THE COMPASSION OF JAZZ. Jim Cassell
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Jim while working with the United Farm Workers (UFW). (1976)
CHAPTER
2
Pioneers
My grandfather, Dr. Edward Howard, was from Cornwall, England, and sailed steerage to Massachusetts in 1890 in his teenage years. He was a gifted student, having previously studied in Europe before immigrating, and received a scholarship from the Borden family, of Borden Dairy, to attend Harvard Medical School. He settled in in La Jolla, California, with my grandmother, Eliza Berryman Howard, where he spent the rest of his life as a doctor.
Jim’s grandfather Dr. Edward Howard, an early La Jolla pioneer, with his mother. (1914)
Jim’s Grandmother with his mother.
Though his specialty was in childhood diseases, La Jolla was a very small town, and my grandfather served in a greater capacity as the town doctor. He was also the first doctor in La Jolla, and so became a pillar of the community. He was known for his generosity in the seacoast village; when the ranchers, farmers, and regular folk couldn’t afford their medical bills, my grandfather accepted eggs and produce as payment—he never turned anyone away. In fact, in the 1970s, Cliff Robertson wrote my mother a letter in which he describes his grandmother telling him of how my grandfather could be seen in his backyard burning the medical bills of families who couldn’t pay.
He prevented an unknowable number of drownings by putting up lifesaving rings along the beaches. However, Dr. Howard was not good with money. During the Great Depression, he made some bad investments, and eventually he and Eliza needed to sell their three little houses, known as the “Oleander,” the “Geranium,” and the “Columbine.”They moved to a little apartment in San Diego, where they lived until their deaths.
Before moving, my grandmother Eliza had just as lasting an impact on La Jolla as Dr. Howard. She was a pillar of the community in her own right. She planted the ice plants along the shore, which flourish to this day. She was the president of the Women’s Club of La Jolla, which was housed in a beautiful mission-style building with surrounding gardens. She also worked closely with Mrs. Scripps, heiress of the Scripps newspaper dynasty who retired in La Jolla, to build the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, the Episcopal Church of St. James-by-the-Sea, the Scripps Hospital, and the children’s pool.
Jim’s maternal grandmother (circled) was in the first graduating class of women at Colorado State University.
My grandmother was one of the twelve students to graduate from Colorado Teachers College in 1890, notable for being the first graduating class of that college to include women. Before meeting my grandfather, she had worked as a schoolteacher in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, where she enjoyed the natural beauty of the Rockies. Living up there had its dangers, particularly mountain lions.
My mother told me the story of a pelt my grandmother had, and the story of how she came to have it: she had been walking home alone along the trails from the schoolhouse at dusk one day, and, upon reaching a bluff, noticed a mountain lion stalking her. She looked around for help and could only see some far-off farmhands pitching hay in a field, so she lifted her skirts and waved them frantically to get their attention. One farmhand waved back, oblivious to the danger, but luckily the other saw the mountain lion and rushed off for his shotgun.
Essentially, Eliza Howard was a progressive, liberated woman for her time, and her viewpoints and experiences greatly affected how she raised my mother, and in turn how my mother raised me. My mother told me a story from when she was young, when she once made fun of a black woman walking in front of her house. Her mother overheard her comments and yanked my mom out of the house by the ear, giving her a stern talking to about discrimination.
Both my grandparents taught my mom to be generous to those with little money, and to never be cruel on the basis of race and color. While La Jolla wasn’t the most diverse town, it had a Hispanic district, an African American district, and a small Filipino presence as well as the white middle class. My mother, Victoria “Bicky” Howard, always said that it was her mother who taught her to have empathy, especially toward minorities, which she made sure to impart to her own children.
Dr. Howard and Eliza Howard were not my mother’s biological parents—they adopted her when she was a toddler. Her biological father was Gildas Charles Evans, who came over from South Wales. He was a good-looking, musically minded man, and he made his money by teaching singing and giving instrument lessons. He met and married Ethel May Cool, and they arrived in La Jolla in 1900. Ethel died in childbirth, leaving Gildas with my newborn mother and his grief. In 1914, he gave my mother up for adoption to Dr. Howard and Eliza, who were in their sixties at the time. My mother only found out about her adoption many years later, when she was a teenager overhearing some cruel comments from schoolmates.
Jim’s biological grandfather, Gildas Evans, who had to put his daughter (Jim’s mom) up for adoption after his wife died.
I was born in 1945 in La Jolla, where I spent the first ten marvelous years of my life. Back then, I went by a different name: Corky Cassell. My mom had seen the name in a listening booth in a record store—it was written as graffiti on the walls. What was obvious to her was that Corky was a character—he had long hair, walked all summer barefoot, and had a kind of “surfer kid” attitude to him. My mom thought it was a fun name, and thus nicknamed me. She was right to foresee the importance of the beach in my life, as I would quickly come to define myself by the ocean.
La Jolla was not a wealthy town, but it was rich in natural beauty, being situated on an outcropping of California just north of San Diego. Meaning “the jewel” in Spanish, the village lived up to its sparkling name in a National Geographic spread in 1952. The ocean faces the town on three sides, and still is the main source of entertainment for the residents. I learned to walk alongside learning to swim with a baby’s instinctive dogpaddling skill, and my mother would frequently take us to the beach to play and to explore the cathedral-like caves nearby. We would go cliff diving and snorkeling regularly, and every day was a magical adventure of one kind or another.
My mother, when she was young, would climb up Mount Soledad, which has a lovely cross at the peak, and pick wildflowers. During the summers, however, I was on my own, as my mom struggled to support three children by herself, working retail and later as a dental assistant. It was a small town, and people knew each other’s business and conditions, and were generous to us. A friend lent us a car, others gave us their hand-me-downs, as well as other acts of kindness. In particular, I remember a lifeguard, Dick Soper, who was something of a father figure to me in those early years. He would pitch in and buy me some lunch sometimes, as he knew I didn’t always have money.
My biological father, who I was named after, had left when I was young, and Dick stepped into the role, teaching me about the beauty of the ocean but also the adventures that could be had at the cove beach. I would go snorkeling in the gorgeous reefs and swim through the eel grass that grew there.
My biological father had little in common with his own father, Harrison Howard Cassell, who died before I was born. Harrison put himself through law school and became the district attorney of Los Angeles, leading relief efforts in the wake of an earthquake in Mexico, and even running for the Senate. After his divorce from my paternal grandmother, who I only ever knew as Nana, he became an alcoholic and died poor in a boarding house.