Heritage writer

Girls and boys were asked to sign a safe driving agreement with their dads

The year is 1946 and Americans are relishing life without war, jumping into a society that offers anyone with a little money the opportunity to drive a car. But trouble erupts almost immediately in the postwar paradise. Primitive roads, unsafe vehicles and unqualified drivers spell an explosion in traffic deaths on American highways –33,500 people were killed in the year following war’s end.

President Harry Truman was having none of it. He convened a Highway Safety Conference in May of 1946, gathering together in Washington 2,000 officials whose jobs involved transportation and traffic safety.  In his opening speech, Truman decried the slaughter on the highways and called for the enactment of laws dictating the qualifications of drivers.

Setting aside his prepared speech, Truman launched into the “most vehement and vitriolic attack on reckless driving ever delivered by a high government official,” said “Public Safety” magazine. “Even the trim MPs stationed at each side of the speaker’s platform were startled out of their impassive rigidity.

“Truman criticized state driver’s license requirements, including those in his home state of Missouri: ‘You know, in some states – my own in particular – you can buy a license to drive a car for 25 cents at the corner drug store. It’s a revenue-raising measure. It isn’t used for safety at all. . . . It’s perfectly absurd that a man or a woman or a child can go to a place and buy an automobile and get behind the wheel – whether he has ever been there before makes no difference, or if he is insane, or he is a nut or a moron doesn’t make a particle of difference – all he has to do is just pay the price and get behind the wheel and go out on the street and kill somebody,’” Truman said.

Big plans to cut traffic deaths

The safety conference adjourned after three days with a consensus on its Action Program to combat highway deaths. Stricter driver’s licensing requirements, education in the schools and an aggressive public information campaign were all part of the ambitious plan they urged state, city and county officials to adopt.

Truman convened similar conferences in 1947, 1949, 1951 and 1952, and each time participants analyzed the statistics and retooled the Action Program for greater success.  But as time went on, overall highway traffic volume shot up, and the fatality total continued to climb. Stats showed 35,000 highway deaths in 1950; 37,500 in 1951; and officials projected 40,000 in 1952.

Traffic safety evangelists, disappointed by the lack of success, adopted a strategy they hoped would bump their public education program forward. Judge Alfred P. Murrah of Oklahoma, chairman of the National Committee for Traffic Safety, expressed it this way: “We come to the realization that it is not enough merely to appeal to the mind; we must appeal to the heart and soul of man. When we have done that, we will build an organization for safety rooted in the hearts and minds of the individual everywhere. That, my friends, is our goal and there can be no turning back.”

Colorado Governor Dan Thornton urged involving industry and business in the traffic safety crusade: “In other emergencies and catastrophes, such as floods or disease . . . the states (have traditionally) enlisted the support of business and industry to help in a crisis. A similar approach could reduce the unnecessary loss of life due to traffic accidents.”

Despite all the government’s heroic highway safety efforts, traffic deaths steadily increased throughout the 1950s and 1960s reaching a high of 55,600 in 1972. As is still true today, teen drivers were responsible for a disproportionate number of highway fatalities during this time.

Kaiser-Frazer introduced the World's First Safety-First automobile in 1953

Kaiser-Frazer embraces safety crusade

Automobile manufacturers such as Kaiser-Frazer, started by Henry Kaiser and Joe Frazer right after the war, took the safety sermon seriously. They began to do two things: build a safer car and educate drivers, especially newly licensed teenagers, about safe driving.  When Kaiser-Frazer came out with its 1953 Kaiser Manhattan, they dubbed it the “World’s First Safety-First Car!” The Manhattan had an extra large windshield for better visibility, a low center of gravity, steering designed for better control as well as a powerful engine, brakes with “more stopping power” and special lighting for better visibility at night.

Even before launching its safety-first vehicles in the early 1950s, Kaiser-Frazer began in 1949 to coach its customers on how to teach their teenagers to approach the road with caution and responsibility. The dealership offered boilerplate agreements for fathers and teenagers to sign, setting up rules for safe driving. The “Dad-to Daughter” and “Man-to-Man” agreements, approved by the National Traffic Safety Committee, included pledges such as these:

“I fully realize the car is not a plaything but a machine that has the power to kill, and I will not try to show off with it;

“I will not race with other cars regardless of how much of a temptation it might be to do so;

“I am fully aware of the risks involved in driving after drinking, and I will not allow the car to be driven by anyone who has been drinking any form of intoxicating liquor while the car is in my charge;

“I hereby give my father my Word of Honor that I will do what I have promised above in consideration of his permission to drive the family car. . . I have signed this agreement of my own free will.”

Curiously, the dad-to-daughter and man-to-man (father-to-son) agreements, although distinctly titled, were identical, making no provision for the inherent differences between teenage girls and boys. Mom was absent from the 1949 equation altogether.

Agreements underline changes in driving attitudes

A comparison of the 1949 and a 2011 parent-teen safe driving agreement reveals the differences – and similarities – of the harrowing experience of getting teens through the early driving challenge.  The American Automobile Association’s (AAA) template addresses the same issues as the Kaiser-Frazer agreement: obeying traffic laws and eschewing daring practices such as racing, stunts, and drinking alcohol. It also brings up topics hardly imagined in 1949: “I will not allow drugs or weapons in the car. . . I will pull over and park before using my cell phone, pager or any other electronic devices.” (The Department of Transportation launched “distraction.gov” in 2009 to attack the problem of multi-tasking while driving.)

Another contrasting feature of the AAA agreement versus the Kaiser-Frazer document is the promise to “wear my safety belt at all times,” a sign of the vast updating over five decades of the nation’s laws governing highway safety and the manufacture of safer cars.

The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act and Highway Safety Act passed in 1966 gave the federal government the authority to set uniform safety standards.  These measures, including seat belt requirements, finally began to reverse the upward trend by the early 1970s.

In April of this year, the government reported the rate of fatalities in 2010 fell to the lowest levels since 1949 despite a significant increase in the number of miles driven. In announcing the 2010 numbers, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said: “Still, too many of our friends and neighbors are killed in preventable roadway tragedies every day. We will continue doing everything possible to make cars safer, increase seat belt use, put a stop to drunk driving and distracted driving and encourage drivers to put safety first.”

First in a series

Nurses pose on the lawn of the Permanente Oakland hospital during World War II

Like other underappreciated groups who came home to a seemingly unchanged society, nurses were discouraged and hesitated to pursue their chosen profession due to low pay, low status and poor working conditions. Many nurses chose to be waitresses or factory workers where they could make more money and work more reasonable hours. The exodus from the nursing profession created a shortage of qualified nurses, which would intensify in later years.  

Home-front nurses had been content to work without making demands during the war emergency. But after the war, they wanted more. Alameda County nurses had affiliated with the California State Nurses Association (now California Nurses Association or CNA) in 1941 and relied on the association to represent them to East Bay hospitals administrations. But in 1945 these nurses realized that the statewide association had not been effective in bringing them better pay and working conditions.  

The association had developed employment guidelines for the benefit of nurses, but the association had no power to force hospitals to follow the voluntary rules. The East Bay Hospital Conference, made up of administrators from 12 hospitals, adopted a “Statement of Policy” regarding nursing issues in 1941, and dropped it after the war emergency was over.  

Alameda County nurses form their own guild 

Major Edith Aynes, a recruiter from the Army Nursing Corps, gave force to the East Bay nurses’ argument that their profession deserved a better status. Quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1946, Aynes spoke about the military model of the registered nurse as someone who performed patient care, while other untrained staff performed peripheral menial tasks.  

“Instead of taking temperatures, serving (food) trays, making beds and carrying bath water, the nurse is free to change dressings, give medications, care for sick patients and in general supervise the entire ward,” Aynes said.  

Article published in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1946

Alameda County nurses took Aynes’ message to heart and decided to form their own nurses union in November of 1945. “The objective of the guild will be to establish standards relating to salaries, personnel practice and conditions of employment and to maintain an economic security program for registered nurses, members of the guild,” Kathleen Koepke, president of the guild, told the Oakland Tribune.  

In March of 1946, the guild asked the U.S Conciliation Service to recognize the guild as bargaining agent for the nurses in negotiations with the East Bay hospitals. In April of 1946, guild members voted to affiliate with the Public Workers of America (PWA) and the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations), a federation of unions. This was at the same time the CIO and AFL (American Federation of Labor), then separate groups, were fighting in Sacramento over political endorsements for state offices.  

Guild appeals to public for support 

Soon after joining the CIO, the guild began a public relations campaign to win community support for their demands for better pay and working conditions. “You Needed the Nurse…Now the Nurse Needs You” was the title of the pamphlet the new Nurses’ Guild of Alameda County’s leaders developed and delivered to 8,000 trade unions, teachers, doctors, dentists and other professionals in Alameda County.  

In the pamphlet, the nurses laid out their demands: “The immediate goal of the Nurses’ Guild is a collective bargaining contract that will guarantee the nurses a decent wage, reasonable amount of leisure, and fair working conditions …living symbols of our American Way of Life. Standing united, the nurses are determined that, no matter how long it takes, the hospitals must finally recognize the justice of the nurses’ case by signing the contract.  

Alameda County Nurses' Guild circulated this pamphlet in 1946.

“The nurses’ requests are for your protection!” the pamphlet declared, appealing to the public’s self interest in quality care. Specifically, the guild was asking for a better salary (minimum of $200 a month), a 40-hour work week, down from the standard 48-hour week for nurses, designated holidays, vacation with pay, reasonable sick leave with pay, adequate maternity leave, pre-employment and annual health examinations, protection under the Social Security Act and protection under the Unemployment Insurance Acts. The nurses also demanded the right of collective bargaining through “organizations of her own choosing without discrimination or intimidation and a job as an American Citizen, regardless of race, religion, color, ancestry or national origin.”  

The guild leadership invoked the words of a prominent economist of the time, Varden Fuller, to bolster their case: “There will be no real end to the shortage of nurses in Alameda County until nurses can be guaranteed decent working conditions in hospitals,” Fuller was quoted in a guild press release. “It’s no wonder that so small a percentage of nurses coming out of the armed forces are returning to hospital work. A nurse can go to work in a warehouse or a cannery and earn as much or more money as in a hospital.” The nurses augmented that claim in the pamphlet, declaring that a woman paring and peeling in a cannery made $202.50 and a grocery clerk made $241 per month, while nurses were making $175.  

KP’s chief physician Sidney Garfield makes history by signing first nurse contract 

The Nurses’ Guild leaders urged the public to write to the hospitals and “let them know you’re in complete sympathy with the nurses’ just requests.” On the list of hospitals whose nurses had voted to be represented by the guild was the (Kaiser) Permanente Foundation Hospital at Broadway and MacArthur in Oakland, the first Permanente hospital, opened in 1942. Permanente administration distinguished itself by being the only hospital representatives that allowed a secret ballot for its nurses to select an organization to speak for them in labor negotiations. Sidney Garfield, MD, Permanente’s founding physician, was also the first to sign a collective bargaining contract with the newly energized nurses’ organization.  

The nurses’ initial campaign for labor representation came to a close on August 1, 1946, with the announcement of Garfield’s signing. “Permanente’s historic contract gives working nurses a 40-hour work week for the first time in Alameda County hospitals,” the Guild press release stated. “Besides reducing the former 48-hour work week to 40 hours, the Permanente agreement raises the former basic wage of $175 to $185. The basic rate will go up to $190 on October 1 and $200 monthly on January 1, 1947.” Meanwhile, the California State Nurses Association was negotiating with other East Bay hospitals. Spokeswoman Edna Behrens told the Tribune their contracts called for a 44-hour work week beginning July 1 and a 40-hour week as of January 1, 1947. She said the shortened week would not mean a reduction in the minimum salary of $200 per month.  

While nurses felt empowered after the war to pursue higher positions in the field of medical care, not everyone was anxious to embrace them in new roles. A case in point is neurosurgeon Howard Naffziger, who spoke in 1947 at a two-day conference of the Association of California Hospitals at Hotel Claremont in Oakland. “Highly specialized nurses should be called something else, because they have specialized themselves right out of the care of the sick.” He said nurses could learn all they needed to know in two years, or even one year of training. “The needs of the public for nurses exceed the ability of the public to pay,” the renowned neurosurgeon said.  

Marguerite McLean, then superintendent of nurses at Highland Hospital and later director of the Permanente School of Nursing, countered his remarks: “Doctors …have had to spread themselves so thin that one wonders what would happen if nurses hadn’t been qualified to step in and take care of the situation,” McLean told the Oakland Tribune. She added that even the practical nurse with less training would need a living wage, which would have to be close to the $200 basic monthly pay of the trained nurse. “Nurses feel they are best qualified to know and understand nursing requirements.”  

(Next time: In 1966, Kaiser Permanente nurses stage first work action in California history.)

For more on Kaiser Permanente nursing click here.

Fabiola Hospital in its heyday

By Laura Thomas
Heritage correspondent   

Kaiser Permanente Oakland stands today on one of the busiest intersections in the city, destined to bustle even more with the new medical center rising in place of the MacArthur-Broadway indoor mall.   

What many may not realize is that the groundwork for the Kaiser Permanente complex was laid – both literally and figuratively – in Oakland’s early years by a group of high society women of the Fabiola Association.   

In 1887, it was at that same corner, then New Broadway and Moss Avenue, on 2 ½ acres of land covered with oak, eucalyptus and locust trees donated by Anthony Chabot, that the Oakland Homeopathic Hospital and Dispensary constructed a splendid turreted Victorian building. They named it the Fabiola Hospital after a wealthy woman who built a public hospital in 4th century Rome.   

It looked more like a railroad baron’s mansion than what we might think of as a medical building, but it was in line with what those 19th century matrons thought was best for sick people – an environment that was home-like and comforting.   

Privileged women strive for underprivileged

Bucolic setting of original Fabiola hospital

The group had been organized by Kate Kirkham 10 years before. She witnessed a carriage accident and was horrified to learn the victims would be taken 10 miles to a San Leandro hospital, the nearest hospital at the time. She collected $50 donations from 18 women of her circle – local water developer Chabot was a friend of hers – and opened the group’s first facility on Market Street.   

They formed the Fabiola Association to support their work, which focused on providing medical care to anyone who needed it. In its early years, the association members were proponents of homeopathic care.   

Once the hospital went up, the association members established a nursing school that accepted men (an oddity at the time), a diet kitchen, and a visiting nurse service. They began a program of expansion that didn’t abate until the Great Depression hit in the 1930s.   

Fabiola grew to meet community needs

Interior of maternity cottage late 19th century

Fabiola’s expansion was much like the evolution of the modern-day Kaiser Permanente’s complex. Before 1900, Fabiola annexed a Queen Anne-style cottage to the main building for the nurses’ quarters, and then added a facility for children and a maternity “cottage.” Over the following 20-plus years, the hospital spread across Broadway with the takeover of a Red Cross facility and the building of a graceful Spanish-style nursing home designed by Julia Morgan.   

A new surgical building went up in 1907 along Moss Avenue and Howe Street. The final spate came in 1923, accompanying a building boom across the city, when the Fabiola ladies built another nurses residence at 3797 Piedmont Ave., with a tennis court.   

The year ended with the completion of a modern 50-bed maternity hospital at the corner of Moss Avenue and Broadway appointed with, according to the Oakland Tribune, “antique walnut, rich rugs and cretonne hangings.”   

The much-touted maternity building, you may realize, became home to the first Kaiser Permanente hospital in 1942. But there’s more to this story.   

Both Kirkham and Kaiser dreamed of better access to care

The Kaiser Foundation Health Plan’s mission is built upon the work of earlier generations that saw providing adequate health care as a duty of the society. And people of means often took it on as their personal mission. Henry Kaiser was inspired to set up the Kaiser health plan by his mother’s untimely death, much as Kate Kirkham was prompted by the suffering she witnessed in the accident.   

In the progressive era, women across the country started hospitals and clinics for women, children and the poor. The Fabiola Association was part of the trend. Members insisted in their by-laws that the hospital be managed by women and that the staff doctor always be a woman.   

Fabiola maternity hospital circa 1924

Society ladies took care of working nurses

The Fabiola women were fiercely devoted to the welfare of the nurses. In 1902, they were encouraged by the board president to take turns sending their carriages out “at 8 o’clock in the morning to take the night nurses out for an hour or two driving in the quieter parts of our suburbs” to help them relax before going to bed.   

There were power struggles among the ladies who served on the Fabiola board and at least one strike by nurses which necessitated the matrons’ heading over to the hospital to hoist the bed trays up from the kitchen. They were also taken to task by local ministers who berated them for raising money through gambling, with the Fabiola Derby Day at the Oakland Trotting Park.   

Again, owing to their social status, such criticism didn’t stop them. “Oakland’s most exclusive dames are members of Fabiola and they are indignant over Rev. Baker’s strictures,” reported the Tribune in June 1904.   

Each year, the Fabiola Association issued their service statistics. In 1900, they saw 871 patients of which 619 were hospitalized. Of those, only 131 paid the full hospital charges, the rest paid nothing or just what they could afford. By 1930, the hospital saw 4,753 patients, of which 517 received free care.   

Unfortunately, the good works wrought by the Fabiola ladies soon came to a crashing halt. Hard times reduced paying customers and donations dried up. The hospital closed in October 1932. The Tribune’s headline was “Fabiola Ends Experiment in Feminism” and editorialized that the regret felt by Oaklanders for its loss “was akin to grief.”   

Original architectural beauties demolished

Early the following year, the glorious original hospital – a building that would qualify for landmark status had it survived – as well as the children’s annex, nurses home, and the surgical building were all razed. The new maternity hospital was saved in hopes the operation could be resurrected.   

Instead, the Fabiola Association turned over all its assets to Samuel Merritt Hospital in 1940 with the stipulation that it be used for those unable to afford hospital care, and the women went to work for another decade to aid that effort. The real estate, including the hospital, was estimated at a $75,000 value.   

Fabiola maternity hospital renovated and reopened as the first Permanente Foundation Hospital circa 1942

The hospital was considered still quite modern with its reinforced concrete construction, and Henry Kaiser and Dr. Sidney Garfield were quite pleased to find it in 1942 when they were running out of room to treat shipyard workers at the Richmond Field Hospital. They paid $333,000 for the land and renovations and reopened it in August.   

The Fabiola building served as the core of the original Kaiser Permanente complex during the war and early days of the public health plan. Many additions and renovations on the site characterized Oakland’s flagship facility’s growth over the past 65 years.   

At one time, the Fabiola was painted pink, Henry Kaiser’s favorite color, and in its last iteration was encased in aluminum, one of Kaiser Industries’ main industrial products. The 1923-built, four-story building was torn down in 2005 as part of the Oakland Medical Center rebuild project currently under way.   

Kaiser Permanente carries on Fabiola’s original mission

Few Oaklanders remember the old hospital now, though scores were born in the homey maternity cottage, including my father in 1920. The new Fabiola building on Howe Street is the last reminder of that “institution of real Christian socialism” – as defined by its president Mrs. J.P.H. (Catherine) Dunn at its closing – that was the original Fabiola.   

If in later years Henry Kaiser was accused of being a “socialist” for putting forth a prepaid, group health plan, he stands shoulder to shoulder with Kate Kirkham and her successors in realizing his shared humanity with those in need but without means.   

One hundred and thirteen years separate the pastoral beauty that surrounded the 19th century Fabiola Hospital from the current scene: pavement, numerous traffic signals and striped crosswalks that knit together Kaiser Permanente’s modern complex. But the legacy of thoughtful health care and community benefit is what abides.

For more about Kaiser Permanente’s community benefit programs, go to http://tinyurl.com/4fcswsh

Christmas 1956, and the family of Henry J. Kaiser, Jr., was reveling in the beauty of the season and reflecting on its own good fortune and faith.  As they had done the two previous years, the trio – Henry Jr., his wife, Bobbie, and son Henry III, then 4, recorded a holiday album to share their happiness with their friends and the employees of Kaiser Industries.

The album eavesdrops on the young family as they recount stories and sing in anticipation of Santa’s arrival on Christmas Eve. The child, nicknamed Henry Three (aka Henri Trois), vows to stay up to see St. Nick up close. Can he do it? His parents are skeptical.

Mr. and Mrs. Henry J. Kaiser, Jr., alias Mama and Papa to Henry III. Photo courtesy of the Bancroft Library.

Just about seven minutes long, the 1956 recording celebrated San Francisco Bay Area’s newest bay crossing, the Richmond – San Rafael Bridge, the release of a musical classic from “My Fair Lady,” and the talent of young Henry Three who showed his precociousness by reciting a poem in French and then translating it for “Papa” Kaiser.

For me, “Mama” Bobbie Kaiser’s reference to Santa coming from the north to Oakland over the “new Richmond Bridge” rang a bell. As a native of Richmond, I remember taking my last ride on the auto ferry that connected the East Bay with Marin. My parents had a ritual of cramming all eight of us in to our 1950 Ford and driving onto the ferry as a special Sunday outing. That ended in September of 1956 when the bridge opened.

Henry J. Kaiser, Jr., son of industrialist and visionary Henry J. Kaiser, showcased his singing talent by launching into “I Could Have Danced All Night” as Henry Three reiterated his determination to greet Santa whenever the jolly soul showed up at the Kaiser home during the night. The song, which was well known later, had just been published and performed on Broadway in 1956. Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle (actually sung by Marni Nixon) popularized the tune in the 1964 screen version of “My Fair Lady.”

Precocious child grows up

Henry Kaiser III with his guitar at the South Pole in 2001. Photo from the Kaiser Family Foundation Web site.

Henry Three’s Christmas album performance foreshadowed his success as a brilliant student who enrolled at Harvard University at 16 and as an innovative and eclectic musician, research diver, videographer and film producer.

In 2007, Henry Three produced a documentary film about scientists working in Antarctica with famed documentarian Werner Herzog. The movie, “Encounters at the End of the World,” was nominated in 2009 for an Academy Award for Documentary Feature. Kaiser appears briefly in the film and his underwater camera work is showcased in the DVD’s special features.  

The Baby Boomer Henry Kaiser has an impressive discography and is well known as a gifted musician and composer. Wikipedia has this to say about him: “Recording and performing prolifically in many styles of music, Kaiser is a fixture on the San Francisco music scene. He is considered a member of the ‘first generation’ of American free improvisers.”

Happy holidays, and enjoy this excerpt of the Kaiser 1956 album. Kaiser_Christmas_1956

In the fall of 1942, thousands of New York area workers boarded Kaiser Shipyards recruiting trains in Hoboken, New Jersey, heading for Oregon.  Around the same time, thousands of job seekers were catching trains from the South and the Midwest bound for Richmond, California. Still others uttered a hopeful prayer as they started up their jalopies or farm trucks and headed west. Looking to change their lives for the better, the skilled and unskilled took a chance that the West Coast dream was not an illusion.

They were leaving their hometowns where recovery from the Great Depression was elusive. If they had jobs, the pay was low. Many were deep in debt and saw higher pay in the World War II shipyards as a way to heal their ailing finances. Some were young and saw no future or excitement in their native states.  

Chicago area welders wait for train to Richmond. National Archives photo by Jack Delano.

 Individuals were desperately needed to build ships to help win the war. So it didn’t matter whether you were black or white or Asian or Hispanic – or if you had skills and experience. You could learn on the job, and if you did well, you could improve your position and pay. You didn’t even have to be healthy and strong – and many weren’t. You could seek medical care at the shipyards, and you could purchase the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, affordable comprehensive, prepaid health care for yourself and your family.  

The shipyard life wasn’t all hearts and flowers. Worker housing was inadequate, and communities were overwhelmed with newcomers.  But for many workers, migration to the West Coast opened up a new, optimistic world.  

Mississippi mother of 11 becomes shipyard welder  

Lucille Preston, reared in Clarkesdale, Mississippi (near Memphis, Tennessee), is a case in point. She first went to work on a plantation at age 12 or 13 babysitting for the wealthy owner’s children. Eventually, she cooked for the family every day and served at their elaborate parties. The generous family hosted her wedding when she married a man whose parents worked for the same prominent family.  

When the couple’s six child was on the way, Preston’s husband, Willie, caught the California bug. “My husband just came home one evening and said that there was work in Richmond, California. ‘They’re opening up the Kaiser Shipyard, and I would like to go.’ So I said: ‘Why sure,’ ” Preston told Judith K. Dunning, oral history interviewer for a Bancroft Library project in 1985.*  

Unidentified family awaiting a train in Chicago. National Archives photo by Jack Delano.

Willie sent for Lucille when he got an apartment in the war housing. She set out for Richmond on a train, eight months pregnant, carrying her one-year-old with the other four clinging to her skirt. On the platform, a kind conductor shepherded Lucille and her brood through the crushing crowd onto a car bound for California. From El Paso, Texas, to Richmond, Lucille stood holding the baby while the other children settled at the feet of nearby passengers.  

At Richmond, the Prestons settled in their new home, Lucille gave birth and a month later she was working graveyard at the shipyards and learning how to weld. Willie worked swing shift so the two took turns at parenting.  The couple had five more children over the next decade. After the war, Lucille operated a dress-uniform press at Treasure Island where she worked for 20 years.   

Lucille told Dunning her only regret was that the expense of raising eight sons and three daughters kept her from building her dream house. However, most of her children went to college – one daughter has two master’s degrees –and they all have successful careers.    

Government helps young men launch shipyard careers  

Getting to California from other parts of the country seemed a pipe dream for many would-be welders. Kaiser Shipyard recruiters fronted train fare for many who came across the country with nothing. Workers could pay back the loan when they got their paychecks. For young men 16 to 24, the federal National Youth Administration (NYA), established by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1935, collaborated with the Richmond Kaiser Shipyards to make the impossible dream possible.  

The NYA paid for transportation to California. Once in Richmond, the young men were welcomed at the Richmond War Work Residence Center where they lived in dormitories and received two to four weeks of welder training. The pay for a month was $33.30, minus $22.50 for meals, dental and medical care, work clothes and equipment. After the initial period of “confusion, bewilderment and expense,” the men were placed in shipyard jobs, according to the Richmond Shipyard newsletter “Fore ‘N Aft.” By April 1943, the project had placed 1,500 welders in Richmond yards.  

Diversity reigns in the shipyards  

Throughout the war years, the West Coast shipyards attracted all kinds of people from all over the globe.  There were actors, writers, lawyers, cowboys, farmers, housewives, shopkeepers, and doctors. Some were experienced at building ships and others had never seen one.  

Here’s how the “Fore ‘N Aft” described the work force in April 1944: “We are all kinds of people, as you can tell by listening to us – Texas twang and Brooklyn brogue, down east Yankee and Carolina drawl, along with almost every language on earth from Polish to Swedish, from Syrian to Italian. It takes all kinds of people to build ships, just as it took all kinds to build America. Shoulder to shoulder, we’ll come through together.”  

*Lucille Preston, “A World War II Journey: From Clarkesdale, Mississippi, to Richmond, California, 1942,” an oral history conducted in 1985 by Judith K. Dunning, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1992.  

Front and back covers of launch program for the S.S. Burbank Victory, July 28, 1945 (Courtesy of the National Park Service, Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park, Launching Program, RORI 3169)

Director of Heritage Resources

The world was changing dramatically 65 years ago this week. The war in Europe was over, and Japan would surrender within a few weeks. In Richmond, Calif., the last Victory ship built in the Kaiser Shipyards was readied for launch on July 28. Above the ship, the S.S. Burbank, the word ‘Aloha’ in giant letters was suspended between two cranes.

An orchestra played Hawaiian music, guests wore leis made from fragrant pikake blossoms, and Henry J. Kaiser’s wife, Bess, cracked the traditional flower-wreathed bottle of champagne across the bow.

“In launching the last of the Victory ships, we are not registering a finality,” said Kaiser, “but beginning the second phase in the achievements of our industrial family.”

Looking on were Kaiser’s two adult sons, Edgar and Henry Jr.

It was said 10,000 people were on hand, including shipbuilders who had worked on the very first Victory ship.  They sang “Aloha” to Mr. and Mrs. Kaiser and, as the S.S. Burbank slid down the way into San Francisco Bay, flowers tossed from the deck showered the crowd.

The symbolism of the “Aloha” theme has only grown over time. The Hawaiian word is used to say both goodbye and hello. America was saying farewell to World War II, and greeting the post-war world. Henry Kaiser was leaving shipbuilding and embarking on new ventures—including opening the Permanente Health Plan, later renamed Kaiser, to the public. And he was advocating for national reforms that would make health insurance available to all Americans.

Indeed, days before the launch of the S.S. Burbank, Kaiser announced he had drafted a legislative proposal that he presented to several U.S. Senators to create a national program of voluntary prepaid medical care.

“…The greatest service that can be done for the American people,” said the preamble to Kaiser’s 1945 proposal, “is to provide a nationwide prepaid health plan that will guard these people against the tragedy of unpredictable and disastrous hospital and medical bills, and that will, in consequence, emphasize preventive instead of curative medicine, thereby improving the state of the nation’s health.”

These events also were coupled with opening the Permanente Health Plan and Hospitals to the public under the leadership of physician co-founder Sidney R. Garfield. Thus, this week became the springboard for the 65 years—to date—of continually defining the future of health care with the growth and leadership of Kaiser Permanente . (See: Opening a Prepaid Health Plan to the Public 65 Years Ago this Month.)

This would be Kaiser’s ultimate legacy.

The Kaiser family at the launch of the last Kaiser Victory Ship, July 28, 1945.

As the preeminent California historian, Kevin Starr, has noted, “After all the things he did—the great dams he had built, the great waterways, the unprecedented work in the shipyards—Kaiser knew that this was the thing that would last.”

Or, as Kaiser, himself, said on several occasions in the last years of his life in Hawaii, “Of all the things I’ve done, I expect only to be remembered for…filling the people’s greatest need—good health.”

National health care legislation failed in 1945 and many times thereafter, but Kaiser, Dr. Garfield and their successors have persisted in advocating for heath care for all ever since and saw President Obama sign the Affordable Care Act last March 23. That came exactly 65 years and 20 days after the official date of Henry J. Kaiser’s original “Proposal for a Nationwide Prepaid Medical Plan Based on Experience of the Permanente Foundation Hospitals,” which had been prepared in consultation with Dr. Garfield.

Today, Kaiser and Garfield are honored for their contributions on the Home Front of World War II at the Rose the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park for making prepaid medical care “a legacy of the WWII Home Front.”

(Special thanks to Veronica Rodriguez, Museum Curator at the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park, for locating and sharing use of the program images for the launch of the S.S. Burbank Victory, July 28, 1945.)

This Oakland Tribune clipping is one of many news stories when Kaiser Permanente began opening its doors to the public.

Sixty-five years ago this month the curtain was about to fall on the dreadful years of World War II, and Dr. Sidney R. Garfield and industrialist Henry J. Kaiser were raising the curtain on their plans to expand their prepaid Permanente Foundation Health Plan—later renamed Kaiser Foundation—beyond Kaiser’s employees to the general public.

So it was, in July 1945, that they announced that the “first large extension of the family health plan” beyond Kaiser workers would be in Vallejo, California, about 30 miles northeast of San Francisco.

The idea of going to Vallejo with a Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospital resulted from a grassroots invitation from citizens there—a sort of populist request for prepaid medical care. That should come as no surprise. The new medical care program—nicknamed “a Mayo Clinic for the common man” by one writer of the era—had been a hit with workers in the wartime Kaiser Shipyards in nearby Richmond and was getting nationwide media notice.

“I don’t see why this can’t be done everywhere, for everyone,” said one shipyard worker. “This should be for everybody,” added another. “We must organize and demand this not only for us workers but for all their families. It should be for everybody in America.”

Against that backdrop, Kaiser Permanente was invited to town by a tenants’ council of the Vallejo Housing Authority to provide care for residents of eight large wartime public housing dormitories. A doctor was assigned to each dormitory and a clinic was set up within an existing public health service infirmary.

Meanwhile, with the cooperation of local physicians, a citizen’s committee had unraveled wartime bureaucracies to get the government-sponsored Vallejo Community Hospital opened in 1944. It was needed because the Mare Island Naval Shipyard at Vallejo and the nearby Benicia Arsenal ordnance facility had drawn thousands of wartime civilian workers. The city’s few doctors had been swamped by a flood of new patients.

However, with the war ending, the government was no longer willing to support a community hospital. The military-style facility—long, low buildings spread over 30 acres—closed after the war ended in August, leaving thousands of civilian families without medical care.

Before long, the not-for-profit Kaiser Foundation Health Plan needed a full service hospital in Vallejo. So, on April 1, 1947, Kaiser Permanente re-opened the 250-bed Vallejo Community Hospital as its own, having first leased it as surplus property from the Federal Works Agency. Later, it bought the hospital at the site where Kaiser Permanente’s Vallejo Medical Center remains to this day.

“This…marks the beginning of efforts now underway by the Kaiser organization to offer Permanente Foundation facilities to all groups interested in complete prepaid medicine,” the July 1945 announcement read. The existing facilities were those on the Home Front of World War II serving Henry Kaiser’s shipyards and steel mill. They were in Richmond, Oakland, and Fontana in California and in Vancouver in Washington state.

Kaiser Permanente's Oakland Medical Center started with rebuilding of the burned out shell of a former hospital, seen here in 1942 with Dr. Sidney R. Garfield, at right, and Ned Dobbs, liaison between physicians and the architects.

A few days later, Clyde F. Diddle, administrator of the Oakland Medical Center, told the San Francisco Chronicle that the Oakland hospital was being opened to the public under four principles: prepayment, group medical practice, adequate facilities, and “a new medical economy.”

“This ‘new economy,’ strongly opposed in part by some factions favoring the traditional family physician-patient relationship, follows the old Chinese practice of paying the physician while you are well,” the Chronicle said.

Added Diddle, “We offer medical service from nasal spray to surgery—and all under one roof. The important thing is that there are no barriers to early treatment. …Patients are encouraged to come in early…”

The Chronicle article also reported that Henry Kaiser was preparing a proposal for Congress to establish a nationwide system of voluntary prepaid medical care.  This would be the first of many continuing efforts to support Sidney Garfield’s dream of health care for all Americans that have continued to the present day.

These historic events are honored today by the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, which includes historic sites of the wartime medical care program. Notes National Park Service interpretative materials: “Today, prepaid medical care is central to American culture—it is a legacy of the WWII Home Front.”

Forecasts in 1945 projected eventually serving about 25,000 people in Vallejo. Today, the Vallejo Medical Centers serves about 10 times that number in California’s Napa and Solano counties alone. The entire Kaiser Permanente multi-state program serves 8.6 million members.

The “official” date for Kaiser Permanente’s opening to the public became Oct. 1, 1945, but the work got under way in earnest starting in July.

Sixty-five years ago Friday, May 28, the New York Times reported that Henry J. Kaiser, as national chairman of the United National Clothing Collection, had announced that more than 125 million pounds had been gathered on the way to a 150-million-pound goal for overseas war relief.

It was a momentous time as America prepared for the first Memorial Day following Germany’s unconditional surrender—VE Day—less than three weeks earlier and the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt only six weeks earlier.

In an example of Henry Kaiser’s spirit of supporting the social needs of people, he had agreed in January to chair the clothing drive at the request of President Roosevelt.

Said the President in a Jan. 22 letter to Kaiser: “…As many war victims have died from exposure and a lack of adequate clothing as have died from starvation… The importance of the cause demands a leader who will stimulate thousands of our people throughout the land to give vast amounts of volunteer service, as well as inspire all Americans everywhere to contribute all the clothing they can spare. I am confident your personal leadership will command the nationwide cooperation needed for success…”

Henry Kaiser had never led such a national campaign before, but took up the cause with the same gusto with which he had built ships for the war, and which had earned him nicknames as the “can-do” industrialist and the “patriot in pinstripes.”

There is enough spare clothing in America’s clothes closets and attics,” he said, “to go far toward relieving the stress of these innocent people.”

By a mid-March kick-off, Kaiser had 2,500 volunteer local chair people lined up on his way to 7,600 for the drive. The goal was surpassed with a total of 150,366,014 pounds of used clothes, shoes and bedding shipped overseas.

Clothing drive poster was used nationwide in Henry Kaiser-led overseas war relief effort.

As if that were not enough, Kaiser repeated the feat after VJ Day— the surrender of Japan on Aug. 14, 1945.

World War II was finally over and Kaiser this time responded to a request from President Harry Truman.

The sponsoring agency for both volunteer drives was the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, which had been formed by participating World War II allied nations. It was disbanded after the war, with its functions transferred to agencies of the newly formed United Nations, establishment of which had been supported by Kaiser.

By example, Kaiser further embedded into his organizations a spirit of service to the common good that continues to this day within his lasting legacy, Kaiser Permanente, co-founded with surgeon Sidney R. Garfield and open to the public in October 1945.

As one of his biographers, Albert P. Heiner, summed it up: “…Once again, Kaiser had proved he was more than an exciting industrialist, he was a man with a heart.”

Bess & Henry Kaiser

Thinking about sweethearts across America expressing their love this Valentine’s Day weekend, my attention was drawn to almost 200 newly acquired recordings in our Kaiser Permanente Heritage Archive.  One recording qualifies as a “singing Valentine” from Henry J. Kaiser to his wife, Bess, as World War II drew to a close 65 years ago.

First, the backdrop.

Bess Kaiser, with Henry, prepares to launch one of her husband's ships. Sons Henry Jr., left, and Edgar look on

One has to understand that the Kaisers—along with their sons Edgar and Henry Jr.—were “unabashed sentimentalists,” as Kaiser biographer Albert P. Heiner has recalled.   “They showed their affection for each other by effusive words of love they so often expressed.  And by unhesitatingly putting their arms around each on a regular basis.”

Henry Kaiser called Bess “mother” in private and public.  This struck a cord within the Kaiser organization, and she became widely known among Kaiser’s employees as “Mother Kaiser.”

In October 1945, this sentiment was reflected at a banquet honoring “Mother Kaiser” with a song from a group of Kaiser singers in a rendition of  “Let Us Call You Sweetheart.”  Based, of course, on “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” this popular song dates from 1910—three years after the marriage of Henry and Bess.  It became a lifelong favorite of the couple.

If you take a listen to the song, you will hear the singers invite the audience to join in.  Listen especially to the end when Henry Kaiser—a little off key—joins in an unabashedly sentimental solo.

A second recording at the banquet was a humorous takeoff of the 1892 classic “Bicycle Built for Two.” Here are the changed lyrics:

Bessie, Bessie,
Give me your answer do!
I’m half crazy
All for the love of you!
It won’t be a stylish marriage,
We can’t afford a carriage,
But you’ll look sweet upon the seat
Of a bicycle built for two.

Henry, Henry, here is your answer dear.
I can’t cycle. It makes me feel so queer.
If you can’t afford a carriage,
Call off your bloomin’ marriage,
For I’ll be blown if I’ll be ‘tow’n’
On a bicycle built for two.

Henry, of course, provided much more for Bess than “a bicycle built for two.”

Bess & Henry J. Kaiser in 1946

As one of the 20^th Century’s most successful industrialists, Henry Kaiser also built several lines of automobiles. Kaiser’s love for Bess and for automobiles is illustrated in one of the photographs reproduced here. It is an image from our history archive that shows Henry and Bess playfully taking a spin in a door-less small truck in 1946 at a Kaiser industrial plant in Trentwood, Washington.

Henry and Bess Kaiser’s lasting legacy, of course, is Kaiser Permanente.  In 1942, they formed the Permanente Foundation Health Plan, a charitable trust, to serve the health care needs of 200,000 Kaiser employes on the Home Front of World War II.  It was Bess who picked the name.  The couple had a retreat along the bank of Permanente Creek south of San Francisco that she found beautiful and calming.  Read more about that in “Search for the Source of the Permanente” by our senior consulting historian, Steve Gilford.

Let me close with special thanks to collector Ron Gorremans of Lincoln City, Oregon, from whom the Kaiser Permanente Heritage Archive acquired these World War II era recordings.  The audio clips are from master recordings of 118 ship launches during the war from Henry Kaiser’s Swan Island Shipyard in Portland, Oregon.  They are currently being digitized.  When that is complete, we will deposit the originals in a permanent preservation archive as well as make the digital copies available to the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park for use in its interpretive program.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Kaiser on horseback at site of his first California road project

What do Henry Kaiser, Carol Burnett, and George Lucas have in common? Not obvious? How about John Madden, romance novelist Danielle Steel, bodybuilder Joe Weider – and Henry Kaiser? Not intuitive? OK, what about Clint Eastwood, restaurateur Alice Waters, and Color Purple author Alice Walker? Still stumped?

Try this combination: Henry Kaiser, Earl Warren, Leland Stanford, architect Julia Morgan, Hiram Johnson, photographer Dorothea Lange, pilot Amelia Earhart, and polio vaccine developer Jonas Salk. Starting to see a pattern here? These famous historical figures are all recent inductees into the California Hall of Fame.

Henry Kaiser, 20th Century industrialist and co-founder of Kaiser Permanente Health Plan, will be officially inducted into the California Hall of Fame (launched in 2006) in December.  This will be Kaiser’s eighth inclusion in lists of hall-of-fame honorees, including the U.S. Labor Hall of Fame in Washington, D.C., where he was honored in 1990.

California Gov. Arnold Swartzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver announced the 2009 list of honorees this fall. They are (alphabetically): entertainer Carol Burnett, former Intel CEO Andrew Grove, governor and U.S. senator Hiram Johnson (19th Century), decathlete and philanthropist Rafer Johnson, Henry Kaiser, philanthropist and peace activist Joan Kroc, filmmaker George Lucas, football commentator John Madden, gay rights advocate Harvey Milk, artist Fritz Scholder, author Danielle Steel, fitness and bodybuilding pioneer Joe Weider, and Air Force test pilot General Chuck Yeager.

Inductees

To learn more about the 2009 inductees and the 38 from previous years, go to

http://californiamuseum.org/exhibits/halloffame/inductees

Schwarzenegger said the intent of the hall of fame is to highlight the broad range of California interests by honoring trailblazers who have distinguished themselves in more than one field and “impacted the world with their overall courage, determination, and creativity.”

When Kaiser lost his bid to build the Shasta Dam, he started a cement company to provide the six million tons needed for the northern California project and quickly became the world’s largest cement producer.

Kaiser's Barge 21 on Bay Bridge construction

He played a major role in the construction of such pre-War wonders as the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River in Washington State, and the 1933-built Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge. He even built roads in Cuba and levees in Mississippi.

During World War II, Kaiser established West Coast shipyards whose workers built war ships at record-breaking speed. Kaiser employed a mix of skilled and unskilled workers that included the first women shipyard workers, as well as African-Americans, Chinese, Hispanics, and Native Americans.

Making of a health care program

Taking care of workers, many transplanted from the South and other parts of the country, entailed the creation of a health care program that placed emphasis on workers’ safety and a healthy lifestyle to avoid illness and injury. With 100,000 shipyard workers in the four Richmond, Calif. shipyards alone, the Kaiser Health Plan became the largest civilian medical care program on the Home Front of World War II.

Sidney Garfield, MD, developed and ran the medical care program, based on a prepaid, group practice model he had found successful on earlier Kaiser worker care programs. When the shipbuilding contracts evaporated at the end of the War, Kaiser and Garfield opened the health plan to the public. Eventually, union agreements kept the plan afloat and allowed it to grow to serve 8.5 million members today.

After the War, Kaiser turned to other industrial endeavors — manufacturing automobiles, homes, dishwashers, aluminum, steel, chemicals, electronics, and aeronautics.  But Kaiser always wished — and believed — that he would be best remembered for his work to provide better health care for all people.

In the decade before his death in 1967, Kaiser often said:

“Of all the things I’ve done, I expect only to be remembered for . . .  filling the people’s greatest need — good health.”

– Ginny McPartland

Kaiser Permanente Historian Tom Debley will be interviewed Tuesday, Dec. 1, on Capitol Public Radio (KXJZ 90.9 FM) about Henry Kaiser’s legacy and his induction into the California Hall of Fame. The interview will air on Insight with Jeffrey Callison from 10:05  to 11:18 a.m.  For more information:

http://capradio.org/programs/insight

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