Santa Ana’s Spirited Past

Santa Ana’s rich heritage--a colorful quilt of Confederate and Union soldiers, railroad workers, stubborn ranchers and marauding bandits--stirred to life Saturday in a serene setting, the Fairhaven Memorial Park and the Santa Ana Cemetery.

The Santa Ana Historical Preservation Society presented its second annual Historical Cemetery Tour, complete with a horse-drawn buggy, an old-time fire engine and costumed actors playing the parts of plucky pioneers. The two-hour tour included a visit to the chamber where the voice of God was recorded, as well as accounts of the state’s first flight, its last lynching and an abortion controversy.

“There is so much history right here in Santa Ana,” said Jo Ann Ramirez, an officer of the group. “There is a yearning to know what’s going on, what came before you. And this is a way of promoting the good side of Santa Ana.”

More than 300 people strolled through the cemeteries Saturday, learning how a fire in 1885 destroyed the garments and headquarters of the newly organized volunteer fire department, how the women’s suffrage movement took on steam in the Southland and how Julius Reinhaus beat the competition by shipping in dry goods from the East Coast instead of Los Angeles.

Rose Lee Horning was enchanted with the skits.

“It’s so thoughtfully done, and there is so much background. It is entertaining for those who are casually interested, and even those with more in-depth knowledge,” Horning said. “These stories are so lively. So dramatic.”

So much nostalgia. Horning’s father, Ray Moose, was an ear, nose and throat specialist in San Bernardino. He died a decade ago, at 96. But years ago, his office was near the turning circle for the Santa Fe railroad--a catalyst for development in Southern California.

“I wish they were still alive,” Horning said of her parents. “They probably would have known some of these people.”

Figures presented included John Rankin, who--until he was 97--would go every day to his dry goods store, at the corner of 4th and Sycamore streets. That corner was also the spot of California’s last public hanging.

Francisco Torres was lynched in July 1892 after he allegedly killed the foreman of the Helena Modjeska ranch, where he worked. The foreman deducted an extra $2.50 from his paycheck, and Torres apparently didn’t realize the money was for a new county tax to--you guessed it--build roads.

And then there was Dr. Willela Earhart Howe-Waffle, who carried a Colt .45 and a dagger with her on emergency calls, delivering babies.

Her first husband, Dr. Alvin Howe, was indicted for allegedly performing an abortion. Although Howe, the second mayor of Santa Ana, was acquitted, he faced so much animosity that he left the county anyway, heading north to San Francisco.

Willela remarried, but after she died some 20 years later she was buried next to Howe in a Los Angeles cemetery. Members of the Santa Ana historical society are planning a campaign to exhume the bodies to bring them back to Orange County.

Most of the city’s pioneers, including Rankin, Charles and Ada Bowers and the McFadden brothers, are buried at the palm-studded Santa Ana Cemetery and Fairhaven Memorial Park. Fairhaven has a mausoleum built in 1916 with acoustics so stunning that Cecil B. DeMille brought Charleston Heston to the marble and granite corridors to capture the booming voice of God for “The Ten Commandments.”

Glenn Martin, who recorded California’s first flight near Main and McFadden streets in Santa Ana on Aug. 1, 1909, is interred in the mausoleum. Others buried at the cemeteries are Jenny Lasby-Tessman, who studied the sun from Mt. Wilson Observatory and taught astronomy at Santa Ana College; the singer Bonnie Raitt’s great-grandfather, who had a dairy in Orange County; and Charles Dickens’ bookbinder.

“I learn something new every time I come here,” Ramirez said.