The headline in the local newspaper on Feb. 26, 1959, was large and imposing, indicating an arrival of someone important: “Orphan Annie Senior Comes to La Jolla.” “Annie Senior” was Harold Gray, the creator of the popular comic strip that had delighted millions since its inception in 1924 and syndication in the nation’s newspapers. At 65, Gray had selected La Jolla as his “western working base.” He and his wife, Winifred, purchased an unassuming contemporary two-bedroom, two-bath home in Bird Rock at 5220 Chelsea Ave., where the well-known cartoonist wrote and sketched the last nine years of “Orphan Annie” before his death in La Jolla in 1968. Unfortunately for posterity, the “Orphan Annie” house where Gray lived and worked has been recently demolished for development. Only a handful of old-timers in the neighborhood remember Gray’s life among them — most recalling Gray as a tall, reclusive man seldom seen on the street, friendly but definitely not a socializer. “Nobody really got to know him that well,” said Dr. Gilbert Kinyon, who has lived nearby on Chelsea Avenue for 56 years and delivered Gray the final anesthesia at Scripps Hospital when he died of lymphonia in September 41 years ago. “He did all the work for ‘Orphan Annie’ in one small room in the house. He also was a radical Republican and made his views known oftentimes in the strip. Every year he sent out a Christmas card that said, ‘Sandy says woof to the neighbors.’” Perhaps the card personified Gray’s sardonic wit. In the strip, Orphan Annie’s beloved dog, Sandy, always said “arf,” not “woof.” “Orphan Annie,” with its mainstay cast of characters featuring Daddy Warbucks and Punjab, was still in the heyday of popularity when Gray moved here, quoted with a readership of 90 million in 1959. Born in Kankakee, Ill., in 1894, Gray had his first newspaper job as a boy in 1913. He served in World War I, and upon arrival home went to work for the Chicago Tribune, where “Annie” was born with a name inspired by a James Whitcomb Riley poem. Gray traveled extensively to national and international destinies throughout the life of the strip to seek inspiration for characters and stories — travels that eventually led him to La Jolla. On purchasing the Chelsea Avenue house, he said, “We’ve been traveling through the 48 states for many years. We chose La Jolla for our western head because it seems to have a serenity, an ever-present stimulus for creative thinking that we have never found in any other part of the country.” Ironically, unlike other La Jolla writer residents and artists such as Dr. Seuss, Max Miller and Raymond Chandler, Gray never seemed to parody his turf. “You just never saw him,” says Betty Peach, another Chelsea neighbor. “But when I went out begging for the March of Dimes every year, he always handed me a check for $100 — a lot of money when everybody else was giving $5.” “He was a nice man with a nice little house,” says longtime Chelsea resident Gail Redfern. “Now it will just be another two-story mansion.” — “Reflections” is a monthly column written for the La Jolla Village News by the La Jolla Historical Society’s historian Carol Olten. The Society, dedicated to the preservation of La Jolla heritage, is located at 7846 Eads Ave. and is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Fridays