Paul’s Party !

Paul J. Vanderwood — An Obituary and Remembrance

Paul J. Vanderwood — An Obituary and Remembrance

Eric Van Young, UC San Diego

October, 2011

Vanderwood_remembrance   

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                             1929 – 2011

Paul J. Vanderwood; San Diego State History Professor, scholar of Mexican history known for mentoring students

Dr. Paul J. Vanderwood started his career covering Martin Luther King Jr. and Elvis Presley as an investigative journalist and went on to become a leading scholar in Latin American History at San Diego State University, where he taught Mexican History for 25 years, gaining an international reputation.

He went into the remote villages of Mexico to observe local religious customs and brought back insights that distinguished him in the academic world and captured the interest of the general public. As a professor, he was as excited about sharing his research as mentoring students. Both his books and his teaching won awards.

“He was a great historian and a people person,” said longtime friend George Sherman.

Dr. Vanderwood died of bowel cancer Oct. 10 at San Diego Hospice in Hillcrest. He was 82.

“He communicated excitement about his work across generations to new Ph. Ds as well as leading figures in the field,” said his friend Dr. Gilbert Joseph, Farnam Professor of History and International Studies at Yale University.

Even into his 80s, Dr. Vanderwood traveled to Yale to present lectures in Latin American history. “He was generous intellectually and personally and had an impact on students from San Diego universities to Yale,” Joseph said.

Dr. Vanderwood was among those who pioneered the teaching of history through film and used his journalistic background to bring immediacy and vividness to his books on Mexican cultural history, some of which are widely used in colleges. Among his most acclaimed works were “Disorder and Progress: Bandits, Police, and Mexican Development” about the changing face of banditry in 19th century Mexico and “The Power of God Against the Guns of Government,” about government suppression of a religious rebellion in Mexico.

He was known for trying to bring meaning from his research to a wider audience outside academia, particularly in the area of religious beliefs.

“In later works he focused on popular religious feeling—not so much formal, institutional religion, as people’s personal beliefs, making an effort to get inside the heads of the historical actors,” said colleague Dr. Eric Van Young, distinguished professor of history at the University of California, San Diego.

Among his many awards, Dr. Vanderwood will receive posthumously the 2011 Distinguished Service Award of the Conference on Latin American History.

He began his career covering the Civil Rights movement for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain in Memphis, TN after graduating from Bethany College in 1950 with a major in journalism and history. As he interviewed history professors at Memphis University, he was encouraged to pursue a master’s degree in history there, which he received in 1957.

During the Korean War, he served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army from 1951-53 in the Psychological Warfare School, focusing on ways to train troops to resist brainwashing.

In the early 1960s, he was among a team of investigative reporters sent to South America to examine difficulties the Peace Corps had in retaining volunteers. He became fascinated with Latin American culture, which led him to study the subject at the University of Texas-Austin, where he focused on Mexican history and received a Ph.D in 1969. He joined the faculty at San Diego State, where he was close to the Mexican border.

“He was a bit of an explorer and went out into remote Mexican villages to observe spiritual life and local traditions,” said Dr. Joanne Ferraro, chair of the history department at San Diego State.

He lived in La Mesa for more than 40 years and was known as a scholar and mentor—giving his time not only to his students, but anyone who asked for his help. “He could talk to anyone about anything,” Van Young said,

He was born June 3, 1929 in Brooklyn, NY to Mildred Horstman, a star teenage ballet dancer and Joseph Vanderwood, a cigar manufacturer. He is survived by his sister Pam Stiff of Deland, Fl.

No services. A private gathering is planned.

A Paul Vanderwood Memorial Fund is in the process of being established for a scholarship and proposed research center in his name at San Diego State University, said Sherman. For information, e-mail George Sherman Geosherman@aol.com.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/oct/28/paul-j-vanderwood-san-diego-state-history-professo/

TUNAMAN’S MEMORIAL

TUNAMAN’S MEMORIAL

Located southwest end of Island, facing bay.

Large bronze sculpture  and granite marker.

 

Driving Directions:

From the North I-5 or I-805, to I-8 West.

Exit Rosecrans St. head south to Shelter Island Drive, turn left.

Follow all the way to the end and veer right.

Just the west of the pier you will see a bronze statue of three fishermen, this is where you will see the boat heading out to sea.

Our boat will come as close to shore as possible, the crew will wave to the families  & then head out to sea.  

 

THE BOAT WILL BE THERE BETWEEN 11:45-12:00 ( Noon), ON FRIDAY – OCTOBER 28, 2011.

Friends of Paul Vanderwood

Paul Vanderwood passed away October 10, 2011. An official obituary will soon be published. There will be no funeral but a celebration of life party is in the  planning stage. Watch for further notice.

Immigrants (and Others) Still Seeking Help from Juan Soldado

 Christian Faltis is the director of teacher education at the University of California, Davis, and a renowned painter of dazzling scenes depicting the plight of Arizona’s immigrants. Here in a striking new painting he pictures forlorn immigrants seeking help from Juan Soldado, the accused and executed rapist-murderer subsequently revered as a popular saint. Juan’s remarkable story is told in my book, Juan Soldado: Rapist, Murderer, Martyr, Saint, published a few years back by Duke University Press. Juan, a young Mexican soldier named Juan Castillo Morales, was in 1938 publicly executed for the crime involving an eight-year-old girl in Tijuana. Many thought him innocent, a scapegoat for a military superior. And in accordance with beliefs of the faithful, those who die unjustly sit closest to God. So the devotees prayed to Juan for betterment in their lives and many testified that their requests had been granted. In other words, miracles occurred, and they erected a shrine to Juan where he had fallen in a hail of bullets fired by a military execution squad. Today there are regular pilgrimages to Juan’s shrine in Tijuana’s downtown Cemetery Number One. Among the petitioners are those hoping to find family, work, and a better life in the U.S. And the devotion has spread widely to other parts of Mexico and across the international line into much of the United States where mainly Latinos but also Anglos seek the protection of Juan Soldado, and through him the assistance of God in their daily travail. Professor Faltis, who paints under the name Simon Candu, has poignantly captured in this painting the relationship between these struggling immigrants and a Higher Power. He invites our compassion for these people. In other paintings he is more strikingly critical of Arizona’s draconian anti-immigrantion laws. In all of them he urges us to ponder matters of justice. He will be showing and discussing his work later this month in New York City.

THE MISSING CHILD (A FAMOUS PAINTING) FROM SATAN’S PLAYGROUND

 For decades, Dick Robarts, a real estate developer from Windsor, Canada, has been determined to track down a masterpiece painting of his great, great, great . . .grandmother, Charlotte Monro, who was immortalized by the greatest of Scotish portrait painters, Sir. Henry Raeburn (1756-1823). Raeburn’s works are featured in some of the world’s finest art galleries. They are fully catalogued and their provenance is known. But Charlotte, the lovely child dressed in fluffy white and holding a bird, is missing. Robarts has traced her through well-known art dealers and famous art auction houses like Christie’s and now to Agua Caliente, the fabulous gaming resort which flourished outside Tijuana during Prohibition and beyond, and is the subject of my new book, Satan’s Playground: Mobsters and Movie-Stars at America’s Greatest Gaming Resort. In his pursuit of the painting, Robarts placed an advertisement in a slick magazine called English Country Life, published in London, and a cousin of his responded saying that she remembered an “Uncle Allan” telling he that she had seen the painting at Agua Caliente, specifically “at the home of a colleague at Agua Caliente.” That tip brought Robarts to Tijuana where he learned that the painting had indeed been seen in offices at Agua Caliente, where it was probably the property of one of the Border Barons who ran the resort. Contact with relatives of one of the baron’s, James Crofton, has to date yielded no confirmations. But Robarts is still searching hard and follows up every lead. Agua Caliente now seems like his best bet. In fact, he has come across a painting of Charlotte from Agua Caliente, but the child has been Mexicanized. That is, given Mexican facial and other features. The remake is not painted over the original, but Robarts figures that the artist must have been working with the original to paint his Mexican copy. The Barons prided themselves with fine, famous paintings in their homes and workplace. When Charlotte was on auction in New York City in the 1920s, it is quite possible that one of them acquired the painting. Agua Caliente itself was covered with splendid artwork. The overall theme of structures at the resort was mission revival, so popular at the time. But interior decorators filled the place with a mish-mash of luxurious paintings, furniture, tapestries, hand-painted tiles from Spain, spectacular chandeliers from Italy, and ornate Louis XIV chairs from France. The barons would have been proud to show-off a Raeburn, one of the master’s few paintings remaining in private hands. Dick Robarts remains determined to find that original painting of his relative. His enthusiasm is infectious. Some say he is like Don Quixote tilting at windmills. Others are willing to bet that he finds Charlotte.

Moose Drool Revealed and Revered

I was wearing my Moose Drool (brown ale) sweatshirt the other day in a bistro when a woman rushed up to tell me that her family had embraced a moose drool symbol as a kind of medieval coat of arms.  You know, those kinds of colorful symbols that emblazoned the shields of warriors in those times.   It seems that the family owns a painting of a drooling moose and annually passes the work–which is said to bring good luck to the holder–from one of their family households to another  each year.  Now there is a family crisis, because her nephew who has had the painting for his year of good luck refuses to give it up and pass it on in accordance with family tradition.

The incident got me thinking about moose drool per se.  Do moose really drool?  Of course they do when  glands in that huge pendulous muzzle they carry around produces an abundance of saliva–or maybe when they are salivating (drooling over) a good looking possible mate over the hill.  Or drooling over that next meal up ahead.  I first became acquainted in a serious way with moose drool at a lovely mini-brewery in Missoula, Montana, where they sold only draft beer, one of them called Moose Drool.  I recently chatted with one of the owners of that brewery, Neal Leathers, about the origins of that name.  “Well,” he said, “we wanted to use Big Sky Country critters as a theme, so a partner’s mother,  a painter, created scenes featuring local animals: buffaloes, bears, moose, marmots, foxes, mountain goats, etc.  One painting featured a moose lifting its head out of a pond, water streaming from its muzzle.”  Neal said to his partners, “Hey, it’s a moose drooling.  Let’s call it “Moose Drool’.”  A pretty good debate followed over whether or not “Moose Drool” was an appropriate name for a beer but the team decided to chance it.  The name intrigued customers.  Leathers said that in the beginning older ladies refused to say “Moose Drool” when ordering a brew.  “They just pointed to the tap and said, ‘Give me one of those’.”  But the barkeep  wouldn’t do it.”   ”Which one, Ma’m,” he’d  say, “and the hesitant customer would reply pointing to the tap, ‘That one.’   ’Oh, no,’  the barkeeper would kid them.  ‘You gotta say it.’   And the patron would finally mutter ‘Moose Drool’ and get her glass of beer.  But that was a few years ago.  Now they say it out loud.  Some even shout it.”

Over the last decade, so many patrons have gleefully bellowed “Moose Drool” so forcefully that Leathers and his partners have expanded “Moose Drool” brew to bottles sold throughout the western U.S.  And some have even adopted the the drooling moose as their family’s coat of arms.  Meanwhile, the brewery has expanded its offerings to include “Whistle Pig Red Ale” and “Scape Goat Pale Ale.”  I guess Montana has pigs that whistle along with plenty of scapegoats.

Agua Caliente Chips and Tokens a Hot Item

The new issue of Casino Chip & Token News December 2010) features an article with lovely photographs on Agua Caliente during Prohibition. In the same publication (p. 57) Michael Knapp reviews Satan’s Playground: Mobsters and Movie-Stars at America’s Greatest Gaming Resort saying, “A more detailed and authenticated book would be hard to imagine. . . It’s not often that a detailed and thoroughly researched book about a single casino and its environs is published.  Satan’s Playground  is one of them, and anyone with interest in Agua Caliente will find it valuable and enjoyable.” Dealers report an upsurge in prices in the wide variety of Agua Caliente chips. A batch was recently found at a San Diego swap meet.

An Ex-Governor Recalls Satan’s Playground

 Journalist Dennis Moore’s detailed (and largely laudatory) review of Satan’s Playground  appears in the December 26, 2010, edition of East County Magazine, the region’s most widely read electronic publication. Dennis’ friend, the ex-governor of Michigan, Dan Walker, wrote him: “An excellently written and interesting review. In the 1930s, with my father, I often visited Agua Caliente resort and racetrack. I remember vividly the casino, where they used silver dollars rather than chips. My father, whom I fondly call ‘The Old Man,” always bet on the nags, with bookies in San Diego and often at the track. We visited Tijuana often. There was nothing like Tijuana in the 1920s and 1930s. I have great memories of that area about which you wrote in your book review.” Dan Walker was governor of Illinois in the 1970s. He grew up in San Diego and Escondido.