It was before the heyday of the glamorous casino (built in 1929), but Santa Catalina Island already had a reputation as "an island of romance" when my maternal grandparents, Edith Ott Muncey and Frederick Bingham Muncey made a honeymoon visit there in 1924.

It's a trip that I had heard mentioned by my grandmother several times but when I interviewed her in 1981 it was the first time she'd given me all of the details.

Edie and Fred were married on November 1, 1924 in the rectory of Mission Dolores in San Francisco. My grandmother wore a red, sequined silk-like dress at her wedding in typical flapper-style dress of the time.

"After the service we had our honeymoon supper at Tates-at-the-Beach in San Francisco and then we drove down to Santa Cruz that evening. We had a model T. Ford and it took us about three hours to motor down to Santa Cruz. From there, the next day we drove all the way down to LA."

Using Los Angeles as a home base they spent a few days touring around locally and as my grandma said, "Of course, we had wanted to go down to Catalina."

On November 4, they boarded one of the big steamers, probably at San Pedro.

"We left the dock early in the morning and reached Avalon around noon. We weren't planning to stay overnight but were just going over for a one-day excursion. The crossing was very rough; not rainy, but windy and stormy out and a lot of turbulence. There was an orchestra on board. Boy, were they terrific!

Your grandfather and I were the only ones that did not get seasick. We were up on the deck dancing the whole way. Everyone else was downstairs in the bathrooms. There were no drinks; remember, honey, this was Prohibition."

According to my grandmother, the band on board played popular songs of the era like “Avalon”, “Who’s Sorry Now”, “Whispering”, and “The Rose Room." They played mostly all two-step numbers like the Rose Room. That was our favorite-- absolutely. They played all the songs that I fell in love with your grandfather to."  (They had originally met at a dance in San Francisco.)

They arrived in Avalon around noon with the weather there clear and pleasant. "We walked around the town for awhile and had a good meal at some little restaurant in the town. We watched the divers down in the water at the harbor and went on the glass bottom boat. By late afternoon it was time to go back to the mainland." When I asked my grandmother if she had any photographs of the trip she replied, "No, honey, we didn't take pictures. We were too poor to own a camera."

All in all, the honeymooners had a pleasant excursion to Catalina and back. "It was a short visit, but it's one of the nicest memories from my past," my grandmother reminisced.

Denise K. Fourie, granddaughter of Edie Muncey

 

"Our family's memories of Santa Catalina Island go back more than seventy years:  my father first visited the Island as a Sea Scout in the Thirties and my mother worked several summers for the phone company in Avalon in the late Forties.  They honeymooned on a boat in Avalon Bay in the early Fifties and began taking me and my sister there in the late Fifties;  in the Sixties, after my brother was born, the whole family spent weeks at a time boating around the Island, with several weekdays moored in Avalon Bay a feature of the cruise.

 In the late Fifties and early Sixties Avalon seemed to be a sleepier place than today.  I can remember going ashore to find Crescent Avenue quiet and lazy;  then, when the steamer arrived to the sound of Mariachi music, the town exploded as tourists filled the streets.  And again, at day's end, when the steamer left, the town again became quiet, with only residents, yachtsmen and hotel visitors enjoying the dusk and dark.

 Starting in the late Seventies my parents spent anywhere from a week to four weeks in Avalon, first in homes on the Flats and later in a home up on Maiden Lane above El Encanto.  My wife first became an Island visitor at that time, and my sister's children, born in the Eighties, have grown up with Avalon as a summertime backdrop to their lives.  My father passed away in 1989;  my mother is still living but rarely visits.  Yet my sister, her children and my brother try to get back to Avalon every year, as I do.

 There are so many memories:  watching the seaplanes and the big Sikorski flying boat taxiing across Avalon Bay;  going to the Casino Theater for a movie and hearing the organ serenade us before the film, finishing up with "Avalon;"  enjoying weekends up the Island at Cabrillo Cove near Little Gibraltar Point or in Emerald Bay west of the Isthmus when I was a Sea Scout myself.  But a great memory was a dinner up on Maiden Lane where John and Jeannie Windle and Doctor Staff and his wife--all gone now--sat for hours on a late August evening and reminisced about their histories on the Island. 

Santa Catalina Island is so much a part of our family's lives, and now for thee generations.  How wonderful it is that the Museum and the Conservancy work so hard to preserve the history of this special place."

 Chris Ericksen, Long Beach, California