Even nicer at ninety…She’s always been good-natured. So when the heat hit 93 degrees on Saturday, June Sandford stood outside the Mission Beach Woman’s Club greeting guests to her 90th birthday party with a smile. A sweet, warm smile.
June’s three kids were all there ” Olive, Ed and Julie, along with cousins, nieces and nephews. Her family helpfully prepared name tags for everyone with headings: PB United Methodist Church friends, PB Town Council friends, her Beryl Street neighbors and general friends. There were lots of us, covering the years since she arrived in PB in the 1940s.
June and her late husband Pug were among the founders of the church and were very active through the years. When I mentioned I couldn’t find parking at Santa Clara Point (where the Mission Beach Woman’s Club sits at the corner of Bayside Lane and Santa Clara), she nodded. And when I told her I parked in PB and walked over, she smiled and remembered a great story.
“We planned a picnic for the church youth group, here at Santa Clara,” she recalled. “All the kids came with us except one young man who had a paper route in Crown Point. We figured he’d be late ” but I looked around and there he was! I asked him, ‘How did you get here so soon?’ And he said, ‘I walked across.’ This was 1949,” June explained, “and it was low tide.” (Mission Bay wasn’t dredged until the early 1950s.)
Warm testimonials came from her neighbors on Beryl Street, where she’s welcomed generations of kids. And from PB Town Council friends, remembering her service as president, vice-president, honorary mayor and longtime parliamentarian.
June, you’ve earned every bit of the praise. Keep enjoying it.
Belmont’s ups and downs…Our family has always loved Belmont Park’s roller coaster. When it was threatened with demolition, we volunteered to paint it.
I wrote about it, hoping others would help to save the coaster.
In 1986, when voters had the choice of a public park or a shopping center, of course they nixed the shopping center.
The city then gave former Councilman Mike Gotch (who died May 18 at age 60) a lose-lose proposition: We’ll tear down the coaster and The Plunge because we can’t afford to repair them or you accept commercial development which will pay for them.
He reluctantly ” and sadly ” agreed. Mike later confided that the developers made promises they didn’t keep.