OBITUARY: With a high school diploma and determination, he helped built the city’s infrastructure — then was its first mayor.
By ROBIN HINCH
Orange County Register
When Jim Bell moved his family to Farquhar Avenue in Los Alamitos in 1943, there was only one stop sign in town and only two paved roads — Los Alamitos Boulevard and Katella Avenue. And there were no sewers.
Farquhar, although a residential street, was the dirt-road thoroughfare for workers at the Los Alamitos Naval Air Station. When the quitting time whistle blew at 4:30 p.m., a stream of cars rumbled dustily past the Bell’s house. And if Jim’s wife, Evelyn, had forgotten to bring the laundry in from the clothesline (remember those?), she made a mad dash to the back yard to rescue he clean longjohns before they were coated with grime.
Los Alamitos wasn’t yet an incorporated city, but it did have a chamber of commerce. Jim called them up to see what it would take to get the streets paved.
At the first meeting he attend he learned two important things: The Chamber of Commerce President Grace Johnson, had died in her sleep; and if you come to a meeting and squawk about something , you’ll end up engineering the project yourself.
Jim became the next chamber president.
Now Jim was not schooled in city management. He was an electrician with a high school education, a mind that soaked up information as easily as today’s kids learn computer skills, and a good solid sense of what needed to be done.
He went to the library and brought home armloads of books on city and county government. Late into the night he sat at the kitchen table, hunched over chapters on water districts and sewer systems.
Under his guidance, Los Alamitos residents saw bumpy dirt roads give way to smooth, clean asphalt. They happily surrendered their septic tanks to a city-wide sewer system.
And when the city finally incorporated in 1960, Jim was elected its mayor and served for the next four years.
He was 82 when he died Monday.
A native of Trimball, Tenn, Jim joined the Navy after high school and learned the electrical trade. When he was discharged in California, he worked for the naval shipyard before becoming an electrician for the Naval Air Station. He married Evelyn Rhodes in 1939.
He was a tall man, with muscled forearms worthy of Popeye and huge hands that could skillfully connect the tiniest electrical components. He held his children to a strict moral code, aprincipal component of which was “do not challenge my authority.” A sign of disrespect could bring one of those large hands flying faster than you could mumble, “I’m sorry.”
A religious man, Jim helped found the First Baptist Church of Los Alamitos. He loved to garden, growing gorgeous flowers and plump fruits and vegetables in his backyard. And he did everything by hand. No electric mowers or edgers for this electrician.
His mind was always at work. When he bowed out of city government, he sought to make daily life easier. He conjured up a little flag that popped up automatically when a dumpster was full. He made a device with a windshield wiper motor that would shut off the electricity to a car that someone was trying to steal. He never bothered patenting his inventions. The fun was in the creation.
His car, of course — a 1977 Chrysler with 40,000 miles and nary a scratch — was the source of endless tinkering. Toward the end of his life he was till pulling out the carburetor or starter for fine-tuning, even when the car had just come back from the shop.
He is survived by his wife; daughter Sylvia House; son, Jim; sisters Mary Rains, Estelle Williams; brother, Odel; seven grandchildren; seven great-grandchildren.
Reminisces of Jim Bell, Jr., long time resident of Rossmoor, Spring 2008
“My dad was from Tennessee. He was stationed out here during the war, and after being discharged he didn’t want to go back there. He liked it too much out here. So we settled in Long Beach.”
He got a job as an electrician at the base, so in 1947 we moved to a house on Farquhar, where the dental offices are now – across from the bank of America.” It was a couple lots in from Los Alamitos Boulevard.
There were only two paved streets in the area at the time. Katella and Los Alamitos Boulevard. Everything else was dirt roads. There was a forest like grove of trees on the east side of Los Alamitos Boulevard, south of Orangewood.
Bell remembers there were a lot of civilian employees at the base. “Come 4:30 the whistle would blow at the base4 – you could hear it all around town – and within a few minutes all the workers would be hitting the road. – the dirt roads – and their would be a big wall of dust.
“Aty the time the prevailing afternoon winds would blow things a little west.
Bell remembers the dust would wreak havoc on any laundry hanging on the clotheslines. “I remember hearing that whistle and my mom would still have some clothes on the line, and we’d all run to the lines and start bringing in clothes before that wall of dust would settle on them.”
My dad hated that dust and he wanted to do something about it — get some oil on the road or something. We had no city council – only a chamber of commerce which kind of represented us – so my dad went down there, but the lady who was President of the Chamber had passed away and nobody had taken her place. So the other folks said, if you want to have any clout with the county, it helps to be speaking for the Chamber. “So they let him be the chamber spokesman.”
That’s how he got into politics.
A lot of the kids’ dads would be off playing ball with them at night. My dad was studying all these books on how to get things done legally.
Long’s Market was near us. Campbell’s market was up by Sunshine Glass Company. (Los Al Boulevard & Florista)
Back then you’d have real thick fog just hanging over the farmland.
To head to Anaheim you’d take Ball. More places to stop for fruit or pull something off a tree.
Doves would come in around four o’clock over the Haagsma bakery near where McAuliffe is now. I’d lay on the railroad tracks and watch them come in.
Katella – no stop lights between Los Al and Beach.
Went to the big Boy Scout Jamboree up by Irvine Lake. That was about when that road came to be called Jamboree.
Rossmoor was my playground. Lima bean fields. No sugar beets at all around then.
We’d go up around Coyote Creek – wasn’t very deep, lots of shrub and small trees – snakes, coyotes, jackrabbits . Could shoot Pheasant around where we live now.
Kids nowadays don’t know how much fun we had.
Wattes was really the only farm around here.