Gregory Peck Recalls an Uglier Side of La Jolla

A grim piece of San Diego history is getting a public airing in a fund-raising letter from Gregory Peck.

The actor is appealing for contributions to the KLANWATCH project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is suing Fallbrook racist Tom Metzger over the beating death of an Ethiopian man in Portland.

In his signed appeal, the 73-year-old Peck recalls an incident during his youth in La Jolla that he says helped shape his social conscience:

“One of my earliest and most vivid memories is of a Klan incident, the burning of a cross in front of a house rented by a black family in the small town of La Jolla, California.

“It was in the early 1920s, when I was about 5 years old, but I remember it well. It must have been my first awareness that hate and violence existed in the world.

“The incident shocked me, and I suppose the concept of resisting and fighting racial injustice took root and as I grew up became part of my character.”

Through his publicist, the Academy Award winner declined to discuss the incident further.

Dr. Jack Kimbrough, 82, an early civil rights activist in San Diego who organized sit-ins at downtown lunch counters in the 1940s, notes that blacks could not rent or buy homes in La Jolla until the 1950s, except for a two-block area on Eads Avenue.

The enclave was needed for servants, chauffeurs and gardeners employed in La Jolla, said Kimbrough, a dentist.

Bert Ritchey, 81, a native San Diegan and one of the city’s first black attorneys, said that, like Peck, he remembers a cross-burning in La Jolla outside the home of a black family in the 1920s. But the passage of time has left him unsure of the details.

Ritchey said he went to La Jolla often in those days to visit his grandparents.

He said much of San Diego was hostile to blacks--”Whites Only” signs were common--but that racism was particularly virulent in La Jolla.

Shelled Out

Sea and land.

The aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography will soon stop selling seashells by the seashore.

The aquarium bookstore has sold shells for decades, but once the current supply runs out, probably around July 1, no more.

Aquarium director Donald Wilkie said aquariums across the country are increasingly concerned about the depletion of the world’s supply of seashells by ecologically destructive commercial exporters.

While none of the shells sold at Scripps are endangered varieties, the aquarium hopes to raise the public’s “shell consciousness” by halting sales.

Continuing drought and land development in Southern California are driving birds to seek refuge at the Wild Animal Park.

Among them: American wood storks, coastal cormorants and hundreds of egrets. Also, turkey vultures displaced when a grove of eucalyptus trees was cut down to make way for new homes near Escondido.

The birds fly in voluntarily, enjoy the plentiful food and water, then stake a claim to a favorite tree or pond.

Word gets out on the bird grapevine, and migratory patterns shift.

Pass the Tofu, Please

I thought you’d like to know.

San Diego Animal Advocates, the Southern California Vegetarian Society and EarthSave San Diego are sponsoring Sunday’s sixth annual Great American Meatout at Mariner’s Point on Mission Bay.

Entertainment will be jazz and reggae. Food will be strictly sprouts, naturally.

Legends I never heard before.

From the Baltimore Bagel Co., which has eight stores in San Diego County:

“According to legend, St. Patrick often enjoyed a bagel with his corned beef and cabbage . . . “

The (Escondido) Times-Advocate on Monday becomes the latest newspaper to catch format fever.

The new design is still hush-hush, but one secret has leaked out: The historic hyphen in the paper’s name is being dropped.

Apparently, nothing is sacred.