Brianna Hill and Miguel Solorio play Capt. Alberto de Ruiz and his wife. Ruiz, from Cuba, was one of the original architects for the Port of Long Beach. Photos by Danielle Carson.
The movers and shakers of early Long Beach are far-gone, but they rise from the dead every Halloween to share tales of their successes, failures, love and demise.
The Long Beach Historical Society hosted the 20th annual Historical Cemetery Tour at Signal Hill’s Sunnyside Cemetery and Municipal cemetery Saturday. Actors portray ghosts, but they’re far from gaunt. In fact, they’re well-dressed and quite informative.
Gallery Coordinator Brandon Werts said last year they had 600 visitors, which they decided wouldn’t be enough to keep the event running past its 20th anniversary. Luckily, Saturday’s estimated attendance of nearly 1,000 was enough to keep it going, he said.
The crowd was not only an older group of history buffs, as Werts said it was in the early years. Mid-tour history trivia games and the vibrant, comedic performances engaged kids and young adults, who were able to laugh about and celebrate the usually grim and frightening aspects of cemeteries.
There are 20,000 people buried between the Sunnyside and Municipal cemeteries. Though Sunnyside appears retired compared to the greener municipal cemetery on the other side, people are still being laid to rest there.
“There are enough stories for us to be doing the cemetery tour for many, many years,” Historical Society member and tour guide Pat Benoit said.
The diverse sampling of ghosts, clothed in period wear provided by the Long Beach Playhouse, gave history lessons about the early development and culture of Long Beach, which was the most-settled city in the United States during the first decade of the 1900s.
“It’s hard to find information about African Americans or Latinos because they were household and agricultural help, so they didn’t make it into the newspapers,” Patmor, also the tour’s project manager, said.
Historical Society Co-President Roxanne Patmor said they uncover new information for every year’s event, either to beef up their favorite presentations or create new ones. The society works with a resident historian and conducts research year-round, digging up tale-worthy individuals through newspapers, public records Google. In April the board maps out the tour and creates scripts for the volunteer and professional actors from the community.
The historian is Dr. Kaye Briegel, historical society treasurer and the co-director of the virtual/oral history archive at Cal State Long Beach. Patmor said Briegel is so well-versed in Long Beach history, she can look down at any grave while walking through the cemetery and conjure up a story about the person in it.
Here is a sample of this year’s attractions, which change yearly and are performed by a rotating selection of actors:
“A Port for Long Beach”
The story of Captain Alberto De Ruiz, an immigrant from Cuba and one of the architects for the port of Long Beach, was told by Wilson High School sweethearts Miguel Solorio and Brianna Hill, who played his wife, Elizabeth (pictured at the top of this story).
They said all of the actors rehearse four to five times, 20 minutes each. The historian sits in to make sure all the details are accurate.
Ruiz, who was said to be an internationally-minded individual, worked as a city engineer and put together the original master plan for the port. He was the first Latino man to graduate from Anapolis Naval Academy, a detail that the Historical Society only recently uncovered.
The Mysterious Myth of John Bowers
Dennis Kortheuer and Terra Taylor Knudson tell the story of a love triangle and a murder mystery involving John Bowers and his wife.
The story is about the death of a photographer from Minnesota and his gold-digging wife from England, who told the bulk of the humorous mystery. Actors Dennis Kortheuer and Terra Taylor Knudson put a convincing show as the begrudging couple.
Bowers was killed while prowling his own yard at night for a reason only the dead and gone know. John patented a photo machine that prints postcards on a roll instead of individually, a creation that his cheating wife profited from after this death.
The Walker Legacy
Professional actress and singer Lucy Daggett plays Carrie Della Walker, wife of C.J. Walker. The Walkers founded the first Farmers and Merchants Bank on historic Pine Avenue.
Carrie Della Walker, played by historical society board member and professional actress Lucy Daggett, told the story of her husband Charles J., who opened the first Farmers and Merchant’s bank on Pine Avenue and Third Street. The bank was completed during the oil boom of 1923 and was renowned for its ornate architecture that was damaged during the earthquake that happened during Roosevelt’s 1933 “Bank Holiday.”
A stepdaughter of the Walkers was one of the original founders of Long Beach Historical Society. She, along with over a dozen other Walkers, is carved into a large monument in what is called “the Valley of the Monuments” on Sunnyside’s West end.
“A Lot Can Happen in 99 years”
Zadie M. Cannon plays Samella Tibbs Robinson, who informs the last tour of the day about life in early African American Long Beach.
In the 1930s, there were only around 350 African American people in Long Beach. Zadie M. Cannon played Samella Tibbs Robinson, representing the early African American community in Long Beach. She was a janitor, and many of her friends and family worked as maids for Long Beach’s white women.
“Some people say the Great Depression started in the 1930s, but I say it started in the 1920s,” Cannon’s character said of early life in the lower working class.
The historical society only recently found that several of the stones next to Robinson’s, though with different last names, are her sisters that arrived to Long Beach years apart with their respective husbands. Patmor said aside from race, marriage makes it difficult to trace early lineages. Many of the grave sites in Sunnyside say no more than “Mother” or “Father,” making the breadth and depth of the annual tour a phenomenon in itself.
“You know, the [historical society] has a habit of digging people up,” Cannon’s character said.