100 years ago this weekend my dad was born. The end of World War I and the end of the pandemic were recent memories, and the Roaring Twenties were just getting started.
He was an only child, living with his mother and father in Torrance. His father, Charles G. Reis, born 140 years ago in St. Paul, Minnesota, moved to L.A. in 1894, and worked for the Pacific Electric Railway (PE) as a carpenter... until, the story goes, due to anti-German sentiment (racism and nationalism), he was beaten and spent the rest of his life in the hospital.
There was a long history of racism affecting his family--his great-uncle Refugio Bilderrain resigned from the L.A. Board of Police Commissioners in 1889 in protest of firing Latino officers; another other great-uncle Jesus Bilderrain was shot during the Chinese Massacre of 1871.
The violent incident that took his father from him occurred around 1924 when my dad was 3 years old. He and his mom, Ida C. Reis, moved in with his grandmother and aunts and uncles in L.A. He was taken care of by his Spanish grandmother, Domitila Bilderrain de Starr, while his mother worked as a secretary for the P.E. 1924-43. They got free passes on the railway and my dad spent his childhood riding electric trains around the greater L.A. area. Here is a
1926 map of the PE railway system, when my dad was 5 years old.
The last 100 years was an interesting century, and my dad had some interesting times. He was 8 years old when the 1929 stock market crash triggered the Great Depression. This period instilled an attitude of fixing everything and not wasting anything.
In 1941 the attack on Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. into World War II. He worked at Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica during the war, and then was drafted into the Army just as the war ended, spending most of his time in the Army at Fort Lewis, WA.
After leaving the Army, he got an A.A. degree in Electrical Engineering. About a year after his mother died, he had a nervous breakdown and was in a mental hospital 1952-1958. While there, he had electric shock treatments that erased his memory. He came out of the hospital, and rediscovered his life, his friends and cousins, and began piecing together his lost memories. He moved back to Torrance, and in the late 1960s met his soulmate, my mom. They married, and had my sister and me.
He had his
last ride on the Red Cars in 1961. He built a wooden railroad train car capable of carrying a couple of kids at a time that ran on tracks made from galvanized pipe along the side of our house, called Reis Valley and Mudville, that was the highlight of our birthday parties. He built a play house, a treehouse, and repaired almost everything himself. He had a ready laugh and a great sense of humor. He was always interested in science, outer space, and followed the Apollo moon landings closely.
He was an electric motor repairman who worked for M&W Electric for 27 years, and was recognized by his colleagues as someone they could rely on, capable of solving technically difficult problems. He was an inventor, and applied for a patent. He was a devout Catholic and interested in theology and the history of the church. He loved to go hiking in the mountains. He loved to ride trains, and explored the old PE rights-of-way and wrote letters to the Metropolitan Transporation Authority advising them to build new light rail lines in the same places where the PE once ran. He was often reserved, but once you got him talking about trains or electricity you couldn't get him to stop.
He was laid off in 1986 when the City of Torrance condemned his employer's land to make way for the expansive front lawn and parking lot of the future American Honda headquarters. He then worked for the City of Torrance for over 20 years as a Senior Aide cleaning up the garages where buses and police cars are repaired. He rode his bike to work every day until he was 84 years old, when a head injury forced him to retire. He died in 2008 after being run over by a car driven by an unlicensed driver with Alzheimer's Disease.
He lived an incredibly full and eventful life, filled with love and joy and family and friends.
Happy 100th Birthday, Dad.
