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Charles Riggs

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Charles Riggs

Saturday, October 17, marks the anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake in the Bay Area. We've posted some stories this past week of people who remember the day.

Also this past week, millions of Californians participated in the "The Great California Shake Out,"   a series of events that became the biggest earthquake drill ever. That morning 20 years ago, just about everyone everywhere was ducking, covering, maneuvering, practicing, checking. We're ready — but you can't be too ready, of course. That's why we practice, practice, practice.

Meanwhile, the Bay Area Chapter of the American Red Cross  has its own "Memories of Loma Prieta"  feature on its website. Wells Fargo and its team members have long supported communities with financial and human capital, and there are so many other groups who do as well. The Red Cross is one such organization that truly helps build community.

Three and a half years ago, Guided By History was born to commemorate the centennial of the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire on April 18, 1906. This year, with the 20th anniversary of Loma Prieta on October 17, we remember and continue that first mission. We want to help you prepare and stay prepared. So here's a suggestion:

On April 18, check the batteries  in your smoke detector, and double-check your gas and water main valves.  On October 17 — a near-perfect six month's time — check your disaster kit and stash , replacing any supplies that have expired or look old and worn. Use these dates as reminders to be ready for natural disasters.

Remember and Prepare!

Charles Riggs

Naomi Ishida is with Wells Fargo's Customer Connection. In October 1989, Naomi assisted then-CEO Carl Reichardt.

About October 17, Naomi remembers, "I wasn't even here at the Bank — I was at the World Series game! You can tell where my loyalty was on that day."

Naomi was at Candlestick Park  to see the San Francisco Giants host the Oakland Athletics in Game 3 of the World Series.  The Fall Classic that year was dubbed "The Bay Bridge Series," after the span that connects Oakland and San Francisco. The powerful A's had taken the first two games in Oakland over the weekend, and were flyin' high on the strength of "The Bash Brothers" and the derring-do of Rickey Henderson. The Giants had their backs to the wall as the Series moved to the 'Stick.

The game was scheduled to begin after 5 p.m. on Tuesday the 17th. Many in the Bay Area took the day off to see the game, or left early to get home and watch it on TV. At 5:00, the game aired on ABC. Four minutes later, the earthquake struck. 

"It shook pretty good at the ballpark," Naomi says. "The light standards were swaying back and forth. With the sound of the rumble, lots of fans thought folks were stomping their feet in excitement of the ballgame starting, before we all realized it was an earthquake."

"Some fans had small TVs with them," she continues, "and we quickly realized how bad this was. Surprisingly — and thankfully — once we were told to evacuate the ballpark, everyone was calm and exited as quickly but as calmly as possible...."

Charles Riggs

My friend Mike Majoulet works in Wells Fargo Brand Management. He makes sure our communication looks right — that logos are where they belong, that signs in stores say the right thing and don't get in your way, and that Historians don't tell the story wrong just to get a laugh. Yes, Michael is the Chief!

He also has a good story about his experience in 1989, the day Loma Prieta struck. (CR)

"I was managing the Baker Hamilton  building on October 17, 1989. The Baker Hamilton is a brick and timber warehouse at 7th and Townsend Streets, a part of San Francisco for over a century. The building was 290,000 square- feet and historic — which means unreinforced.

"The Baker Hamilton  is a 4-story monolith of a building, built in 1904. The company was the largest hardware distributor west of the Mississippi probably up to the 1950s. The building rests on huge redwood tree piles driven about 75 feet into the ground. It survived the 1906 quake very well. My understanding is that hardware from Baker Hamilton was key to getting the City on its feet in 1906. In fact, Baker Hamilton distributed things like shovels, axes and housewares the day of the earthquake in '06.

"At the time I managed the property, it was mixed use — storage in the basement, and furnishings retail on upper floors. I was at my desk when the quake hit. Remember, this is a brick and timber building and the timbers are 2 feet square on the top floor where I had my office. I was sitting there and I could not quite believe what I was seeing. Suddenly, those timbers were more like rubber bands, almost liquid in undulation!

"There was grinding, bumping, and thumping all around me as the quake's waves passed through. Files flung open on one side of the room, and slammed shut on the opposite wall. Wild stuff! It felt like it would never stop, but as we all know, it did. I was sitting in disbelief as 90 years of dust was unleashed from the wood-slat ceiling above me. The room was golden from the sun hitting the dust particles.

"I suddenly remembered I was the building manager and had the responsibility of making sure all my tenants were OK — who cares about the building!

"With my heart in my throat I ventured into the building to see what happened. Luckily, there were no injuries, but there was furniture everywhere, as most tenants sold home furnishings. Some were much more concerned about their stock and not the possibility of another quake, so I 'ordered' everyone out. We didn't have a major aftershock, but as we started looking around outside, we quickly saw the city was in bad shape. A block away, several people were crushed to death when that brick and timber building lost its walls. Cars on the sidewalk were now only two feet high, flattened under bricks.

"I managed to make my way home to Tiburon that night, driving under the freeway that ran along the Embarcadero — which was condemned the next day. I drove across to Van Ness Avenue , because you couldn't continue along the Marina, which was all rubble  and flames.  I ended up in Pacific Heights on Divisadero Street : When I came over the crest of 'Divis,' heading down toward the bay, I saw the Marina  on fire. Most, if not all, electricity was off, so the glow was heightened that evening.

"I was very nervous about what my home might look like, considering what I'd just experienced. But it was weird...I had 2 pendulum clocks in the house. The table clock in the living room had a pendulum that swung east/west and always ran. But it stopped that day at the exact time of earthquake. The second clock was on a small wall between bedrooms, and I never ran it because the 'tick, tick, tick' and my sleep didn't get along. Its pendulum swung north/south. When I got home, that clock was running.

"I’d still take a quake over a tornado."

Charles Riggs

Next Saturday, October 17, is the 20th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake.  The quake shook the San Francisco Bay Area beyond its 7.1 Richter score: Dozens of people died, millions in property losses were sustained, and the City was shut down for days.

Guided By History began three and a half years ago as part of the centennial commemoration of the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco. That and the Gold Rush certainly are the defining moments for the City, even as it’s enjoyed a long and dynamic reputation since.

But remembering something from a century ago is different than something that occurred in our lifetime. Many who are too young to remember are still connected to people who not only remember, but who were there. During the first months of this blog's existence, we wrote about Loma Prieta and used its lessons to help everyone prepare for the next one — the one that is coming any minute....

I myself have a distinct memory, which I wrote about last year. Many people I work with have memories, and many others remember moments and people and stories from that eerie day.

Between now and next Saturday, we'll share some of those stories. But there's nothing more important than taking that personal drama you read about, and turning your feelings about it into a specific action  — namely, taking the few minutes to get your kit together. 

The coldest thing to consider is that at least 63 people died in the Loma Prieta disaster, and thousands were displaced and homeless afterward. These events are real — they happen, they will happen again, and ordinary people like you and me will be affected. I am glad to help rekindle awareness, and maybe some people will be spurred to create or re-energize their disaster plans.

But I also want to take time out this week to remember the many people who lost their lives that day. Many were just folks on their way home from work, something we all do routinely. Their loss is real. And the loss is still sudden, even over these 20 years.

Charles Riggs

Amanda Hopper is an interpreter at the Old Sacramento History Museum, where she presents Wells Fargo's history to visitors. This is her second post for Guided by History. (CR)

A few days ago I was looking in a box on our desk that is filled with index cards   that explain all the items in our museum. One card refers to a photograph of a man leaning against a pile of silver bars in our "safe room.". The caption to the image reads: "In 1877, Madison Larkin guarded silver from Arizona's Tip Top  Mine."

The index card for the image reads, "Larkin's tenure as Wells Fargo Agent was fairly short but dramatic. He is the bold, alert fellow with the double-barrel shotgun cradled in his left arm; often pictured guarding a Wells Fargo treasure box and a huge pile of silver bullion." The information comes from the book Wells Fargo in Arizona Territory  by John and Lillian Theobald. (Tempe, Ariz. 1978)

This card really sparked my interest. I wanted to know what happened to Madison Larkin. Was he killed? What was so dramatic about his time with Wells Fargo?

I began looking through all the books in our "cave" (our nickname for the backroom) and searched the blog to see if anyone had written about him. I asked Martha, who works with me here, if she knew anything about him. (Martha is the one who made all the index cards in the first place — plus, she knows EVERYTHING.)

After a little searching, she was able to answer all my questions about Mr. Larkin....

Allan Peterson

My beloved Santa Barbara is on fire again. I moved away to go to college in 1979, but my father still lives in the house I grew up in on San Roque Road.

One of my first memories as a child revolves around the Coyote fire of 1964. I can still see the flickering lights of the flames in the canyon as the fire made its way to Steven's Park.  Last night the fire came back near there, but news reports  I have found indicate firefighters have managed to keep the fire mostly out of Steven's Park.

My dad told me when I got older that he went down to Steven's Park that night in '64. Using a shovel, he fought the fire with some neighbors. Underneath the Foothill Road (Highway 192) bridge, he put out a small fire that had caught on the fence of the house there — I imagine he probably saved the house. My dad's story reminds me of a similar one from a friend, who told me that just before he'd left his house during the Witch Creek fire two years ago in Rancho Bernardo, a neighbor had put out a small fire started by embers on a wooden fence across the street from his house.

It's those embers that can burn down a house miles in front of the advancing inferno.

I found and interesting story in the LA Times  about another such resident, George Quinn, who used garden hoses to defend the house he had lived in since 1952. "Soaking wet and smoking a cigarette," Quinn claimed, "I put everything out, the damn firefighters were no help." His wife Barbara said, "We were calm...if you get hysterical, nothing happens."

I'm not sure exactly what that means, but perhaps she was saying nothing gets done unless we do it ourselves. And even though I can't really condone their actions, I also can't help but admire old codgers who stand and fight off the flames, like Mr. Quinn and my dad (who admittedly was younger than I am now when he picked up that shovel).

It is incumbent on all of us who live in fire zones to prepare for the inevitability of these conflagrations by clearing brush and creating defensible space. Agencies fighting the fire, despite Mr. Quinn's protestations, are a great help, but can't be everywhere during the disaster. They must encourage evacuation to encourage public safety.

Fear and bravery have their purposes. It's been 45 years since my dad went out and fought a fire. This time he evacuated to Santa Ynez. I think it was the wise thing to do.

Charles Riggs

Nothing is as heartwarming as a funny-looking dog. You just know he's your best friend EVER.

Second on the heartwarming list has to be a funny-looking building — it simply HAS to be a good place if it looks that bad.

Of course, sometimes a structure looks bad because of the architectural sensibility of the time. Victorian buildings, for instance, are the absolute definition of "WAY too much of everything!"  Or mid-twentieth blocks  that eschewed anything that might suggest humans were inside.

Then there's Kennedy-era  cool. Like the A-Frame Wells Fargo branch built in the early 60s in Eureka, California. The idea was, I think, to suggest Mountains and skiing and a Winter Olympics vibe.  That's just my opinion, of course, but I'm generally right about things like this that don't matter.

In 1944, Wells Fargo plopped a trailer at the U.S. Naval Air Station   in Alameda, California, to provide quick financial services for service people and employees at the base. The trailer was there till the mid-60s, before Wells Fargo consolidated the several branches there into new buildings.

In 1960, American Trust Company and Wells Fargo merged. The combined company had an office aboard the cruise ship SS Monterey.  The sign detailing Fiji currency suggests to me that the biggest business at the window was currency exchange. Whatever the case, it was a nice assignment, I'll betcha.

A few years later, a new Wells Fargo branch was being built in Placerville, California. The Company set up temporary quarters in a double-wide trailer on the Fairgrounds.  There is a reason this is funny to me. Now I know temporary quarters in trailers are not unusual in any business, and the fairgrounds are a large space with limited use. It was a smart decision. It's just that when you see the photo, it looks like "a double-wide on a fairgrounds."

All the comedy you expect from that phrase happens. Sorry.

Marianne Babal

Sometimes when writing on a subject of history, you become totally immersed in the subject at hand — and don't even know when you accidentally touch the ALT   (as in alternate) key.

I recently wrote a historical feature extolling the accomplishments of two people from Wells Fargo's history, George S. Roberts and James A. Walker, both of whom trained and flew as combat pilots in the famed "Tuskegee Airmen"  squadrons in World War II. After retiring from distinguished military careers, both Roberts and Walker came to work for Wells Fargo as bankers. We at Wells Fargo Historical Services are very proud of their accomplishments and of their association with Wells Fargo.

I described the establishment of the U.S. Army Air Corps pilot training program at Tuskegee Institute  that the military had back in 1941 as an "experiment," testing whether African-Americans had the ability to perform as combat pilots — a reticence that indeed sounds ludicrous to us today. A reader pointed out to me that the word "experiment" in conjunction with Tuskegee has an alternate and more sinister connotation.

In 1972, a news reporter uncovered one of our country's most vile episodes of government-sanctioned racism — medical experiments carried out on unknowing African-American men with latent syphilis. The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, or formally the "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male,"  commenced in 1932 and involved 600 male subjects. The U.S. Public Health Service's goal for the study was to track the natural progression of the disease in the subjects. Told only that they were being treated for "bad blood," the Black and mostly poor "patients" received no curative treatment, even after penicillin's introduction in the 1947 brought the first real cure for the disease. Test subjects were even discouraged from seeking other proven treatments. By the end of the experiment in 1972, 128 of the men had died from syphilis or related complications, and dozens of their wives and children had been infected as well.

My description of the military's training program at Tuskegee as the "Tuskegee Experiment"  touched a disturbing chord with some readers — even though the National Park Service , who now administers the historic airfield at Tuskegee Institute as the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site , uses the same terminology  in its exhibits and brochures.

Sometimes you can write history and not quite understand all its nuances or see it clearly it through a wide-angle lens.

Historians will occasionally write something about a person or place that contradicts family lore  or local tradition. When information that we believe is sound is refuted or rejected out of hand, we can be taken aback. The lesson learned is that we are not merely writing about a person, or a place, but someone else's life, someone else's experience. From time to time it does us good to be reminded that others may view the subject through a different lens. This writing assignment has reminded me once again that history is not just facts and context — it is indeed very personal. 

Charles Riggs

On October 17, 1989, I left work an hour early, picked up my seven-year old kiddo from school and went home. Our plan was to cook some hot dogs on the BBQ and watch the third game of the World Series . My San Francisco Giants were playing her Oakland A's, and while things weren't going well for the Giants, the Series had moved to Candlestick Park. I was confident my guys would turn it around.

Before the game started, Kid was lounging on the sofa and lecturing me on the futility of rooting for the Giants in that Series. I was on the floor, surrounded by the remains of an Eagle  that I hoped to reclaim. We tuned in to the game at 5:00pm, and minutes later there was a loud "THUD!" from the west wall. Had someone driven into the house?

I looked up and saw the bookcase on that wall rocking dangerously, so I leapt up to hold it steady. Looking out the window to my left, I saw the peach tree shaking oddly. When trees sway in the wind, it's beautiful; this looked as if some giant fist was shaking the poor thing from underground. It was the eeriest thing I've ever seen. Truly.

Moments later, everything was still. The TV was a hissing static and showing snow. No ballgame there. My neighbor came over and the memory of his voice is still clear: "That was a bad one."

Then, military aircraft were flying overhead, and low — it looked (and sounded!) like they were right over the roof. I turned on the radio and got the full extent of what happened. The earthquake was a 7  — it had wrecked neighborhoods around the Bay and sparked several major fires. A section of the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge failed.

Worst of all, the Cypress Freeway  collapsed and trapped scores of people in their cars.

Most of us know the drama from that day  and the terrible loss of life. I am fortunate to have lived in the 'burbs, away from the fullness of the disaster. What strikes me the most after all these years — in addition to how low those planes flew! — is the different responses. My neighbor was running around helping everyone check the gas mains . And my kid was under the desk. She learned in school to respond quickly, to get to a protective place and wait out the quake. I was standing there like a knucklehead, holding up a bookcase.

They were prepared and I was not.

Recalling Loma Prieta , I remember the fear and confusion I felt. I remember that peach tree shaking weirdly and my kid's muffled reply from safety. I now remember also that I stood there not really knowing what to do.

Guided By History was begun to remember the 1906 San Francisco 'quake and fire, and we blogged for a long time about preparedness. In the Archives, I looked up Wells Fargo's news publication from that time and found the emphasis was on employee and customer safety, and getting things back to normal as soon as possible. The memory of Loma Prieta I now have, fully developed, is about being intelligent in advance..

Accepting that I did it all wrong, and that my seven-year old did it all right, is my first stop to getting prepared.

That, and getting "my kit" together!

Charles Riggs

This year is the sesquicentennial of the Butterfield Overland Mail Route, the first transcontinental stagecoach line. Casey Gill will follow the trail of the BOMC next month and blog about it here. Behind the scenes, teams of dedicated Historians are working 'round the clock to make this historical event come to life. For you!

Casey's journey across the land is the visible piece in a huge undertaking. Lots of sweat and yes, even some tears are falling on his behalf. Behind the BOMC glitz is the seamy underbelly we call reality.

Glen Myers is a Curator in the Wells Fargo History Museum here in San Francisco The other night, Glen and I were working on some video stuff for the project, when outside the studio window came a loud CRASH. We rushed to see what was up and saw a pile of wreckage that was, only moments before, three automobiles.

"My Car!!" Glen yelped and with a single leap, he was outside. Glen's truck was parked behind another car outside the studio, and the third car of destiny came round the corner at high speed. That driver lost control and plowed into Glen's truck, which macked into the one in front.

No one was injured, and the driver of the offending vehicle was led away in a stupor and taken to the hoosegow  .

The police and emergency workers on scene were brilliant, and darn efficient. After 3 hours of police work, insurance reports and tow trucks — there was even another crime across the street that needed the police! — our night's work was through. Glen has everything worked out and we'll get back in the studio on Sunday to finish the gig. But behind the glamor of Casey's trip 'cross country, there are many stories of bravery and perseverence that might never be known. Except for this blog, which brings you the real McCoy  .

Glen's is one such story. The scars we bear are a testament to the level of committment we have to following the Butterfield Overland Mail Route. To bring it to you — our community. There is no greater sacrifice.

And we think Glen might get a Hybrid  out of it!