The Browns of California Read online

  Bepp left the camp before he could help with a favor that Pat had requested. He was planning to run for district attorney, Pat told his client, and “if there are any people from San Francisco in Heart Mountain, Wyoming, I would appreciate your marking their ballots for them.”27

  Pat’s 1943 campaign was his second run for district attorney. In 1939, he had challenged sixteen-year incumbent Matthew Brady. A revived Cincinnatus group helped Pat campaign, and though he lost by a substantial margin, he won a respectable 40 percent of the vote. He became better known and positioned himself for a rematch. During the next few years, Brady grew older and weaker, and the Democrats gained many thousands of new registrants as voters changed parties, just as Pat had done.

  Nonetheless, Pat knew he needed support from at least one of the city’s four newspapers, all Republican-controlled and influential. The line between the editorial position of the papers and their news gathering was virtually nonexistent, so support translated into positive coverage. Opposition meant the paper would mention a candidate not at all, or only in negative terms. The Hearst family published the San Francisco Examiner in the morning and the Call-Bulletin in the afternoon; the de Young family owned the second morning paper, the Chronicle; and Scripps published the Daily News in the afternoon.

  The incumbent district attorney leaked stories to the Hearst papers, so Pat judged he had the best shot with their competition. He visited the editor of the Daily News and said he would run only if he knew the News would support him. After he got the paper’s blessing, he went to the Chronicle with the same pitch and won their endorsement. “He has the energy28 and the will to keep up with the tide of events,” the Chronicle wrote. Their coverage helped transform Pat Brown from an ambitious young man to a serious contender.

  His campaign cards showed Pat in an unusually serious pose, a young man with square-jawed determination, hair combed back, and wire-rimmed glasses already giving him the look that would lead to his “owl-like” epithet. “Born and reared in San Francisco,29 Edmund G. Brown has had an opportunity to absorb and study the human side of San Francisco—he knows its people as well as its politics—its shortcomings as well as its greatness,” read his campaign literature. He promised to “get things done” to stem rising crime and juvenile delinquency rates in San Francisco. He viewed the office as not only punitive, but redemptive. He was particularly interested in preventive, educational programs for young people. “The District Attorney’s office has more to do with the unhappiness of people than any other office. I am confident that30 it is a position that should be handled by a person who is really interested in the welfare of others,” Pat wrote to a friend during the campaign. “The opportunity to bring the prestige of the District Attorney’s office into the lives of people who might otherwise do wrong is one that I do not intend to pass up although I recognize the fact that it is one that may pass me up.”

  The campaign turned into the newspaper battle that Pat had foreseen. Brady, the incumbent, leaked stories to the Hearst papers; the Daily News and Chronicle favored Pat. Pat raised $20,000 for his campaign, all but $5,000 from his savings and the contributions of two friends. Joe Murphy, an Irish labor newspaper publisher and old-time San Francisco politician, taught Pat how to campaign in stores, barbershops, and restaurants, and how to work a room. Pat was a natural. He loved talking to people.

  The candidate voted early on November 1, 1943, in time to get his picture in the afternoon paper. The vote count continued into the early morning hours. Art Belcher, captain of a quartermaster crew in Oakland, stayed glued to the radio all night for news of his childhood friend. “It felt as if the whole world31 depended on the outcome of the fight and when the race got nip and tuck I wanted to go out and find out what was wrong with the people,” he wrote Pat the next day. “Didn’t they know a good man when they saw him? Why didn’t they vote for Pat? Then you would get a slight margin and I would grip my chair.” Finally, Pat eked out a slim victory. Belcher thought back to their days together at Fremont Grammar School: “Remember how grand it was—win or lose—to know the gang was backing you and helping all they could to push one of them to the top of the heap. Well Pat, this is the big victory so far—one to be proud of winning.”

  Pat had overcome a last-minute smear that tied him to the Padre Club, an illegal gambling joint in the Tenderloin that he had incorporated as a social club a decade earlier as a favor for his father. Ida Brown was relieved the mudslinging campaign was over. When her son turned to her on election night, elated, and said the district attorney’s office was just a stepping-stone,32 she was dismayed.

  Most everyone else Pat knew was thrilled.

  To Matilda Levy, he was still Edmund, and she voted with pleasure for the boy she had taught in grade school. “When I listened to the election returns33 and heard your sweeping success,” she wrote, “it gave me a deep personal elation.”

  His Lowell fraternity brothers had been campaign boosters. “Norton Simon’s dice games34 at the cigar stand may have put you thru college, but I’m certain your present post is the result of honest endeavor, intelligence and hard work,” wrote Paul Klein, stationed with the 884th Ordnance Company.

  Pat and Bernice went to Palm Springs for a week of rest. Congratulations trickled in as the news reached those stationed overseas. “Belated congratulations35 to an ex-Pythagorean and Grove Street slugger!” wrote Louis Laye when the newspaper story his brother had mailed arrived at the 733rd TSS in Fort Logan, Colorado. “Keep clicking on Success Boulevard, and we’ll be calling on you, come ‘V’ time.”

  Many compared Pat with Earl Warren, a Republican who had served as district attorney in Alameda County, across the bay, before becoming California attorney general and then governor. Pat made an appointment to meet with Governor Warren, a popular moderate, to solicit ideas on how to revamp the office. They had what would be the first of many lunches in Sacramento just before Christmas.

  One of the last letters of congratulation to arrive was from Pat’s youngest brother, Frank. He wrote from “the other side of the world,” a location he could not divulge, and he timed the letter to arrive as close as possible to when his brother took office. He still called his brother Ed, and wrote the whole family—Ed, Bern, Barbara, Cynthia, and Jerry.

  “I wanted to tell you that I am very proud36 of you and know that you will do a swell job … only thing I would say is, do not lose sight of the fact that the people of San Francisco have placed you in a position of trust and responsibility and want results. You now belong to them and not to any of those who supported you in that hectic campaign.” He told them he would be away longer than he had expected. “You cannot imagine how much more important an aspect your home and family take on when you are separated this way. It isn’t only your family, it reaches to the common ordinary things like a ride thru Golden Gate Park, a hot dog at the beach, the name of a street.” He begged them to write back.

  Pat’s father had not lived long enough to see his oldest son elected to the top law enforcement job in San Francisco, a prospect that might have filled him with both pride and trepidation. As the only daughter, Connie had assumed much of the burden of caring for her father after he had suffered a stroke. He wanted to move back to Grove Street, but Ida refused. Though he recovered and lived several more years, he was never fully himself. The Depression years were not good ones for any business, even gambling, and Harold and Pat took care of their father financially. He died on July 8, 1942. The mass was held in St. Agnes Church.

  On January 8, 1944, Pat drove to City Hall for his swearing-in. His son rode with him in the car. Jerry, not yet six years old, had already distinguished himself with his penchant for asking questions. He wanted to know if Matthew Brady, the incumbent who had lost, would be at the ceremony, too. If his father was being sworn in, Jerry reasoned, it meant that the loser would have to be sworn out.

  A new mayor also was taking office, and a large crowd gathered in the rotunda of City Hall. “The prosecutor must not
become the persecutor,37 seeking vindictive punishment and exulting in its infliction,” Pat said in his brief address. “It is most emphatically not a part of San Francisco’s tradition, it will have no place in the district attorney’s office in this city.”

  Referring to the mayor and other city officials, he concluded, “All of us, I am sure, love this great and fascinating city and, guided by that deep affection, all of us move forward in a firm determination to make it a city unique within the nation—unique perhaps in the entire world—a city whose golden gate is America’s great portal to the awakening Far East.”

  5

  Forest Hill

  When the kids on Magellan Avenue played outside, as they did pretty much all the time, each family had a different signal to call their son home for dinner. Mitch Johnson’s dad blew a bugle. Pete Roddy’s mom rang a bell. Pat Brown yelled, “Jer-ry!”

  Magellan Avenue was the kind of San Francisco neighborhood where the yard lines for touch football were painted indelibly on the curb, and if a parked car was in the way when the boys wanted to play, they knocked on doors till they found someone to move the car.

  Bernice, the leader on practical decisions and finances, had chosen the house on the elm-lined street, a block full of young families in an upwardly mobile, heavily Irish neighborhood. They moved in shortly after her father died. Designed in 1912, three decades earlier, Forest Hill was a planned community advertised in unsubtle terms as an escape from urban riffraff, “a country home within the city.”1 The Forest Hill Homeowners Association collected dues, maintained the private streets, and enforced covenants—single-family homes only, no Japanese, Chinese, or “Negros.” The broad, curved streets followed the contours of the hills to embrace nature rather than impose an arbitrary grid. The height gave every street a scenic vista. The elegant Clubhouse, where the Boy Scouts and the garden club met, was designed by Bernard Maybeck, the renowned architect whose work included the city’s Palace of Fine Arts, built for the World’s Fair of 1915.

  In February 1943, Jerry entered West Portal Elementary, two blocks from the Browns’ modest two-story wood frame house. Pete Roddy introduced his neighbor to the kindergarten teacher: “This is Jerry Brown. He’s a character.” When the local parish opened a grammar school in the fall of 1947, Pat Brown enrolled his son, who skipped ahead half a year and started fifth grade at St. Brendan. Jerry’s teachers were Sister Mary Roseen and Sister Alice Joseph, the school principal; both marveled at Jerry’s ability to question almost anything, and both would stay in touch with him the rest of their lives. Though Jerry chafed at the strict rules and old-fashioned teaching of the Dominican nuns, he internalized the Catholic ethos of right and wrong.

  Jerry looked forward to summer, vacation, recess—any time outside of school. The Magellan Avenue boys careened down the steep hills on Flexies, sleds with wheels, and spent their allowance on ice cream cones at Shaw’s. (Jerry’s allowance was dependent on doing chores; he generally opted for no allowance and no chores.) Mark McGuinness’s home became a gathering spot, with a basketball hoop, a light for night games, and plenty of food in the refrigerator. Jerry often ate his first dinner there, then hit Pete Roddy’s house for dessert before going home for his second meal. Pat frequently worked late, and Bernice insisted they wait for him so the family could eat together.

  Two competing trolley lines, the Muni and the privately owned Market Street Railroad, made San Francisco easy to navigate, even at a young age. Downtown was a short trolley ride from Forest Hill. With more than six hundred thousand people by 1940, San Francisco still felt like a small town. “The city” was San Francisco, “the lake” was Tahoe, and “the river” was the Russian. The city had Irish, Italian, Chinese, and Japanese enclaves, but regardless of ethnicity or religion, most people identified by their parish. When strangers met, the first question would invariably be “What parish do you live in?”

  When Jerry was ten, he went to summer camp at St. Mary’s College while his father attended the 1948 Democratic convention in Philadelphia and then spent a few days in New York. Pat wrote to his son2 about talking with President Truman and attending a Yankees game, a treat for a fan from a state with no major league baseball team, even if Joe DiMaggio struck out that night. Pat described the wonder of flying home on a Constellation, famous for its sleek, dolphinlike shape and triple-pronged tail. Lockheed built the planes at its Burbank plant, in Los Angeles County. Because the launch of the four-engine propeller-driven Constellations had coincided with the war, the planes had been initially converted to military transports. Now they had become popular for commercial flights, boasting some of the first pressurized cabins. Pat left New York City at nine A.M. on a TWA flight that arrived in San Francisco almost twelve hours later. Bernice was “amazed to see the huge plane land so smoothly.”

  “There are many, many interesting things that occurred and I will tell you about them on the way up to Yosemite on Monday,” Pat wrote to his son. “I am sure that you brush your teeth, wash your hands and face, and say your prayers at least three times a day. Give my regards to the gang. I hope you have not gotten into any fights, but, if you have, I hope you haven’t lost them.”

  Yosemite had not lost its importance for Pat, and summer visits to the park became a tradition that allowed him to pass on his love of the outdoors. He made time to join the family for a week or two most every summer, either at Yosemite or the Russian River. Jerry’s earliest memory would be an unpleasant bath in the sink as a toddler at a cabin above the river, but his lasting affection for the place easily outweighed the disagreeable experience. He learned to swim as a five-year-old at Twain Harte, a private lake in the Sierra, and hiked the Ledge Trail at Yosemite the same year.

  Friends who stayed in Yosemite at the Wawona urged Pat to give the more upscale hotel a try so he could play golf and mingle with business and political types. But the Browns were comfortable at Camp Curry. The small village of rustic log-frame cabins, stores, and recreational facilities dated back to 1899, when schoolteachers David and Jennie Curry created a tent camp that became a model for national park concessions. “I have two teen-age daughters3 who desire both male companionship and dancing and I must accommodate my gals,” Pat wrote to friends. “Different boys every night, good dances, fine beach parties, excellent conversation, and bridge on the porch immediately after dinner.”

  Camp Curry also positioned them to watch the nightly event that drew crowds from throughout the park: the Firefall. Cars packed the roads and people jostled for position, waiting for the moment at nine o’clock when park officials would drop burning embers from the top of Glacier Point to the valley floor three thousand feet below. The crowd sang “Indian Love Call” as they watched the fire cascade, mimicking the park’s famous waterfall. The nightly occurrence was beloved, its harm to the park’s ecology overlooked.

  Pat did not hesitate to use connections when he had problems obtaining the reservations he needed. In 1945, the Yosemite superintendent intervened to make arrangements for Pat4 at the request of the undersecretary of the interior, who had been contacted by the California Democratic Party chair. The Browns needed a comfortable cabin with two rooms and a bath for the month of July; Bernice was seven months pregnant. Their youngest daughter, Kathleen, was born at the end of September.

  At work, Pat had moved quickly to make major changes. The new district attorney inherited sketchy records in ink-splattered ledgers. Bail money had been kept in a file drawer. Prisoners were brought into court in cages. Police decided on criminal charges with no input from the two dozen part-time attorneys in the DA’s office, who spent most of their time on their private clients. Modeling changes on those Earl Warren had instituted across the bay, Pat made all his deputies work full time and reaffirmed the district attorney’s right to decide on criminal complaints. The changes cost the police power as well as money, because defense attorneys could no longer bribe police to pursue lesser charges.

  Pat focused his criminal prosecutions on gambling,
prostitution, and abortion parlors, social issues that had become pressing during the wartime years5 as thousands of young men passed through the gateway to the Pacific. In addition to citizen complaints, the Army and Navy demanded action to protect the health of their recruits in the face of high rates of venereal disease. Rather than try widespread crackdowns, Pat waited for an event that might make his action more popular. A botched abortion on a teenager became a justification to pursue the infamous abortion clinic of Inez Burns, patronized by many notable women. With trap doors, secret cash compartments, and bribes to police, Burns had repeatedly evaded prosecution. Pat failed in his first two attempts, but finally obtained a conviction in the high-profile case.

  As a son of San Francisco and a son of Ed Brown, Pat was familiar with many of the people running enterprises he investigated, particularly gambling. One of the men reputed to be at the center of various schemes had gone to grammar school with Pat’s father and lent him money. When Pat ran into the gambler at his usual Friday lunch spot, the Exposition Fish Grotto, he did not mince words: Your father would turn over in his grave if he knew what you were doing, he told Pat.

  “I have my greatest difficulty with the gambling situation,”6 Pat wrote to a friend. He charged bookmakers with felonies instead of misdemeanors, but it made little difference. “As you know, San Francisco is a city that has gambled before I was born and will probably gamble long after I die. It is inbred in people of high moral principle and to eradicate it is like trying to cure a cancer.”