JERRY PERSON -- A Look Back

Before we begin our look back this week, I’d like to share a bit of bad

news. I received a call from Jacq B. Siracusa of Texas thanking me for

the column on her father-in-law, Sisti Siracusa. She also wanted to let

our readers know that her husband, Ernest Siracusa, 81, passed away April

27.

Almost up to the time he died, she said, her husband was out flying his

plane and riding his motorcycle. Ernest Siracusa was a Stanford Phi Beta

Kappa and a secretary to the American ambassador in Buenos Aires under

Adlai Stevenson.

This week, we’re going to look a local insurance man, David K. Jones.

Jones was born in 1905 in Greensburg, Pa.

He suffered from a physical deformity in his feet that prevented him from

walking. He underwent five operations to correct his condition, and he

was 12 before he could walk.

He went to school in Charleston, W.Va., By the age of 13, he got a job at

the Charleston Mail newspaper as a printer’s devil [a gofer].

Jones’ father bought a farm in Cambridge Springs, Pa., where Jones

attended a one-room school.

In a country school, the teacher had to teach several grades during the

day. There were no school buses in those days, but they did have a

horse-drawn wagon to carry the kids to class. It was Jones’ job to fire

up the stove on the wagon to keep the kids warm in wintertime.

The family next moved to Portland, Ore., in 1919. In 1920, his father heard the news of an oil strike in a small beach town called Huntington

Beach.

The family moved here in 1921 and into a house on 14th Street. Jones

finished school at Huntington Beach High School, where he graduated in

1924.

He got a job here washing cars for Gallienne and Robb’s gas station at

303 Main St.

Jones enrolled at UCLA in 1924, but tragedy struck in March 1925, when

Jones’ father was killed in an automobile accident in Long Beach.

He quit school and went to work for Andy Teague’s service station. In

1928, he and a school friend, Lyle Dunn, bought Teague’s station, which

he ran for more than a year.

He next went to work for the Texaco Oil Co. Jones became a district agent

for the Prudential Life Insurance Co. on Dec. 15, 1929.

Jones married Frances Bradt on June 7, 1936, and for many years lived at

206 Crest Ave.

In 1944, Jones quit Prudential to buy out the real estate and insurance

business of Huston, Suter and Huston at 109 Main.

Jones was a charter member of our Lions Club, and he was a 32-degree

Mason. Jones continued in the insurance business until he retired.

Frances and he then climbed into their automobile and took off to see

America. Who knows, they may still be traveling on some new byway.

* JERRY PERSON is a local historian and longtime Huntington Beach

resident. If you have ideas for future columns, write him at P.O. Box

7182, Huntington Beach 92615.