USA > California > Los Angeles County > Los Angeles > Los Angeles from the mountains to the sea : with selected biography of actors and witnesses to the period of growth and achievement, Volume III > Part 27
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The nurse elected to be president of the school should be a woman of force and character. She should be a woman who understands girls and can comprehend their desires and difficulties. She, as the repre- sentative of the school, submits all recommendations and requests of the Student Body to the superintendent of the hospital, and the superin- tendent of the hospital, in turn, presents her wishes to the president of the Student Body to be placed before its members. Complaints concern- ing the conduct of nurses are made to the president. If worthy of con- sideration, the matter is brought before the Board of Student Body Affairs, and, if deemed necessary by them, placed before the Student Body for consideration.
The president is assisted by five monitors of her own selection from the Senior class. It is the duty of the monitors to enforce all rules of the school, to see that there is proper observance of seniority, to super- vise all matters of uniforms and personal neatness among the nurses, and to have general oversight of the good conduct and well-being of the school. The Senior class as a whole takes the disciplining of the school as its duty, thus lightening the work of the officers very much.
The opportunities for abusing and overstepping rules are greater under Student Body Government, but the desire seems to be latent. There is no supervision in the Nurses' Home by the superintendent or the hospital supervisors. Each monitor is in charge of a floor, and occa- sionally it becomes necessary for her to remind the nurses of their duties, but it is not often.
In admitting new nurses into our school, it is our endeavor to make them feel as comfortable as possible. The probationers are received by members of the Student Body, appointed by the president. The first evening she instructs them as to the rules of the school and the general conduct of the nurses. They are urged to come to her with any dif- ficulties which arise, that they may not become discouraged in their early
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training. When the probationers are capped and taken into the Student Body, the president impresses upon them what is expected of them, as a member of our school.
How much our government has grown a part of us we can hardly realize! But the loyalty and pride which it has instilled are most evident. The responsibility of making our school the best falls on each individual nurse. Our path is not always smooth, for occasionally we find among our number girls who endeavor to pollute the weaker minds and shatter our ideals, causing a feeling of dissatisfaction among the nurses. For- tunately, their sojourn in our midst is usually short.
The above is a very brief outline of Student Body Government as we enjoy it. To write in detail would make a long paper.
It is to Mrs. Walker, our superintendent, that we extend out grati- tude for conceiving of a plan of government for our school which has given us so much freedom, loyalty and self-respect.
STUDENT NURSES.
MRS. HORATIO WALKER JR. during her residence in Los Angeles has been superintendent of the Hospital of the Good Samaritan, and her services in behalf of and to that great institution make her one of the interesting women of Southern California.
Mrs. Walker comes of a family of scholars, ministers and profes- sional people. She was born in New Brunswick, Canada, her maiden name being Rahno Aitken. Mrs. Walker feels that her life work is a direct product of the influences and training she received from her father and mother. Her father was the Rev. William Aitken, a native of Scotland and a graduate of Edinburgh University and a Scotch Pres- byterian minister. He married Jane Noble, whose people lived at Stra- bane, County Tyrone, Ireland. Mrs. Walker was one of a family of nine children, all of whom are still living. Four of her brothers and one sister were overseas in the World war. Her oldest brother is a lawyer of prominence, and her third brother is the present Lord Beaverbrook. Her mother is still living at Newcastle, New Brunswick. Her father died in 1913 in Canada, after having been retired for twenty-two years. Mrs. Walker was educated at the Ministers' Daughters College in Edinburgh, Scotland, and has been overseas a number of times. She is a woman of culture, wide experience and travel. Her father neglected no opportunity to give his children the broadest possible education, and it was a wonder- ful home atmosphere in which Mrs. Walker and her brothers and sisters grew up.
Mrs. Walker's husband, who died eleven years ago in the Pasadena Hospital, was the only son of Horatio Walker, a famous American artist. Horatio Walker Jr. was born in Canada, and was a graduate of McGill University, at Montreal, with the B. A. degree, and also one in medicine. Dr. and Mrs. Walker were married at Trinidad, Colorado, in 1907. Prior to that time Mrs. Walker had taken the course for train- ing in the Toronto General Hospital, and for a time was superintendent of a hospital in Montreal. After her marriage and the death of her hus- band, she returned to California and was elected superintendent of the Good Samaritan Hospital eight years ago. At that time the hospital was still at its old site on Seventh street, its organization including some fifty or sixty nurses. Nine months later the institution was moved to its present beautiful home on Orange street, and since then Mrs. Walker has had an important part in the continuous upbuilding of the institu- tion, until it ranks second to none in the West. The Hospital of the
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. Good Samaritan is maintained under the auspices of the Episcopal Church, Bishop Johnson being president of the Governing Board. While in so many ways the skillful efficiency of the management is due to Mrs. Walker, she is credited with one particular achievement, the introduction in 1913 of the Student Body Government in the Nurses Training School. Those competent to speak of the results of this plan freely credit Mrs. Walker with much of its success .. In six years the plan has passed through more than the experimental stage, and it is now regarded as an indispensable feature of the training school and has given a distinctively high tone to the character and conduct of the body of nurses.
CHARLES H. SPENCER, D. O., was one of the founders of the present College of Osteopathic Physicians and Surgeons, of which he is secretary and treasurer. He is also honored as president of the California Osteo- pathic Association and has done much to build up and extend the practice of osteopathy on the Pacific slope. A brief history of osteopathy in Cali- fornia is published on other pages of this work.
Dr. Spencer was born at Gilboa, Ohio, November 12, 1875, a son of Benjamin S. Spencer. His education was the product of attend- ing the grammar and high schools of Ohio up to April, 1891. At that date, sixteen years old, he received a teacher's certificate and much of his active life has been spent in educational affairs. For three and a half years he taught in Putnam County, Ohio, and then after a six months' course at the Illinois Normal University he taught school, in McLean County of that state two years. Another year was spent in teaching in Putnam County, Ohio, after which he entered the S. S. Still College of Osteopathy at Des Moines, Iowa, and received his degree in June, 1902. He took special work for three months in physiology and pathology at the University of Chicago, and returned to Des Moines as an instructor in the Still College of Osteopathy. During the summer of 1903 he was again a student in the University of Chicago.
Dr. Spencer has been a resident of Los Angeles since 1905. He assisted in the organization of the Los Angeles College of Osteopathy, and was its vice president until 1914, when as elsewhere noted, it was consolidated with the Pacific College of Osteopathy, resulting in the present College of Osteopathic Physicians and Surgeons. Besides his duties with this institution Dr. Spencer has carried on a large private practice in Los Angeles. His offices are in the Hollingsworth Building.
He is a member of the Annandale Country Club and a democrat in politics. At Humboldt, Iowa, August 24, 1904, Dr. Spencer married Jennie Connor Beguin. Dr. Spencer has two children. His son Ray- mond C. served in the 144th Field Artillery, an organization known as "The Grizzlies," with many memorable exploits to their credit in the World war. His daughter Margaret Jean was born in 1917.
EMORY D. MARTINDALE, a successful lawyer of Los Angeles, has many of the qualities and has had many of the experiences which are typical of the sound American stock from which he springs. He early learned to be dependent upon his own resources and has relied upon the principle of self-help. He began working for a living when a small boy. He paid for his own education and like Abraham Lincoln, of whom he is a great admirer, studied law and men largely at first hand, with only incidental contact with the institution of learning.
Mr. Martindale was born in a great center of culture and learning, Chantauqua County, New York, in the township of Chautauqua, five miles
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from the county seat of Mayville. His birth occurred October 7, 1871. . His parents were John S. and Electa (Stebbens) Martindale. The Mar- tindales were English while the Stebbins were of original Holland Dutch ancestry. Most of the generations on both sides were identified with agriculture. The maternal grandparents Stebbins were among the first settlers of Chautauqua County, going there with ox-cart and teams and clearing away some of the heavy timber to get room for their first buildings. The Martindales were a Pennsylvania family. Mr. Martin- dale's mother died in 1883 at the age of thirty-nine. John S. Martin- dale, who died at Long Beach, California, in February, 1911, was for about ten months a private soldier in the Union army during the Civil war. When he first volunteered his parents used their influence to get him released. Later he was drafted October 16, 1862, was mustered in at Camp Howe as a member of Company D of the 169th Pennsylvania Infantry. He was mustered out with his company on July 26, 1863. He took his place in the line of battle at Gettysburg just as the enemy was beginning to retreat. In early life he was a farmer and later owned a sawmill in Chautanqua County and from that mill delivered a great deal of lumber used in improving the grounds of the Chautauqua Assem- bly. He died at the age of seventy-four. He and his wife had three sons and three daughters, all living except the youngest, Frederick, who died in infancy. The others are: Lloyd S., a rancher at Eliwanda, California; Alice, wife of Irving G. Adams, of Fredonia, Chautauqua County, New York; Emory D .; Ida J., wife of Hiram B. Johnson, their home being on a two hundred eighty acre ranch at Hinckley in San Bernardino county; and Mary E., wife of Rev. Burt J. Edwards, a minister of the Free Methodist Church at Wichita, Kansas.
Emory D. Martindale was twelve years old when his mother died. His father was a comparatively poor man, and the son after his mother's death spent his summer vacation working on the farm until he was twenty-one years of age. Besides the common schools he attended high school at Sherman and Westfield in his native county, and for several seasons took normal course in the Chantauqua Summer School. For eight years he was a teacher in his native county. The first money he ever really owned and earned was thirty dollars paid him for six months' work. The summer he was sixteen he weighed not over ninety pounds and was employed in driving his father's team during the construction of the Chautauqua Lake Railway, then a steam road, now operated by electricity. Mr. Martindale taught school for two years, 1906-08, in the Philippine Islands.
On returning from the Orient in 1908 he located at Los Angeles and spent one term in the University of Southern California Law School. He had studied law while teaching in New York State and in the Philip- pines. He was admitted to the California bar in February, 1909, and since then has been engaged in a general growing practice as a lawyer. He was candidate for Congress on the prohibition ticket in 1912, and a can- didate for the legislature in 1914. Mr. Martindale is a member of the First Baptist Church of Hollywood.
August 30, 1914, he married Mrs. Lollie B. (Fielding) O'Connor, of Los Angeles. The year of his marriage Mrs. Martindale was cam- paign manager in his contest for the Legislature. Mrs. Martindale's son, J. Robert O'Connor, is now United States District Attorney. Reports from Washington say that he is the youngest Federal district attorney in the country. He is prominent and well known in Southern California, and lives at South Pasadena. Mrs. Martindale was born at Fayette, Missouri.
Allin SRhodes
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ALLIN L. RHODES, known for his many conspicuous interests in finan- cial affairs, is a true son of the Golden West, a native of Calaveras County and representative of a family that has been in California seventy years.
His father, the late Alonzo Rhodes, was born at Lumberton, North Carolina, May 25, 1825, and the Rhodes family is still a prominent one in the Old North State. Alonzo, however, spent his early manhood in Tennessee and Mississippi until in 1849 he joined the argonauts to Cali- fornia, making the trip overland. He farmed in San Joaquin County until 1856, mined in Calaveras County until 1872, and from that year until he retired in 1891 was occupied with real estate and conveyancing in Stock- ton, where he is best remembered in a business way. In 1886 he and associates took over the street railway system of Stockton, and during his connection therewith it was greatly improved and extended, with ser- vice adequate to that growing and progressive city. Alonzo Rhodes moved to Los Angeles in 1899, and spent the last five years of his life here. He died in May, 1904. He was a member of the Society of California Pioneers. At Stockton March 15, 1855, he married Miss Anna MacVicar, a native of Mississippi, and of their six children three are living, Alonzo Willard of Los Angeles, and Mary A. who lives with her brother Allin.
During his boyhood and youth in Stockton, Allin L. Rhodes attended the public schools, but took his professional education in the University of Michigan, where he was graduated in the law course with the degree LL.B. After his admission to the bar he practiced at Stockton until a break down in health in 1897 compelled him to abandon his profession there. After two years of recuperation among the Sierras with refreshed energies he resumed his career at Los Angeles in the fall of 1899, and the following spring entered the legal department of the Title Abstract & Trust Company and about six months later took the general manage- ment of its affairs.
In August, 1913 those in touch with Los Angeles business will recall the consolidation of this company with the Los Angeles Title Insurance Company, under the latter name, with Mr. Rhodes as general manager and director, the offices he holds today. In January, 1914 the company also absorbed the Los Angeles Title & Trust Company, giving it unrivaled facilities. The business of the company has assumed such proportions that it has recently, as shown by the reports issued by the Insurance De- partments of the various States, been handling a greater volume of title business than any other company in America engaged in the title insurance business exclusively.
Mr. Rhodes is also president of the Brearley Investment Company and a director of the Azuza Orange Company. He is a York Rite Mason and Shriner, a member of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, and in politics a democrat.
THE URBAN MILITARY SCHOOL was founded in the fall of 1907. Many of the earlier pupils have completed their courses and in the arena of practical life have signalized the training and advantages of the days they spent in this school. It is through these young men that their practical working days and in their character that the success of the school is thus justified. These older students and the parents of many boys who have attended or are in attendance at the school, speak with remarkable unanimity in praise not only of the opportunities for intellectual training but also for those influences and safeguards that are thrown around the boys while in the school.
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The school opened with fifteen pupils enrolled, but for several years past it has cared for the specified limit of attendance, seventy-five boys. The first location of the school was at Ninth and Beacon streets, but in 1910 it moved to its present home, in the beautiful Westlake residence district of Los Angeles. There is also a summer school maintained at Catalina Island, where a class of twenty boys live in tents and enjoy superlative advantages of camp life under proper supervision and regu- lations.
The object of the Urban Military School is to prepare boys for admission to West Point, Annapolis, St. Paul's, Groton, St. Mark's, Hotchkiss, St. Vincent's, Thacher's and other similar schools. It has been highly successful in achieving its aim expressed in giving that fair and individual attention so necessary to the welfare and happiness of boys and laying the foundation for education in its broadest sense, incul- cating principles of integrity in word and deed, teaching self-reliance and establishing habits of study, punctuality and application. The man- agers of the school have found that these ideals can be best attained through the advantages of military training. Military discipline is an essential feature of the school life, though by no means the principal end and aim, furnishing rather the environment and the routine in which the other purposes may be most appropriately worked out.
The Urban Military School is for both resident and day pupils. The headmaster from the beginning has been Mr. C. C. Burnett, an educator of many years experience. The general management of the school, especially its home life and the facilities and influences surrounding those who live at the school, are under the direction of Miss Mary McDonnell.
WALTER P. STORY. To the initiative and resources commanded by Walter P. Story Los Angeles is indebted for one of its sky scraper office structures in the business district, the Story Building, which he began in April, 1908. It was completed April 1, 1910, and at that time was regarded as the most modern office building in the city, twelve stories high, and with a frontage of 120 feet on Broadway and 150 feet ·on Sixth Street.
The Story family is an old and prominent one in the State of Mon- tana, and from there inuch of their wealth and enterprise have been drawn into the upbuilding of Southern California. Walter P. Story was born at Bozeman, Montana, December 18, 1883, and is a son of Nelson and Ellen (Trent) Story. His father was a Montana pioneer and credited with one of the largest individual fortunes in that state. He was born in Ohio in 1828 and his paternal ancestry went back in New England history to about 1640. Nelson Story grew up on a farm, but had a partial college education, and in early manhood identified himself with the western frontier. He was a participant in the early freighting between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains, and as a miner, freighter, rancher and business man of varied interests, his career belongs to the history of California, Montana, and a number of territories. For many years he was president of the Gallatin Valley National Bank at Bozeman, Montana, and was one of the most helpful factors in building up that city. He built beautiful and palatial homes both in Bozeman and Los Angeles.
Walter P. Story attended public school at Bozeman until 1894, when he first came to Los Angeles with his parents. In this city he attended private and public schools and at the age of sixteen entered Shattuck Military School at Faribault, Minnesota. He was there until
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1902, and in 1903 he graduated from Eastman Business College at Poughkeepsie, New York. Returning to Bozeman, he became identified with the Commercial National Bank, an outgrowth of the Gallatin Valley National Bank of which his father was president. Beginning as book- keeper and teller he continued his services for two years and then returned to Los Angeles and engaged in the real estate business with Arthur E. Tandy under the name Tandy & Story. He dissolved that firm about the time he began the erection of the Story Building. This office structure stands on a lot which Nelson Story bought in 1895, for a purchase price of fifty thousand dollars. The transaction was con- cluded with a cablegram from Colonel James Lankershim, who was then in Paris. When Walter P. Story was fourteen years old his father presented him with this lot. Mr. Story when he began the erection of a million dollar building borrowed half the amount from his father and negotiated the rest by loans from local bankers. The building has been a profitable one, and the obligations against it has long been cleared away.
Mr. Story is a member of the California Club, Los Angeles Athletic Club, Midwick Country Club, Los Angeles Country Club, Overland Club of Pasadena, Bohemian Club of San Francisco, the Chamber of Com- merce and the Los Angeles Realty Board. He was appointed by former Governor Hiram Johnson on the Board of Directors of the Sixth District Agricultural Association, and was reappointed by Governor Stephens. Mr. Story married April 21, 1903, Miss Geraldine Rowena Baird, of San Francisco.
EDWARD GERHARD KUSTER. A prominent member of the bar at Los Angeles, who has long been mainly engaged in general corporation and probate practice, and is recognized as an authority in rate matters, is a native of Indiana, born at Terre Haute, August 15, 1870. His parents were Dr. Charles Edward and Emma (Eshman) Kuster.
Dr. Charles Edward Kuster was born in Germany, March 27, 1842, and was seven years old when he accompanied his parents to the United States and grew up at Indianapolis, Indiana. His medical education was secured in the Ohio Medical College, Cincinnati, and Rush Medical College, Chicago, from which he was graduated in 1865. Post graduate courses followed in England, France, Germany, Austria and Scotland, and he returned to the United States with thorough training in medi- cine and surgery. The outbreak of the Civil war gave him experience on the field of battle, where professional skill was so sadly needed. Dr. Kuster enlisted in the Indiana Volunteer Infantry in 1864 and after carrying a gun with his comrades for six weeks, was examined and appointed surgeon of the regiment, although he had not yet received his diploma. He served out his one hundred days' enlistment, then returned to college for graduation, then re-entered the army and served professionally until the end of the war.
Dr. Kuster located at Terre Haute, Indiana, and engaged in prac- tice there until 1885, when he came to Los Angeles. He had been a member of the board of health at Terre Haute and under appointment by President Arthur, was examining surgeon for the pension board. After coming to Los Angeles, he continued the practice of medicine until he retired in 1907. At Terre Haute he was married to Emma Eshman, who, at death, left but one son, Edward Gerhard.
Edward G. Kuster received his preliminary educational training at Terre Haute and Los Angeles, later was a student at Berlin, Germany,
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and after returning to the United States was graduated in 1896 from the Los Ang les High School. He studied law with one of the leading firms of Los Angeles, took a course in the University of California and was graduated with the degree of B. L., and a post-graduate course in the university, and was admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of Cali- fornia, March 13, 1902, and in the United States Courts in 1903. Fol- lowing his admission to the bar, Mr. Kuster became chief clerk for Graves, O'Melveny & Shankland, his former preceptors, and upon the dissolution of the firm, continued with Mr. O'Melveny in the same capacity. In 1906 he opened his own office at Los Angeles, three years later torming the firm of Kuster, Loeb & Loeb, which was dissolved in 1911, since which he has practiced alone.
Mr. Kuster has always taken an active part in the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra, a civic institution maintained by the people of Los Angeles and Pasadena for the benefit of Southern California. He is a director and secretary of this organization and is devoting much of his time to bringing its benefits into a wider field. This is the oldest symphonic organization west of Chicago. It stands today free from indebtedness, free from commercialism, dependent upon the people of the community alone for its life and sustenance, and serving all the peo- ple which its sustaining fund will permit it to reach. The concert sea- son of 1919 opened on October 17th, with a great gala performance in celebration of the orchestra's centenary. This enterprise, as others with which Mr. Kuster has been connected, has benefitted by his interest and energy. An instance may be cited. In 1910 Mr. Kuster became managing director of the Automobile Club of Southern California. At that time the club membership was 30,000. When he resigned in 1916, the membership had reached 11,000, and carried an insurance business aggregating a third of a million dollars. Mr. Kuster is identified with many business, professional and social organizations, among these being the American Automobile Association, of which he is coast representative, and the California, Los Angeles Athletic, San Gabriel Valley Country and University clubs.
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