Robert Wade “Bob” King (1906-1965): Olympic Gold Medalist Who Became a Pioneer of Permanente Medicine

 

Robert Wade King, better known to the sports world as “Bob” King, lived one of those remarkable American lives that seems almost too neatly divided into chapters. In the first, he was the best high jumper in the world, a Stanford athlete with a graceful leap and the cool nerves to win Olympic gold. In the second, he put away the track shoes, became Dr. Robert Wade King, and helped build one of the most important health care institutions in California.

King was born in Los Angeles on June 20, 1906, the son of Marion C. and Maude Shafer King. When he was still a child, his family moved to Lima, Ohio, where he grew up and graduated from Lima Central High School. Lima would always claim him proudly as one of its own, and with good reason. Before King became a California physician, before he became part of the Kaiser Permanente story, he was the local boy who jumped higher than almost anyone alive.

At Lima Central, King showed the promise of an athlete with unusual spring and composure. By the time he arrived at Stanford University, he had already earned a reputation as a high jumper to watch. In April 1928, The Lima News described him as a “sure choice” for the American Olympic team at Amsterdam, noting that he had first made his name locally and had only improved under Stanford coach E. L. “Dink” Templeton. The paper recounted that King had won the Ohio scholastic title while still in high school, then went on at Stanford to win major intercollegiate honors and set records in the high jump.

The article also captured something that would follow King throughout his athletic career: people seemed to admire not only how high he jumped, but how little fuss he made about it. He was not portrayed as a self-promoter or flamboyant champion, but as a disciplined, serious athlete who quietly did the work and then cleared the bar.

Bob King at Stanford University

By 1928, King had become one of the dominant high jumpers in the United States. Olympics.com notes that while at Stanford he won the IC4A high jump in 1926, the AAU title in 1927, and in 1928 won the IC4A and NCAA titles and tied for first at the AAU. His lifetime best was just under two meters, an extraordinary mark for the era.

Then came Amsterdam.

The 1928 Olympic high jump was not a tidy, quick contest. It stretched on for hours, testing not only spring and technique, but patience, endurance, and mental resolve. In the end, King cleared 1.93 meters — 6 feet, 4¼ inches — to win the gold medal for the United States.

Newspaper accounts across the country celebrated the achievement. The Macon Telegraph reported that “Bob King Wins High Jump” and described the Americans’ strong showing in track and field at Amsterdam. Back in California, The Sacramento Bee ran a headline that seemed to capture King perfectly: “Bob King Modest About Winning High Jump.” Interviewed after his victory, King did not boast. Instead, he treated the Olympics almost like another meet, saying he had simply gone out to do the best he could and was glad his best was good enough. 

Bob King in The Capital Times, 1928

Lima, of course, was ecstatic. The Kansas City Times reported that King’s Ohio hometown was already planning a triumphant welcome for him, complete with a committee headed by Mayor Ellis E. Jones and an official “Bob King Day.”

It was the kind of hometown tribute reserved for a young man who had carried a small city’s name onto the world stage. Lima had sent him out as a promising schoolboy athlete; Amsterdam sent him back as an Olympic champion.

But King’s life did not become a long victory lap. After graduating from Stanford in 1929, he turned decisively toward medicine. He attended Northwestern University Medical School and specialized in obstetrics and gynecology. The same focus that had made him an elite athlete now carried him into a demanding profession. He served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during World War II, then returned to civilian medical practice in Northern California.

By 1946, the transformation was complete enough to be newsworthy. The San Francisco News noted that Dr. Robert Wade King, head of the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics at Permanente Hospital in Oakland, was “the same Bob King of Stanford” who had won the Olympic high jump championship in Amsterdam in 1928.

That short notice is striking because it places King at the intersection of two very different kinds of history. In 1928, his name belonged to sports pages. By the mid-1940s, it belonged to the growing medical world of Permanente, the health system that had emerged from Henry J. Kaiser’s industrial enterprises and Dr. Sidney Garfield’s prepaid medical model.

In 1948, King became one of the seven original partners in the medical partnership that became The Permanente Medical Group. The Permanente Medical Group itself identifies February 22, 1948, as the date the partnership was officially established, with seven founding partners. King was not merely a doctor working inside a new system; he was one of the physicians who helped give that system its professional foundation.

That second legacy may be even more lasting than the Olympic medal. Kaiser Permanente would grow into one of the largest and most influential health care systems in the United States, but in those early years it depended on doctors willing to build something different from the traditional fee-for-service practice model. King was one of them. As an obstetrician, he would have been present at the most intimate and consequential moments in thousands of family lives — the arrival of children, the beginning of households, the everyday miracle of medicine when it works as it should.

There is a lovely symmetry in King’s two careers. The high jumper spends his youth learning how to rise above a fixed bar, with everyone watching and every failure public. The obstetrician spends his maturity in a quieter arena, helping others into the world, often without headlines or applause. One career is measured in inches; the other in lives.

Robert Wade King died in Walnut Creek on July 29, 1965, at the age of 59. He had been an Olympic champion, a Stanford star, a physician, a wartime medical officer, and a founding figure in one of California’s most significant health care institutions.

In Lima, they remembered Bob King Day. At Stanford, his name remains part of a proud Olympic tradition. In Kaiser Permanente history, he belongs among the early physicians who helped shape a new model of organized medical care. And in the larger story of California lives, he stands as a reminder that fame can be only the first chapter.

Bob King once cleared the bar in Amsterdam and became the best in the world. Then he came home, became Dr. King, and spent the rest of his life helping others begin theirs.

Sources: Wikipedia, Kaiser Permanente website, The Lima News, Allen County Museum, Kansas City Times, Sacramento Bee, Macon Telegraph, The San Francisco News, Find a Grave

Irving Pichel (1891–1954): Famed Actor, Director Called Before HUAC as "Un-friendly Witness"

 

[Updated Burial info: Irving Pichel is not buried in the Wilson Family Plot with his wife, but is buried with his mother at the West View Cemetery in Pittsburgh, PA. Thank you to his family for the updated info. We will keep his bio on this site.]

Irving Pichel, whose name was pronounced “Pitch-ell,” belonged to that rare class of Hollywood figures whose career bridged stage, screen, and politics—and who paid a price for all three. Born in Pittsburgh on June 24, 1891, and educated at Harvard, Pichel came of age intellectually as much as artistically. 

Pichel’s personal life was closely intertwined with one of Berkeley’s most prominent and unconventional families through his marriage to Violette Wilson, daughter of Socialist mayor Jackson Stitt Wilson. Their union placed Pichel at the intersection of politics, theater, and progressive intellectual life in the East Bay during the 1920s. 

Greensboro Record feature on Violette Barry

Contemporary accounts show the couple deeply embedded in Berkeley’s cultural scene, including their involvement in establishing a playhouse dedicated to serious theatrical work, reflecting Pichel’s early commitment to the stage before his Hollywood career took hold. Violette herself was no mere adjunct to her husband’s career—she was described in period profiles as an actress, architect, and mother who balanced creative and domestic roles at a time when such independence for women was still notable. Their marriage thus represents more than a personal relationship; it captures a moment when Bay Area theater, radical politics, and early Hollywood talent overlapped in a small but influential cultural circle, one that would shape Pichel’s artistic trajectory even as his later career was defined by forces far beyond Berkeley. 

Dracula's Daughter movie poster

Pichel first made his reputation as an actor of striking presence and voice. He was memorable as Sandor in Dracula’s Daughter, as Fagin in the 1933 Oliver Twist, and in supporting roles such as Huger in Jezebel. His voice alone carried authority—he narrated John Ford’s She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, lent narration to How Green Was My Valley, and even voiced Jesus in The Great Commandment. Yet acting was only one facet of a broader creative life. By the 1940s he had become a director of considerable range, capable of moving from fantasy (Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid, complete with one of the more curious Hollywood co-stars—a trained squirrel used for comic effect) to prestige drama (The Miracle of the Bells) to early science fiction (Destination Moon), the latter winning an Academy Award for special effects and helping define the genre’s visual language.

"The Man I Married" movie poster

But Pichel’s work was never merely entertainment. He brought to Hollywood a distinctly intellectual and moral sensibility, shaped in part by his Jewish identity and by a commitment to social themes that increasingly set him apart in an industry wary of controversy. That sensibility was on full display in the 1940 film originally titled I Married a Nazi (released as The Man I Married), one of the earliest openly anti-Nazi films produced by a major studio. At a time when many in Hollywood hesitated to confront Germany directly, Pichel pushed forward a film that depicted the insidious spread of Nazi ideology within a family and the moral collapse that followed. Contemporary coverage described it as a “frank, starkly dramatic” portrayal of Hitlerism’s impact on ordinary life. That a Jewish director was behind such a project was no accident; it reflected both personal conviction and a willingness to use film as a vehicle for warning as well as storytelling.

You can watch Destination Moon in it's entirety:

This same inclination toward socially conscious filmmaking would later draw the attention of the House Un-American Activities Committee. In 1947, Pichel was called before HUAC as one of the so-called “unfriendly witnesses.” Though he was not among the Hollywood Ten and avoided imprisonment, his association with liberal causes, labor organizations, and films perceived as politically charged marked him for suspicion. As summarized in contemporary accounts, his inclusion stemmed largely from his history of directing films with strong social or anti-fascist themes and his affiliations with liberal groups. The result was effectively the same as for many others: he was blacklisted.

The Spokesman Review photo from HUAC era

The blacklist did not end his career outright, but it broke its momentum. Like many in his position, Pichel was forced to seek work abroad, spending time in Europe to continue directing when opportunities in Hollywood evaporated. When he eventually returned to the United States, the damage had been done. He directed a handful of later films—including Martin Luther (1953) and Day of Triumph (1954)—but the scale and influence of his earlier work were never fully regained. The stigma lingered, quietly but persistently reshaping the final chapter of his professional life.

Parallel to his film career, Pichel maintained a strong connection to Berkeley and to the intellectual traditions that had shaped him. He lectured, wrote, and remained engaged with theater and education, bringing a scholar’s approach to drama that reflected his Harvard training and early stage work. He was, in many respects, more than a Hollywood figure—he was part of a broader cultural world that included academia, civic life, and political discourse.

Pichel with a young Natalie Wood

Pichel is also remembered for his eye for talent. He is often credited with helping to discover Natalie Wood and character actor Charles Lane, further extending his influence beyond his own performances and films. His career, taken as a whole, reveals a man who moved easily between mediums and roles: actor, director, narrator, teacher, and cultural participant.

On July 13, 1954, just a week after completing Day of Triumph, Irving Pichel died of a heart attack. He was 63. His death closed the career of a figure whose legacy is not only in the films he left behind, but in the example of an artist who insisted—sometimes at great personal cost—that cinema could engage with the moral crises of its time.

SOURCES: Wikipedia, Find a Grave, Pasadena Post, Oakland Tribune, Spokesman Review, LA Evening Citizens Review, Beaumont Enterprise, San Francisco Call Bulletin, Florida Times Union, Green Bay Press Gazette, Quarterly of Film, Radio & Television, Mountain View Cemetery records, Greensboro Record

Angus Cloud (1998-2023): Actor who found unexpected fame

Angus Cloud grave (photo Michael Colbruno)

Plot 82, Grave V8082

Angus Cloud was not supposed to be famous, and that, perhaps more than anything, explains why he was. Born Conor Angus Cloud Hickey on July 10, 1998, in Oakland, California, he grew up far from the machinery of Hollywood, the son of Irish immigrants and a product of the city’s unvarnished rhythms. He attended the School of Production Design at Oakland School for the Arts, where his interests leaned toward the technical side of film and stagecraft rather than performance. Acting was not a childhood ambition; it arrived by accident, as so much in his life seemed to.

That accident occurred, famously, on a Brooklyn street. While working at a restaurant, Cloud was spotted by a casting director who saw in his manner—unaffected, watchful, slightly wary—the outline of a character not easily manufactured. He was brought in to audition for HBO’s Euphoria, despite having no prior acting experience. In a city and industry that often polishes its stars into indistinguishable sheen, Cloud’s lack of training became his greatest asset. He did not perform so much as inhabit.

Cast as Fezco, a soft-spoken drug dealer with a moral center that flickered beneath the surface, Cloud quickly became one of the show’s emotional anchors. His delivery—halting, deliberate, sometimes almost reluctant—felt less like acting than transcription. Audiences responded to the authenticity, to the sense that this was not a character constructed but a life observed. Even as Euphoria grew into one of HBO’s defining series of its era, Cloud remained a quiet presence within it, his performance resisting the excesses that surrounded him.

His rise was swift. Within a few years, he moved from obscurity to international recognition, appearing in films and music videos, and becoming a figure of fascination for a generation drawn to his understated style. Yet the suddenness of that ascent carried its own weight. Fame, particularly of the modern variety, offers little insulation; it exposes as much as it elevates.

Angus Cloud (photo Newsday)

Cloud’s personal life, by all accounts, remained closely tied to his family. Their importance became painfully evident in the final chapter of his story. On July 31, 2023, at the age of 25, Angus Cloud died at his family home in Oakland, just one week after the death of his father. According to reports, he had been struggling with profound grief in the days following that loss . The family, in a public statement, emphasized both his devotion and his vulnerability, noting his openness about mental health struggles and the difficulty of navigating them alone.

His death reverberated beyond the usual boundaries of celebrity mourning. For many, Cloud represented a rare kind of presence in contemporary television: a figure who seemed untouched by artifice, whose stillness carried more weight than spectacle. The reaction from colleagues and audiences alike reflected not only the loss of a rising actor but of something less easily defined—a sense of reality in a medium that often trades in illusion.

In the end, Angus Cloud’s life reads less like a traditional Hollywood narrative than a brief and luminous interruption. He arrived unexpectedly, left an impression that felt disproportionate to his time, and departed just as suddenly. There are actors who build careers brick by brick, and there are those who appear, fully formed, and alter the landscape before vanishing. Cloud belonged to the latter, his legacy carried not in a long list of credits, but in the quiet insistence that what is most compelling on screen is often what feels most true.

Sources: Wikipedia; Newsday (Aug. 1, 2023) obituary clipping; Find a Grave

Dennis “Denney” Wilie: Oakland Oaks Standout Baseball Player

 

Cardinals 100th Anniversary and Denney Wilie

Dennis “Denney” Wilie was a professional baseball outfielder whose career spanned the early twentieth century, including major league service with the St. Louis Cardinals and the Cleveland Indians between 1911 and 1915, and several productive seasons in the Pacific Coast League, most notably with the Oakland Oaks. A native of Texas, Wilie first gained attention as a two-sport athlete at Baylor University, where he distinguished himself in both football and baseball, earning a reputation as one of the fastest players in the Southwest and an electrifying performer whose speed and aggressive base running made him a standout attraction.

Wilie entered professional baseball in 1911, signing with a Texas League club before advancing rapidly through the minor leagues. He reached the major leagues that same year, appearing in games for St. Louis and later Cleveland, though his time at the highest level was intermittent and limited in duration. Over the next several seasons, he moved between major and minor league clubs, including stints in the Pacific Coast League and other circuits, as was common for players of the period. His progress at the major league level was hindered both by inconsistency and by the broader disruptions affecting baseball during the era, including the instability of league structures and the impact of World War I on player availability and continuity of play.

Wilie achieved his greatest professional success after joining the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League. In 1919, he batted .326 with 34 doubles, placing him among the top ten hitters in the league in both categories and establishing himself as one of its more productive offensive players. Contemporary accounts note that he consistently batted above .300 during his tenure in Oakland, including seasons in which he hit .310 and .307, reflecting both his contact ability and his continued effectiveness as a top-of-the-order player. His combination of speed, batting skill, and aggressive style made him a central figure on the Oaks during this period.

Wilie’s career, however, was significantly affected by personal difficulties. While in Oakland, he became involved in an extramarital relationship with Elsie Mager, a married woman, which developed into a prolonged and public affair. The relationship contributed to tensions both in his personal life and within the community, particularly after Mager became pregnant. The situation drew increasing scrutiny and coincided with a decline in Wilie’s professional standing. Additional incidents compounded these difficulties, including a 1922 automobile accident in downtown Oakland that resulted in a confrontation with police and his arrest on charges of drunkenness. These events further disrupted his baseball career and contributed to his eventual departure from organized professional play.

Following the end of his baseball career, Wilie remained in the Oakland area, where he was employed at Fairmount Hospital. His post-baseball life was largely removed from the public attention he had once enjoyed as a professional athlete. Despite his earlier prominence, his later years were marked by relative obscurity. He died in 1966 in Hayward, California; at the time of his death, no relatives could be located, and his passing received little public notice.

Wilie’s career reflects the trajectory of many early twentieth-century players whose professional achievements were substantial but often fleeting, shaped by both the evolving structure of baseball and the personal circumstances that influenced their ability to sustain success at the highest levels of the game.

Sources: Oakland Tribune (Nov. 19, 1995) ; Waco Tribune-Herald (Oct. 23, 1995), St. Louis Post Dispatch (June 7, 1992), Salt Lake Tribune(May 9, 1920), Baseball-Reference.com

Horry Wert Meek (1857-1910): Early Hayward Pioneer; Owner of "The Orchards"

 

Horry Meek, Oakland Enquirer

Plot 33

He died, as so many of his class did, not in the fields that made him, but in a comfortable Oakland home, attended by family and the quiet acceptance of a man who had long since spent his strength building something larger than himself. In January of 1910, after weeks of decline, Horry Meek—orchardist, financier, and one of the shaping figures of early Hayward—passed at the age of 53.

Meek was born into the first generation of California builders. His father, William Meek, arrived in 1847, part of that wave of pioneers who transformed the East Bay from open land into agricultural wealth. Horry inherited not just land, but momentum. Educated locally and at the University of California, he came of age just as Alameda County was organizing itself into a modern agricultural and commercial region.

At Hayward, the family holdings became something close to legend. The estate—known simply as “The Orchards”—was not a modest farm but one of the largest cherry operations in the world. Contemporary accounts describe it as a centerpiece of the region’s agricultural identity, a place where rows of fruit trees translated directly into capital and influence.

But Meek’s ambitions extended beyond cherries. Like many men of his era, he diversified—banking, oil, transportation, and land. He served as president of the Bank of Hayward and held interests in electric rail systems connecting Oakland, San Leandro, and Hayward, helping knit together the East Bay as a functional economic region.

Baseball Diamond circa 1889, Hayward Area Historical Society

And then there was baseball.

Long before organized leagues and stadium lights, Meek was among those who brought the game to Hayward, sponsoring and encouraging early local clubs. In an era when baseball was still defining itself as America’s pastime, these town teams mattered. They were civic identity in uniform—weekend rituals that stitched together agricultural communities. Meek’s role in fostering the sport locally places him among that early generation of patrons who helped turn baseball from a pastime into an institution.

His life, in many ways, was a study in accumulation—of land, of enterprises, of influence. By the time of his death, his estate was valued at $847,451, composed largely of real property, farmland, and oil interests. That figure alone would have marked him as a major figure in Alameda County.

In today’s dollars, that estate would be worth roughly $28–30 million, depending on the inflation measure used—a substantial fortune, but perhaps still an understatement when measured against the land values of modern Hayward and San Leandro. What was once orchard and open acreage now sits beneath subdivisions, commercial corridors, and the layered infrastructure of the East Bay.

There is something fitting in that. Meek’s wealth was never static—it was rooted in land that would inevitably be transformed. His legacy is less a fixed monument than a footprint: the shaping of a region in transition from rural to urban.

San Francisco Examiner

At his death, newspapers described him as a “well-known financier” and “son of a pioneer,” a phrase that captures both inheritance and expectation. He was survived by his wife and children, and buried with the quiet ceremony reserved for men whose lives had been spent in steady, visible work rather than spectacle.

He built orchards that no longer exist, financed enterprises that have long since been absorbed or replaced, and helped introduce a game that endures far beyond him.

In the end, the cherries are gone, the fields subdivided, and the fortune dispersed. But if you stand in Hayward and imagine the land before the streets—rows of trees, a dusty ballfield, a banker-orchardist watching both—you can still see the outline of Horry Meek’s world. And, in some ways, the beginning of ours.

Sources: Oakland Enquirer, Jan. 21, 1910, p.1 ; Oakland Enquirer, Jan. 21, 1910, p.7 ; San Francisco Examiner, Jan. 22, 1910 ; San Francisco Bulletin, Jan. 22, 1910 ; San Francisco Chronicle, July 13, 1910

Jerome Lincoln (1829-1896): Pioneer Banker

Lincoln Family Mausoleum (photo Michael Colbruno)

Plot 27

Jerome Lincoln belonged to that early class of California bankers whose lives bridged the distance between New England mercantile discipline and the raw opportunity of the Gold Rush West. Born in Boston around 1830, he entered business young and quickly proved himself capable in the world of trade, eventually becoming a junior partner in the Boston firm of Whitwell, Seaver & Co., dealers in general merchandise. It was a conventional path—until he followed the pull of California.

In 1854, Lincoln came west as a special agent for the firm, part of the steady stream of Eastern businessmen who transformed the chaotic Gold Rush economy into something more structured and enduring. Like many of his contemporaries, he stayed. Over time, he shifted from mercantile trade into finance, where his temperament—measured, reliable, and methodical—found its natural home.

By the late nineteenth century, Jerome Lincoln had become one of San Francisco’s established financial figures, serving for two decades as President of the Security Savings Bank. His career placed him squarely within the network of men who helped stabilize California’s economy after its boom-and-bust beginnings—men who turned gold dust and speculation into institutions, mortgages, and long-term capital.

His name also appears among the founders of the Colusa County Bank, organized in 1870 alongside a roster of prominent “Forty-Niners” and early California businessmen. That connection places him within a broader story: the spread of financial institutions from San Francisco outward into the agricultural valleys of the state, supporting farming, settlement, and regional growth. In this sense, Lincoln was not merely a city banker—he was part of the infrastructure that helped knit together Northern California’s economy.

San Francisco Examiner death notice

Yet like many of his era, the end came not dramatically, but quietly, and with a touch of the ordinary suffering common to the nineteenth century. In the winter of 1896, Lincoln endured a prolonged and painful illness—an extended attack of gout that left him weakened and confined to his home. In his final hours, he reportedly remarked that his heart troubled him. Shortly thereafter, at his residence on Harrison Street in San Francisco, he died at the age of sixty-six.

He left behind a wife, a son, and a daughter, as well as a reputation that seems to have mattered greatly in his time: he was described as a man who enjoyed the “utmost confidence and respect” of his associates and maintained a wide circle of personal friends.

There is something telling in that final assessment. Jerome Lincoln was not a figure of scandal, spectacle, or great public controversy. He was something quieter, and perhaps more essential to the California story—a builder of institutions, a steady hand in finance, and one of the many men whose names are now largely forgotten, but whose work made the state’s growth possible.

The Lincoln Mausoleum was designed by architect Charles Man, who used a Doric temple as inspiration. It is constructed of California granite. Man also designed Mountain View Cemetery's main office. 

Sources: San Francisco Examiner, February 24, 1896; Colusa County Bank historical account (1870 founding records)

Sarah and Naomi Wakefield: Mother and Daughter Drowned in Ship Wreck

Wakefield Family Crypt (photo Michael Colbruno)

Plot 27

In the winter of 1901, Sarah Wakefield—a woman of means with residences in San Francisco and Oakland—had taken her daughter Naomi, then just nineteen years old, to the Hawaiian Islands. It was the kind of journey that marked a certain level of comfort and standing in the Bay Area at the turn of the century: a winter abroad, followed by a return to a well-appointed home on Harrison Street. Her daughter Naomi, by all accounts, was bright and accomplished for her age—already something of a young pianist, and the center of her mother’s life.

They boarded the Pacific Mail steamship City of Rio de Janeiro in Honolulu, bound for San Francisco. It was a routine voyage on a well-traveled route linking the Pacific world—Hong Kong, Yokohama, Honolulu—to the growing port of San Francisco. For passengers like the Wakefields, the journey promised a quiet conclusion: arrival at the Golden Gate, disembarkation, and a return to familiar streets.

Instead, they entered one of the most dangerous passages on the Pacific Coast.

San Francisco Examiner Front Page

On the morning of February 22, 1901, the Rio de Janeiro approached the Golden Gate under a dense and blinding fog—conditions that were not uncommon, but always perilous. Navigating the narrow strait required precision; the currents ran hard, the rocks lay unforgiving, and visibility could vanish without warning. In that fog, the vessel struck submerged rocks near Fort Point. 

What followed unfolded with terrifying speed. The ship’s hull was torn open, and because it had been built before modern watertight bulkheads became standard, water rushed in unchecked. Within ten minutes—ten—the great steamer was sinking stern-first into the cold Pacific. 

There was little time to organize an escape. Many passengers were still in their cabins. Others, confused by language barriers among crew and officers, struggled to understand orders. Lifeboats were few, and fewer still were launched effectively. 

Sarah and Naomi Wakefield were among those who did not survive.

Sarah & Naomi Wakefield (San Francisco Chronicle)

Of the more than 200 souls aboard, over half perished—making the disaster the deadliest shipwreck at the Golden Gate, a place that had already claimed hundreds of vessels in the nineteenth century. Mariners had long known the entrance to San Francisco Bay as both gateway and graveyard: fog, shifting tides, submerged reefs, and narrow channels combined to make it one of the most treacherous harbors in the world. The wreck of the Rio de Janeiro was not an anomaly—it was the most tragic example of a persistent danger.

In the weeks that followed, the sea returned its dead slowly. Bodies washed ashore along Baker Beach and beyond, identified where possible and mourned where not. Families scanned newspapers for names; friends waited for word that never came.

For the Wakefields, the loss was not only personal but material. Sarah Wakefield left behind a substantial estate—real property across the Bay Area, investments, and holdings accumulated over a lifetime. Yet the inventory of her estate, meticulously itemized in probate, stands in stark contrast to the suddenness of her death. Wealth could furnish a home, fund a voyage, secure a future—but it could not buy ten more minutes in a fog-bound channel.

Mother and daughter were buried together, their story now part of the quiet landscape of "Lower Millionaire's Row" at Mountain View Cemetery.

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Sources: San Francisco Chronicle (Feb. 23, 1901); Oakland Tribune (July 25, 1901); NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries; contemporary accounts of the SS City of Rio de Janeiro disaster.

The Jones Family Mausoleum

Jones Family Mausoleum (photo Michael Colbruno)

Plot 27

The Jones family, whose mausoleum stands on "Lower Millionaire's Row" at Mountain View Cemetery, belonged to that class of early San Francisco merchant dynasties whose fortunes were made not in a single stroke, but through steady participation in the commercial life of a growing Pacific city. At the center of the family’s rise was M. P. Jones, a pioneer merchant who arrived in San Francisco in 1850, in the first rush of opportunity following the Gold Rush. Beginning in the mines and quickly transitioning to mercantile trade, he built a business that would evolve with the city itself—first in general merchandise, then in shipping, and ultimately in the importation of tea, coffee, sugar, and spices.

Jones-Thierbach ad (San Francisco Call Bulletin)

By the late nineteenth century, the firm—eventually known as the Jones-Paddock Company, and later associated with the Jones-Thierbach enterprise—had become one of the principal import houses on the Pacific Coast, dealing heavily in Hawaiian sugar and later in coffee and tea. The family’s commercial reach extended across the Pacific, supported at one time by vessels engaged in island trade, and later anchored in the wholesale markets of San Francisco.

From this mercantile base emerged a second generation that lived less like pioneers and more like participants in what newspapers of the day called “the swell set.” Among them, Milton Jones and Webster Jones appear most vividly in the social columns—sometimes for their business pursuits, but more often for their entanglements in society, sport, and romance.

Milton Jones, a man of means and a familiar figure in racing circles, was known to maintain a string of horses and to move comfortably among sporting men of the region. His life, however, was not without drama. A widely reported court case revealed a dispute with former associate Howard Blethen over unpaid funds tied to racehorse investments—raising the question of whether the obligation was a “debt of honor” or a legal one. The episode offers a glimpse into a world where gentlemen speculated heavily and settled accounts as much by reputation as by law.

Birdie Samm (San Francisco Chronicle)

His romantic life proved equally theatrical. His engagement to Miss Birdie Samm of Oakland played out in the newspapers with a mixture of earnest declaration and public contradiction. At one point he denied the engagement, then reaffirmed it, then clarified that he had only denied denying it—a sequence so convoluted that even contemporaries treated it as comic opera. The matter was eventually settled in favor of matrimony, but not before drawing in family objections and public commentary on the propriety of the match.

Milton’s life ended far from the drawing rooms and racetracks of California. While traveling east, he became stranded by a Union Pacific snow blockade near Cheyenne, contracted pneumonia, and died suddenly, his wife at his side en route to New York. His remains were returned west, where he joined the family in Oakland. The manner of his death—modern travel interrupted by the raw force of nature—stands in contrast to the careful commercial order his father had helped build.

His brother, Webster Jones, carried the family’s commercial legacy more directly, eventually serving as president of the Jones-Thierbach Company, one of San Francisco’s established coffee and tea importing firms. Yet even Webster could not entirely escape the pull of society’s spotlight. In one episode, while traveling in Paris, he placed an advertisement seeking a French tutor—only to be overwhelmed by hundreds of eager applicants, reportedly pursued through the streets by a crowd of determined Parisiennes.

Former Mrs. Webster Jones (San Francisco Examiner)

If Milton’s courtship was public, Webster’s marriage was secret. In 1902, he quietly wed his second wife Jane Stanford Yost—a society beauty—slipping away from San Francisco to marry in San Jose without advance notice to friends. The marriage itself was notable, but even more so was the broader social orbit of the family. 

His first marriage ended when his wife divorced him and entered into foreign aristocracy, becoming Countess Artsimovich by marriage to a Russian nobleman. The marriage had the formal approval of Czar Nicholas.

Through these marriages—some strategic, some romantic, and some contested—the Jones family moved easily between San Francisco commerce, Oakland society, and the wider world. Their story reflects a familiar pattern of the era: first-generation wealth grounded in trade and shipping, followed by a second generation whose lives blended business with leisure, speculation, and social ambition.

By the time of Webster Jones’s death in 1936, the family had largely withdrawn from active prominence, though the business legacy endured in the import trade he had led for decades. What remains today is not the bustle of their warehouses or the excitement of their social intrigues, but the quiet permanence of stone at Mountain View Cemetery—a fitting resting place for a family that helped build the commercial foundations of the Bay Area while living, at times, as though the city itself were their stage.

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Sources: San Francisco Call Bulletin (Sept. 2, 1899); San Francisco Examiner (Feb. 17, 1901; Apr. 17, 1900); San Francisco Call Bulletin (May 13, 1902); Oakland Tribune (Sept. 5, 1936); San Francisco Chronicle (Aug. 11, 1895); related contemporary newspaper accounts.

Nicholas Petris (1923-2013): Longtime Liberal Firebrand in California Politics

Nicholas Petris (grave photo Michael Colbruno)

Plot 49A

Nicholas Christos Petris was an American legislator whose long career in Sacramento made him one of the most distinctive liberal voices in California politics. For nearly four decades, he represented Oakland and the East Bay in the California State Assembly and State Senate, combining an orator’s cadence with a reformer’s impatience for the status quo. 

Born in Oakland to Greek immigrant parents, Petris grew up speaking Greek before learning English in school, an experience that shaped both his identity and his lifelong attachment to classical rhetoric. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in journalism, and later earned his law degree from Stanford Law School. During World War II, he served in the Office of Strategic Services, after which he returned to Oakland to practice law and enter public life. 

Petris was elected to the California State Assembly in 1958 and to the State Senate in 1966, where he would remain until term limits forced his retirement in 1996. His legislative record ranged widely but consistently reflected a belief that government should serve those most in need—tenants, farmworkers, the elderly, and the mentally ill. He was a principal author of the Lanterman–Petris–Short Act of 1967, which reformed California’s mental health system and curtailed the involuntary commitment of most patients. 

Environmental protection formed another central pillar of his work. As co-author of the McAteer–Petris Act, he helped establish the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, a landmark effort that halted the unchecked filling of the Bay and reshaped regional planning.  He also advanced early and often controversial proposals to combat air pollution—including an unsuccessful but widely noted attempt in the late 1960s to phase out gasoline-powered automobiles. Though the proposal failed, it foreshadowed stricter emissions standards that would later define California policy. 

In the Legislature, Petris was known as much for his style as for his substance. Colleagues recalled speeches laced with references to Greek philosophy and delivered with a moral clarity that rarely softened for political convenience. Admirers saw integrity; critics saw stubbornness. Both agreed that when Petris rose to speak, it was from conviction rather than calculation. His ideas were often described as ahead of their time—a phenomenon staffers dubbed the “Petris gap,” the distance between proposal and eventual acceptance. 

His legislative reach extended into housing, education, public health, and consumer protection, and his name became attached to institutions that outlived his tenure, including a health policy center at UC Berkeley and a state office building in Oakland.

Petris died in Oakland at the age of 90, the city of his birth and the political base he never abandoned. In retrospect, his career traces the arc of postwar California liberalism—ambitious, argumentative, and grounded in the belief that public policy could anticipate the future rather than merely react to it.

Sources: Wikipedia, Oakland Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Tracy Press 

Viola Barry (Gladys Viola Wilson) (1894–1964): Actress and Progressive Activist

Viola Barry - 1910 L.A. Herald

Plot 36, Lot 268 W ½ - Wilson Family Plot

Viola Barry, born Gladys Viola Wilson on March 4, 1894, in Evanston, Illinois, was an American stage and silent film actress whose career bridged the stock theater world and the early motion picture industry. She was the daughter of Jackson Stitt Wilson, the Socialist minister, lecturer, and later mayor of Berkeley, and she grew up in an unusually political household for a future actress. 

Raised in Berkeley, Barry came of age in an atmosphere shaped by reform politics, suffrage, and socialism. A 1910 Los Angeles Herald profile made her lineage central to her public identity, describing her as the daughter of Stitt Wilson and presenting her as intellectually aligned with progressive causes. That same article portrayed her as a supporter of woman suffrage and as a young actress with strong views on women’s independence and public life.

Viola Barry - Politics and Artistry meet

Her theatrical training included time in England, where contemporary newspaper accounts say she joined a Shakespearean company and performed major roles including Viola, Juliet, Portia, and Rosalind. By late 1910, the Los Angeles Herald reported that she had spent four years on the stage, including two with Benson’s well-known Shakespearean company, and was poised to become the new ingenue for the Belasco company.

Her most notable films included, Evangeline (1911), The Sea Wolf (1913), Martin Eden (1914) and John Barleycorn (1914). Her final film was The Flying Torpedo (1916), co-written by the legendary writer, director and producer D.W. Griffith, remembered today for The Birth of a Nation (1915).

Viola Barry and Jack Conway in The Land of Might (1912)

The October and December 1910 Herald pieces also show that Barry was marketed not simply as a beauty or ingénue, but as a serious-minded actress with unconventional opinions. One interviewer emphasized her independence, her dislike of conventional social restrictions on women, and the influence of a household steeped in public causes.

In February 1911, she married Hugh Ryan “Jack” Conway, the future film director and actor. The marriage lasted until 1918 and produced a daughter, Rosemary. She later married Frank McGrew Willis, the screenwriter and playwright who is buried with her in the Wilson Family plot. 

The Wilson family plot links several notable figures at once — Stitt Wilson, Viola Barry, her sister Violette, brother-in-law Irving Pichel, and Frank McGrew Willis — creating an unusually rich intersection of Berkeley socialism, early stage culture, screenwriting, and Hollywood history, including McCarthyism. [Read about the others HERE].

Barry worked in films during the 1910s and is remembered today chiefly as a silent-era actress whose life connected the reform politics of Berkeley to the emerging culture industries of stage and screen. 

She died in Los Angeles on April 2, 1964. Though never as famous as some of the men around her, her biography remains valuable for what it reveals about early twentieth-century California: the close overlap of politics, repertory theater, and the new world of motion pictures. 

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Sources: Ancestry.com; Los Angeles Herald, Oct. 30, 1910, p. 31; Los Angeles Herald, Nov. 24, 1910, p. 4; Los Angeles Herald, Dec. 6, 1910, p. 7; Wikipedia, “Viola Barry”; Find a Grave memorial for Viola Barry; Find a Grave memorial for Jack Conway.