2009 marks anniversaries for Jessamyn West
Christmas is an appropriate time to put off reporting on the increasingly acrimonious nature of local politics and take note of two upcoming anniversaries involving Yorba Linda’s best-known literary figure, Jessamyn West.
First, 2009 marks the 100th anniversary of West’s age 7 arrival in California from her native Indiana and her father’s purchase of land north of Yorba Linda Boulevard near Club Terrace Drive to plant a lemon grove.
Second, next year is the 25th anniversary of West’s death, after a 40-year writing career that included novels, short stories, screenplays, essays, memoirs, poetry and an operetta.
Her most famous work, of course, was her first, the short story collection “The Friendly Persuasion,” about the Quaker Birdwell family in Indiana, published in 1945. She also wrote the 1956 Academy Award-nominated film version starring Gary Cooper as Jess.
West began writing the stories during a 14-year recovery from tuberculosis contracted in 1931. By then she had graduated from grammar school in Yorba Linda, high school and junior college in Fullerton, Whittier College and studied at Oxford University in England.
In a 1979 letter to this newspaper, West noted, “The first writing for which I was paid was done for the Yorba Linda Star.” She sold ads and wrote “Social Notes” in 1922-3 before marrying Harry McPherson at the Friends Church and moving to Hemet, where she taught school and helped her husband tend an apricot orchard.
While in Yorba Linda, West participated in Camp Fire Girls, frequently visited a new “broom-closet” library room and played with her cousin Richard Nixon near the water canal adjacent to his birthplace (both mothers were Milhouses).
Her youth and adolescence in Yorba Linda provided some of the background for stories in 1953’s “Cress Delahanty,” about the title character’s experiences from 12 to 16. The 1961 novel “South of the Angels” was set in a Yorba Linda-like area in the 1920s.
Eventually, West settled in Napa, where her husband was a school superintendent. Her parents—father Eldo headed the Yorba Linda Water Company—lived in several Yorba Linda residences (some still standing, some not) and later moved to Whittier.
A few months before West’s death, she was scheduled to attend a Yorba Linda Heritage Museum program and the 70th anniversary of the Yorba Linda Public Library, but illness prevented her from visiting the facility she loved.
West’s long association with the local library ran from the inaugural 1913 year, when the inventory totaled 50 donated books and a checkout card cost $1, to nearly 1985, when the city took over the special district founded in 1914.
First, 2009 marks the 100th anniversary of West’s age 7 arrival in California from her native Indiana and her father’s purchase of land north of Yorba Linda Boulevard near Club Terrace Drive to plant a lemon grove.
Second, next year is the 25th anniversary of West’s death, after a 40-year writing career that included novels, short stories, screenplays, essays, memoirs, poetry and an operetta.
Her most famous work, of course, was her first, the short story collection “The Friendly Persuasion,” about the Quaker Birdwell family in Indiana, published in 1945. She also wrote the 1956 Academy Award-nominated film version starring Gary Cooper as Jess.
West began writing the stories during a 14-year recovery from tuberculosis contracted in 1931. By then she had graduated from grammar school in Yorba Linda, high school and junior college in Fullerton, Whittier College and studied at Oxford University in England.
In a 1979 letter to this newspaper, West noted, “The first writing for which I was paid was done for the Yorba Linda Star.” She sold ads and wrote “Social Notes” in 1922-3 before marrying Harry McPherson at the Friends Church and moving to Hemet, where she taught school and helped her husband tend an apricot orchard.
While in Yorba Linda, West participated in Camp Fire Girls, frequently visited a new “broom-closet” library room and played with her cousin Richard Nixon near the water canal adjacent to his birthplace (both mothers were Milhouses).
Her youth and adolescence in Yorba Linda provided some of the background for stories in 1953’s “Cress Delahanty,” about the title character’s experiences from 12 to 16. The 1961 novel “South of the Angels” was set in a Yorba Linda-like area in the 1920s.
Eventually, West settled in Napa, where her husband was a school superintendent. Her parents—father Eldo headed the Yorba Linda Water Company—lived in several Yorba Linda residences (some still standing, some not) and later moved to Whittier.
A few months before West’s death, she was scheduled to attend a Yorba Linda Heritage Museum program and the 70th anniversary of the Yorba Linda Public Library, but illness prevented her from visiting the facility she loved.
West’s long association with the local library ran from the inaugural 1913 year, when the inventory totaled 50 donated books and a checkout card cost $1, to nearly 1985, when the city took over the special district founded in 1914.
posted by Jim Drummond at 12:00 PM
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