by Paul R. Spitzzeri
During the tenure for most of the 1910s of Gerald C. Waterhouse as superintendent of George Junior Republic, now Boys Republic, in modern Chino Hills, he was praised for overseeing a period of significant development and growth at the institution that worked with troubled boys, including new buildings, added vocational elements, better infrastructure and more. For about half the time that he was in charge, Waterhouse was assisted by Clyde Gilman Doyle (1889-1963), who left a mark at the Republic during that period, but also subsequently at the facility and more broadly.
Doyle was born in 1887 in Oakland and was the youngest of nine children born to Nettie Gilman and Thomas Doyle, the latter a blacksmith. He spent some of his childhood in Seattle before the family moved to Long Beach in 1907 and he attended Long Beach High School, where he was a star athlete, primarily in baseball (a teammate was Douglas D. Coughran, who went on to be a realtor for Walter P. Temple’s Temple City), and student body president. Doyle was also known for his leadership roles in his church and with the Y.M.C.A.
When he graduated, Doyle was a partner with a brother in Thomas Doyle’s business, which advertised the trio as “horseshoers and specialists,” but he was also secretary of boys’ work for the Long Beach Y.M.C.A. and he was so well-liked and successful that, for two years in succession in 1910 and 1911, Camp Clyde Doyle operated at the ranch of famed stage actor Helena Modjeska in the Santa Ana Mountains of Orange County and which constituted the fifth and sixth annual summer camps for the organization. One of the leaders in 1911 was Dana W. Bartlett, mentioned earlier in this post as a featured orator at the Republic and who was a renowned minister, speaker and writer in Los Angeles.
Doyle enrolled at the law school of the University of Southern California and seems to have attended for a year, perhaps leaving for financial reasons, but he caught the eye of Curtis D. Wilbur (1867-1954), an Iowa native who spent much of his youth in North Dakota and was a graduate of the United States Naval Academy. In 1888, at the end of a massive boom in greater Los Angeles and settled in Riverside, where he taught math and read law in the evenings, being admitted to the bar two years later. After eight years in private practice, Wilbur became a deputy Los Angeles County District Attorney before, in 1902, winning election as a judge of the Superior Court.
Wilbur gravitated toward the welfare of children, a growing concern in a rapidly urbanizing and industrializing Angel City, and he soon headed the juvenile department of the Court. Among his many associations with young people was his central role in founding the local George Junior Republic in 1907, with the first location at the boomtime Porter Hotel in San Fernando before the relocation to Chino occurred two years later. In 1917, Wilbur was appointed to the California Supreme Court and was chief justice in 1923-1924, when he resigned when appointed Secretary of the Navy by President Calvin Coolidge, serving until the end of Coolidge’s tenure in early 1929.
In his final days in office, the president appointed Wilbur to a seat on the Ninth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals and, when Congress did not act on this, the new chief executive, Herbert Hoover, who appointed Wilbur’s brother Ray as Secretary of the Interior. Wilbur served a quarter century on the appellate court, including almost a decade as senior judge until his death. His positive impression of Doyle led to an appointment as a probation officer under Wilbur’s juvenile department in July 1911, this lasting until Doyle joined Waterhouse at George Junior Republic in late September 1912.
Doyle proved to be an effective advocate for the institution through speaking engagements, while he also cultivated relationships with individuals and groups in nearby communities, while he also coached the Republic baseball team and pushed for the inclusion of the facility in high school sports leagues during his tenure of not quite three years. He continued his involvement in church and Y.M.C.A. activities, as well and, in March 1914, married Lydia Louise Yeomans, a native of the Vancouver, Washington area, but who attended the same high school and whose sister taught in the Chino school system. It was she who assembled the photographs on album pages that are in the Homestead’s collection and some of which are featured in this post.
The 20 March 1913 edition of the Ontario Report covered a presentation given to the Riverside Y.M.C.A. by Doyle using a stereopticon, essentially a slide show, and he informed the attendees that there were 77 boys at the facility (it appears that all of the charges were white), which had a $25,000 annual budge for maintenance of the 240-acre parcel. He added that there were no public funds, outside of those youths who were sent from the courts and for which $11 per month was provided. Most financial assistance came from auxiliaries “situated in different places over the state.”
The assistant superintendent told his audience that,
California has more dependent children than any other state in the Union. Many are delinquent. They are not all bad. Many have just made mistakes. Until the organization of the Republic they must either be placed on probation or sent to the reform schools at Whittier [founded in 1891 with George H. Woodruff, a future lawyer and business partner of Walter P. Temple, as an early staff member and known as the Fred C. Nelles Youth Correctional Facility when it closed in 2004] or Ione [Preston School of Industry]. The Junior Republic as founded on the belief that boys placed under normal circumstances will become normal men, and with this end in view boys are received within the limits of the institution on condition that they remain during their minority [between 14 and 18 years of age and preferred at the lower end of the range.]
After noting that “the cardinal principles” were self-government and self-support, through work, Doyle pointed out that the charges worked as cooks, in a dairy, on electrical projects, in the laundry or the print shop and were paid in “tin,” a form of Republic currency, with salaries paid out of up to $4 weekly, while board was that amount and was handed over to the house mother at one of the three residential cottages. “Tin” could be converted to actual money “in case the boy wishes to visit his parents, or place it in a bank outside the Republic.”
The talk added that those who did not earn their keep were “arrested as vagrants by the others boys, who constitute a police department, and sent to jail.” They could attend the school and work on the 4.5 hours for each during any given day, while under sentence, “but are under strict surveillance and must sleep and eat in the jail.” There were elected municipal officials, such as a police commission, police chief, judge, court officers and jailer, while the county awarded a graded ranking for the high school level, with two instructors, while a commercial school was included. Doyle concluded,
During the past three years five boys have been released as graduates of the institution, and all have made good. All indications point to an extension of the work as time goes on.
As Doyle managed the Republic baseball team, he arranged for games with amateur adult teams, including that of the Ontario Power Company and a letter to the Report, published in its 31 July 1913 edition, he referred to a split of two recent contests and called the series “everything of pleasure and satisfaction and profit,” especially as “no ball team was ever treated more courteously by their opponents . . . and such kindness will not soon be forgotten.” He added that his charges “speak of it almost daily and are anxious for the third game . . . with this group of clean ball players.” The effect, the Republic official concluded, is that the “boys are today better young men because they have met in this great American game this ball team of Ontario.”
Following that year’s Christmas holiday season, and not long after he established a bar association at the institution to help with its internal court operations, Doyle penned a letter to the Colton Courier, which printed it in its 11 January 1914 number, in which he addressed what was clearly a long-standing concern in the area in the five years since the Republic moved to today’s Chino Hills, as he expressed that,
We are very happy these days in the fact that communities are beginning to realize that this Junior Republic is actually securing results commensurate with the amounts invested. From the north, the south, east and west, at Christmas time, came evidences of this fact. To you then, who read this letter, and have extended any co-operation whatsoever, we word our sincere appreciation and the hope that it at least has given you a small bit of the pleasure to give as it has us to receive.
Doyle signed off “with greetings and gratitude, we are, for better boyhood.” After the March 1914 marriage to Lydia, it may well be that he felt he needed to better provide for his future family and left the Republic a little over a year later to return to the U.S.C. law school. The Ontario Record of 8 July 1915 reported on a farewell party at which it was observed that “everyone at the republic regrets his departure” because “he has won the love and respect of the republic boys.”
Doyle completed his degree in Spring 1916. A few months later, he joined a Long Beach firm and was soon admitted as a partner. A profile in the 17 July 1919 edition of the Long Beach Telegram observed that, as did Wilbur, Doyle, following his high school graduation, studying nights at the firm for which he later worked. Moreover, it was mentioned that “while going to law school his energetic efforts were recognized by Judge Wilbur, who employed him and arranged the hours so Mr. Doyle could attend school and earn his wages after school hours.” He supplemented this by working for the Los Angeles Journal and as a janitor to help pay for school.
By the end of the Teens, he and Lydia had a son and daughter and soon another girl joined the family. In 1920, Doyle received the most votes for a Board of Freeholders tasked with writing a new charter for Long Beach, and then served on the city council of the rapidly growing city, while he continued involvement with the Republic, which changed its name to California Junior Republic, by working as its counsel, serving as a trustee and on the advisory board, bringing groups for visits and more.
A Democrat, Doyle was elected to the House of Representatives in 1944 and served a single term, though he was defeated in his reelection campaign two years later. When he ran again in 1948, he lost the Long Beach vote to the Republican who defeated him, but took solid majorities in other areas of the district, including Compton, Downey, Lynwood and South Gate to eke out a victory. Doyle served on the powerful Armed Services Committee (his namesake son died while serving in the military during World War II) and was surprised to learn that Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn selected him in 1951 to be on the House Un-American Activities Committee.
The HUAC was formed as a special committee in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyal and subversive activities and it became a standing committee seven years later, probing Hollywood film industry figures and investigating the notable Whitaker Chambers/Alger Hills spy matters. Future President Richard M. Nixon preceded Doyle on the committee in two successive sessions of Congress. Doyle, who moved to South Gate before the 1952 election because of redistricting, remained a member for a dozen years, ending as ranking member and acting chair at his death from a heart attack at age 75 in March 1963.
President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated eight months later, commented about his fellow Congress member for several years, “I respected his dedication to duty and admired his love and compassion for mankind.” The chair of the House delegation of Republicans told the media “we have lost an outstanding citizen, while the Republican Senate Whip remarked that Doyle “worked without stint to keep our country strong.” Obituaries focused on Doyle’s legal and political career and did not mention his tenure at Boys Republic (which adopted the name in 1952). The Long Beach Independent eulogized him with:
Clyde Doyle was a conscientious man. The career . . . was marked by evidences of a man “doing his best . . . his prominence came as a member of the House Committee on UnAmerican [sic] Activities . . . he was devoted to the cause of rooting out communism . . . the sincerity of his patriotism and devotion to principle was never questioned . . . Mr. Doyle was an emotional man, and outward evidences of that sometimes drew frivolous comment. But there were indications of a deep-seated feeling for principle and of warm compassion . . . For years, his messages and letters carried a line across the bottom: “Our beloved country deserves the best we can give it.” Clyde Doyle lived up to that motto.
We are fortunate that the photos that Lydia Yeomans Doyle compiled into an album are in the Homestead’s collection to document some early history of Boys Republic, as well as the efforts of that institution to help trouble youths better their lives, a perennial problem that could certainly use more institutions like it to assist young people in trouble, so that the facility’s mission is as relevant as it has ever been in the 120 years of its existence.