Tag: marine

As the Turnmire Turns…..

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Alvin Turnmire, 1947
Beverly Turnmire, 1947

He is 21, dressed in a Hawaiian shirt with a cotton bomber jacket and button front denim jeans. She is 19, holds a Boxer pup and wears a leopard print coat and appears somewhat sad and disturbed.

They are Alvin and Beverly Turnmire, recently married.

Their address is a home in Studio City at 4232 Goodland Ave. near the golf course. They probably live with his parents, but they want to get out and get an apartment.

And Burbank police said they committed a string of burglaries in order to furnish their new place.

November 5, 1947 is the date of their arrest. They were caught 71 years ago, and are probably dead. But their reincarnated young beings still walk Ventura Boulevard.

Studio City people: in love with dogs and exotic clothes, chasing goods and desires beyond their reach, a place of happiness and meltdowns, a magnet for dreamers, a trap set in the San Fernando Valley for aspirational types who fled from somewhere else, a district where many survive by impersonation, wearing costumes and carrying animals and evading responsibilities.

 

1954: Cop with Five Truckloads of Stolen Building Material

And then Alvin Turnmire, 27, is arrested seven years later. For white people back then there were always second chances.

Photograph caption dated March 8, 1954 reads “Officer Thomas Quarles examines king-sized wire snips as he stands amid five truck loads of building material loot alleged stolen by Alvin R. Turnmire, 27, and found by officers at the suspect’s Sun Valley home. Goods was (sic) valued at $20,000.” The article partially reads:  “A Sun Valley father, who seven years ago looted Burbank stores to set up housekeeping, is back in jail today for a fantastic nine-month series of burglaries.”

 

1957: Cops with stolen loot.

Alvin Turmire, now 31, is arrested again, ten years later, in 1957, now living in Pacoima. He is still committing burglaries. For white people back then there were always third chances. Maybe it helps that he was a Marine, fought in WWII, earned a Purple Heart, “got a Jap bullet in the leg at Iwo Jima, as his wife explains.”

Photograph caption dated August 1, 1957 reads, “T. E. Holt, left, checks stolen property at Valley station with Det. John Sublette after police picked up two truckloads of stolen goods at home of Alvin Turnmire, 31, 8969 Snowden Ave., Pacoima. More than $10,000 worth of various equipment was picked up. Turnmire was booked on suspicion of burglary and is scheduled to be arraigned today.”

Photo credit: LAPL/Valley Times/

The Optimist

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The Optimist

If you were to bullet point Mike Hewson’s biography, the list would sound sad:

• Grew up gay in the 1950s
• Drafted into Vietnam as a medic
• Returned to Los Angeles and worked in a hospital
• Cared for his mother during her 4-year ordeal and death from cancer
• Watched his good friends, all young men, die from AIDS.

But it was Abraham Lincoln who said, “People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” He might have been speaking about Mike, who was born on July 18, 1945, and moved to 16724 Morrison St. in Encino five years later.

He had an ideal childhood, with a stay-at-home mother and a father who worked as printing company salesman, and a younger sister, Deawn.

In those days, Encino was like a small town, with block parties and vast ranches and newly built houses. The 101 and 405 didn’t come through the Valley until the early 1960s.

He went to Encino Elementary and Birmingham High School. His family lineage, including many veterans of many wars, stretched back some 200 years.

He attended Valley and Pierce Colleges for two years and then studied to become an Operating Room Technician.

In 1967, he went into the Navy and later joined the Marines and went off to Vietnam for 27 Months. His nickname was “Flash”.

In his field hospital, 30 miles outside of Dan Nang, near China Beach, he assisted in neurological operations on wounded soldiers. Blood, suffering, the horrors of war, death and truncated and destroyed young men: all of these violent and horrific human tragedies marched before his young eyes.

He got down in the trenches and did anything he needed to do to help his fellow Marines. He was “Doc” but he was GI Joe too, never allowing his higher position to interfere in lending a helping hand.

He told me that everyone knew he was gay, but that he never heard one hateful remark. He believed that a lot of homosexuality went on in the armed forces, but that it was not an issue because survival and fighting mattered most.

Only politicians make an issue of it.

When he came back to the San Fernando Valley, in 1971, he was overjoyed to be back in the USA. He was still only 26 years old, and he went to work at Encino Hospital and lived as a single gay man in the Brady Bunch era.

Active in the Metropolitan Community Church, he also hung out with a group of friends who all died from AIDS. He and another buddy survived the lethal scourge of the 1980s.

Unlike many people who remember so fondly the San Fernando Valley and talk badly about its present condition, he finds that some things have gotten better. He misses the horse farms and orange groves, but he loves all the trees and greenery that has come up in the last 60 years. He remembers the view of the mountains that was so clear in the early 1950s, and now those views are returning as cars burn cleaner.

His last job was at Barnes and Noble in Encino, and he does regret the loss of the store, which was closed by greedy billionaire owner Rick Caruso and will be replaced with another CVS.

Mike is retiring to Puerto Vallarta. And at age 65, he will take his optimism down to Mexico, which is also a place where people have hard lives but smile frequently.