Gerald Lewis Lively [51]

  General Notes:

Born at the Butte County Infirmary in Oroville, California, although the family resided in Gridley, fifteen miles away. The date was November 22, 1938. The family occupation at the time was agriculture. The parents, Samuel Edgar Lively, Jr. (aka Lewis Lively) and Helen Monnot were married December 17, 1938 in Reno, Nevada. Helen Monnot was known to have had another child prior to Gerald. See Elana Monnot.

Gerald Lively attended Mt. Diablo High School, Concord, California; California State University, Chico earning a B.S. in business administration. Served with the U. S. Army Security Agency at the 14th U.S. A.S.A. Field Station, Hakata, Japan (military intelligence) 1958, 59, 60. Deputy Administrator, Butte County, California. City Manager, Yakutat, Alaska, Powerlifter.
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Memories of Richmond, California.

I really don't remember when we moved to Richmond, but it was in 1942. I was probably 4 or 5 years old. I was 12 or 13 when we moved away from there.

The residence in Richmond was in a government housing project, a four-plex, two stories, and across Gerard Blvd. from the Santa Fe Rail Station. 336 W Bissell, as I recall.

My sister and I (Catherine) enjoyed sliding down the stair rail to the everlasting concern of our parents. It went up the stair only halfway, but there was no stop at the bottom. A good slide would dump you right at the front door, no problem. And those stair were wooden. Sometimes I would climb to the top of the stairs and empty my marble bag there and push the marbles down the stairs, making this terrific noise. And that always drew a complaint from a neighbor, and I always got scolded and I always did it again.

It seemed like there were hundreds of kids around. Cowboys and Indians, or Army, were the usual games. There was William "Frosty" Underwood, Stephen Stone, Gary Shriner, the bully Glen Allen, Vicki Swanson and others.

Early on we went to "nursery school", an equivalent to todays kindergarten. It was a half block away and across the street from the Richmond Plunge, an indoor swimming pool. Later on I would spend many hours inside swimming, taking swimming lessons and doing the things kids do in a pool. Next to the Plunge was a long tunnel through the hills of Point Richmond where the motorcycle club, the Richmond Ramblers, hill climbed endlessly. I always wondered why they would try to climb a hill they obviously couldn't climb. But ruts were worn from the countless attempts.

On top of the hill us kids would explore around an old collapsing water tank that held twenty or thirty thousand gallons of water. It was surrounded by a fence so we couldn't get inside. Once we found a fencing mask there and we were convinced it was a Japanese Army thing or other. So, in our imagination we knew that water tank on top of the hill was a secret Japanese ammo dump. We spent a lot of time crawling around the tank looking for Japanese soldiers. From this vantage point we could see the entire San Francisco Bay, including Alcatraz (watched the riots in 1948 from there) the Bay Bridge and all the seaplanes taking off and landing from Treasure Island (Pan Am Clippers). And the take-offs from Alameda Air Base (Alameda Naval Station later on). Many times we watched the "Flying Wing" and P-38's, exciting stuff.

I remember the day Franklin Roosevelt died. Frosty and I were wrestling on the lawn and I remarked that someone would probably make today a holiday forever. He argued it would be his birthday that would be the holiday. Not so, I said, he died and everyone is sad, nobody even noticed his birthday.

When we first moved to Richmond, all the trains in the depot across the street were steam driven. Sometimes the engineers would rev-up an engine and spin the wheels, and the chug of the engine would speed up frantically. Whistles were always being heard. Then diesel engines began to appear. They were quiet, smooth, virtually without character. We saw endless streams of soldiers boarding and unloading, and surprisingly they carried weapons most of the time. For kids, this was fascinating stuff.

We played hide-and-seek, threw balls over the house (two stories) in a game called "olly olly oxen free". I have no idea what that meant. We grew a garden out back (victory garden), smashed tin cans and left them by the mail box, raced around and around the block on tricycles and scooters, played hop-scotch, and sneek around the buildings where a neighbor lady would sunbath with no top on.

Looking back, it was a great place to grow up in.

In 1950 we moved to Concord, California into a suburban subdivision. And life changed.
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Earthquake In Oroville, California

It was August 1, 1975 (give or take a month). I was working for the Butte County Administrative Office and was on loan to the Economic Opportunity Council (CAA) to manage the start up of a housing rehabilitation program. It was about 9 am when the first trembler struck. It might have been a 5 or 6 on the Richter Scale as it rumbled through this old house we had our offices in. I remember remarking that we should start up a betting pool on the best guess as to the strength of the quake. We all had a chuckle but nobody started that pool. The next trembler came at about 11 am and felt the same as the first one. I didn't give it much thought, having been through quite a few quakes in the San Francisco Bay Area, as I left to go out to the project site where I had a crew working on a house. Once there I passed out blank time cards to be filled out. I collected them after a time and headed back to the main office in the basement of the old historical County Administration Building. This was a building built back in the 1850's and had received little in the way of improvements or modifications. There, I would sit down and check the cards and sign them, then turn them over to the payroll clerk.

Pat Barry, the Director was in the office talking on the phone. He was having some sort of dispute with a contract attorney and was doing his best to handle the conversation with great delicacy and tact. I was working at a long conference table in his office signing time cards. It was 1 o'clock in the afternoon.

A strong trembler struck, shaking the building violently. Pat slammed down the phone in mid-conversation and stood. I was on my feet too. We just stood there looking up at the concrete ceiling. The noise was terrific and it seemed to last for a half minute or so. Someone said something about getting under a doorway but I wondered about the three stories of cement and brick above my head. No doorway was going to protect me from that.

But the shaking stopped and we all had a nervous laugh then returned to our duties, and Pat called the attorney (who was in Chico and probably didn't know about the quake) and renewed the discussion. But just as he was beginning to explain why he had hung up the phone, another shaking began, this one was even stronger. I was up and headed for a doorway. I stopped there and waited out the quake which lasted about fifteen seconds. And Pat had again slammed down the phone. He broke out in laughter as he contemplated the image he was creating in the attorney's mind. And again he called back; and again a quake struck. This third shaking was the biggest of the three, and certainly larger than the morning events. I don't exactly recall how it happened, but I had hastily moved outside the building, a journey of twenty feet, more or less, and a Secretary was gripping my arm. She said later, that I had dragged her all the way outside.

I was outside the building while the shaking continued. It suddenly stopped as I reached the edge of the porch. The quiet was striking by it's suddenness. I could hear glass crashing to the ground from the downtown areas a block away. I didn't see any people or cars. It was hot and there was no breeze. I stood there, and in seconds there came wafting up, like rising water, a layer of dust. I could see it coming up when it was knee high, and I watched as it advanced up my chest, and up to eye level. It rippled - like water. It passed over my head and kept going up. Then people came running out of the building; apparently the ceilings in the upper stories had collapsed.

Pat Barry came out and declared it was time for a long lunch, he was buying. He gathered up Bob Borchard and we went to a fastfood hamburger restaurant and stood in the middle of the parking lot. Pat said he didn't want anything falling on his head. We ate there. Bob and I made jokes about the quake, and that's where we decided to start a rumor about it. So we made something up. It goes like this: We knew the City of Oroville had been involved in street improvements in our project area and that morning they had broken a water main and flooded the street on one block. We decided to let the residents on that block know that this water was coming up from the lake (Lake Oroville). And the sudden movement of water from the lake came through a fault line that runs through the City, and that this water lubricated the fault line causing the quake. We told that story to some people then promptly forgot about it.

The Administration Building was condemned before we returned from lunch and was torn down within a few weeks. The downtown still has not recovered after twenty-six years.

The next day was Saturday. I coached a womens Softball Team and we were in a tournament that afternoon. I was on third base, coaching and our team was at bat. A runner was on third. And a trembler struck. Nobody moved. I glanced up at a light standard used to light the park at night and it was swinging in a circle at the top, about three or four feet. I remarked to the runner, "You see that?" pointing up at the lights.

She had both hands on her knees ready to run home on the next pitch, and she looked at me and said, "Shut up!".

"Its a quake," I said.

"I don't want to know about it," she barked.

I kept quiet, I think she meant it.

On Monday, when the local newspaper printed their morning edition, they had a story of a news conference held by the Mayor, Bob Winston. He was apparently very upset about some rumors that had people in a near panic, rumors about the lake leaking water through an earthquake fault line and causing the shaker. He said, "I hope I never find the person who started that rumor. God knows what I would do to them."

Several years later Bob Winston was elected to the County Board of Supervisors, effectively making him my boss. We told him about the rumors. He said he didn't recall making the remark, but we did have a good laugh about it. He said, Bob (Borchard) and I had been living in terror of him for years and that was punishment enough.

After another few years, the press published a scientific study about that earthquake. Among other things it said that the cause of the quake was that the weight of the water in Lake Oroville had caused seepage into a long dormant fault line thus lubricating the fault and permitting movement along the fault line.

I wonder sometimes, about "scientific studies".

GL

  Noted events in his life were:

• Military Service, 1959.

• Military Service. Gerald pictured here in 1959 in Japan outside radio shack.

• Military Service. Pictured here with radio direction finding crew, Japan, 1959.

• age. Gerald, age 16.

• age 5. Gerald working in Victory Garden, 1943, Richmond, California.

• Age 5 1/2. Gerald in Victory Garden, Richmond, California

• Military Service. This is a picture of company boat in Japan, 1960.

• Military Service. Pictured here is Trick 1, Japan, 1960.

Gerald married Virginia Lee Lawson [54] [MRIN: 49] on 1 Apr 1958 in Concord, California. (Virginia Lee Lawson [54] was born in 1938 in Central Point, Oregon.)

Gerald next married Joan Rasmussen [59] [MRIN: 50], daughter of Conrad Rasmussen [5158] and Roberta Bailey [5161], on 29 May 1976 in Orinda, California. (Joan Rasmussen [59] was born on 6 Oct 1951 in Berkeley, California.)