and croquet courts the Fourth of July celebrations were marvelous affairs. Anyone, regardless of age, who could say or gesture “I want my punk lite” got it! And off they all went to ignite, pinwheels, giant and Chinese firecrackers, torpedos, roman candles (back fire and all)—and best, the great skyrockets that spun up to a beautiful burst. There were a few falling rocket stick incidents but nothing serious. Father loved it. We were all shaken when a giant cracker went off in Boyle’s hand and it was said that if it had not been for his deep-set eyes he would have been blinded.
New Year’s celebrations involved a different kind of explosion, as the Workmans gathered on second-floor porch facing west over the bluff and, bordering the Los Angeles River, the Flats “toward which the gun was pointed.” When midnight came, Mrs. Workman “started the firing with six shots (blanks) with the old S[mith] and W[esson] 38 [caliber pistol.] Each child, from the eldest, Boyle, down did the same with William H., Sr., being the last to fire and “so fast they could hardly be counted.” This tradition, it was maintained, “meant Good Luck!!!” though it was added that both celebrations “were legal then, although I do recall Father and Boyle in earnest conversation with the police once at New Years.”
Another event of note was a parachute jump from a balloon launched near Fourth and Breed streets and not far from Hollenbeck Park, for which Thomas’ father gave two-thirds of the land to honor his friend, John E. Hollenbeck. After various recollections, the account turned to a summer job when Thomas was 16 in which he was part of a United States Geological survey project from Nevada to Nebraska.
Baseball, however, was a major part of the memoir, including during his six years at St. Vincent’s, including for the varsity/college team and he recalled “an all-time baseball play” at the campus, in which a Los Angeles High School right fielder, Jack Howard, chased down a St. Vincent’s ball so that the fielder “ran up the bleachers, jumped down and found the ball had hit a passing streetcar on Grand Avenue and was coming to him on a good hop. He whirled and threw blindly for a perfect strike to their catcher for an out.” This was before the current home run rule was passed, meaning any hit outside the field was playable, and we might say that the Los Angeles High player kept perfect track on the hit.
Speaking of rails, William H., Sr. “put up a long hard fight for a Union Terminal” because, among other reasons, of poor grade crossings along Alameda Street which, as auto traffic increased, caused long delays. With help later from sons Boyle, who was president of the City Council, and William H., Jr., who headed a citizens’ committee, the project finally got approved in the 1920s, after the elder Workman died. Thomas commented, though, that such improvements, as well as more modern bridges across the river, “came too late for the Boyle heights area, which had been . . . the high-class residential section, as West Adams was later.”
Automobiles were clearly an interest for Thomas, who wrote about Workman family cars, their chauffeur, who lived at the bottom of the horse barn, the 1912 Santa Monica Road Race, driving to his brother William H., Jr’s San Francisco wedding, including repairs on the way, and more. He added that he could not enter Stanford after graduating from St. Vincent’s, so went to the University of Southern California for a year, where he played baseball. The following summer, he worked at a cement plant that supplied material for the vast Los Angeles Aqueduct that opened in 1913.
Notably, he attributed his ability to get accepted at Stanford to his sister Gertrude, who “was a VIP and a great actress and student leader.” Because of his transfer, though he was uncertain about succeeding in tryouts, he did not play ball in the 1912 team (he added that no one in his family thought anything of his athletic prowess, not being sports-minded at all.)
He did play, as first baseman, in summer 1913 when the team, with just 11 players, traveled to Hawai’i and Japan, where, in the latter, some crowds numbered more than 20,000 as they were curious to see just the second American baseball squad in the country. Art Shafer, who played for the New York Giants in the major leagues, was a close friend and played a significant role in teaching the Japanese the sport, for which he was enshrined in its hall of fame.
Thomas was a history major at Stanford, writing a thesis on Japanese history, apparently developing this topic after the visit to that nation and the switching of his degree. Baseball, however, was paramount, as he was captain of the 1915 squad and was on the all-American team of Vanity Fair magazine, with another on that roster being George Sisler, who went on to be a major league Hall of Famer.
Though he had two major league offers, from the Giants and the Philadelphia Athletics, as well as one from the Portland team in the Pacific Coast League, Thomas continued, “my Father was set against my playing ball and asked Billy [William H., Jr.] to get me into something else.” This was with an Arizona cattle company and he remarked that “the New York papers headlined ‘Prefers Cows to McGraw,'” though he actually signed with the Giants before reneging because, he explained to the press, “I have found something to me that looks better than baseball.”
Thomas remained in the cattle business, including in northern México, for more than two years and then enlisted, in December 1917, not long after America entered the First World War, in the Aviation Section Signal Enlisted Reserve Corps, though because there were more flyers than planes, he transferred to a tank corps, but that also fell through. When his draft call came up in summer 1918, he was assigned to a supply train as a truck driver at Camp Kearney and added he had a letter of recommendation by the father of future general and World War II hero, George S. Patton, Jr. He later learned that an office miscue prevented his getting into service earlier.
After his father’s death in February 1918, Thomas recalled, “it hit me hard because I found he was carrying quite a financial load and I might have helped with his real estate holdings during the last three years if I had stayed home,” but he knew nothing about the matter. In 1919, rejecting an offer to work on a relief project in Russia formed by future president Herbert Hoover, he returned to the cattle business and worked on Santa Rosa Island. A highlight of that year was when he and Mary Julia, an enthusiastic supporter of the League of Nations, heard President Woodrow Wilson speak at the Shrine Auditorium in September, just before Wilson suffered a disabling stroke that lasted throughout the remainder of his term.
Because his mother and brothers Boyle and William H. Jr. were executors of the Workman estate, Thomas worked full-time on real estate affairs, including “the home place” and lots and acreage in Boyle Heights. A tract office was opened at Fourth and Evergreen, while he oversaw the sale, in 1921, of the family homes to the Hebrew Sheltering and Home for the Aged (Jewish Home for the Aged). While William H., Sr. intended for his children to inherit the five-acre property and live on it, only his namesake did so, as we’ve seen, with Thomas opining that “Billy went overboard” in the reconstruction on the Boyle House site.
The northeast corner of Soto Street and Stephenson Avenue (renamed Whittier Boulevard) was where an 18-acre section was developed, after an attempt to sell it for what became Roosevelt High School on another piece of property fell through. Billy was opposed, but Boyle and Maria agreed to a subdivision plan for Center Terrace, mentioned earlier in this post by Gertrude and Walter Furman. The Workmans put in utilities, oiled streets and cement curbs and sidewalks, while a new street was named Penrith to honor the family’s English roots. As Los Angeles was in another big boom, the timing was perfect and in about a year, 121 lots in two units took in nearly $170,000 in gross sales.
Another enterprise was oil with two partners, with Thomas handling the leasing of property where prospecting was undertaken. One deal was with William Keck, who became a major industry figure, in North Whittier Heights “not far from the Old William Workman Homestead,” where he learned that the land there “carried a reservation for all precious stones” from the Rancho La Puente days. When little progress was made, Keck headed to Santa Fe Springs and Signal Hill and Thomas ruefully noted “we were very close to millions!”
In 1925, Thomas married Margaret Kilgariff, whom he met at a Christmas Eve party the prior year and the couple had four sons, Henry, Thomas, Jr., David and Richard. His narrative then moved into the period after 1930, when our interpretive era ends, but he discussed his career in the oil and cement industries, with much of that intertwined with respect to cement used in wells.
He concluded by expressing his “affection and appreciation” to his two brothers for their professional and community work; Mary Julia for taking care of their parents and for her leadership of the Brownson House settlement for immigrant families; and his three other sisters for their varied pursuits in theater, religion and the organization, First Century Families.
He also regretted not having spoken to his sister Charlotte for many years because of differences over the estate of their mother. Thomas also noted the shock of the death of his nephew, William H. III, and niece Audree, who both died young, and ended by offering a salud to other nephews and nieces, including Mary Workman Dugan.
We’ll return next with some more family letters which, although from the 1950s, concern recollections by Mary Julia of the 1912 visit to the Workman House in Clifton, England and other memories of hers about Boyle Heights and contact with Thomas Workman Temple II, correspondence with Gertrude relating to family history, and more, so return for this continuation of the post.