John Jewett Garland

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My father, John Jewett Garland, was born April 20, 1902, in Los Angeles, California, the second son of William May and Blanche Hinman Garland. He was born in his family's home at 815 West Adams Boulevard, in a house that had only been finished the previous year. The West Adams area was the newest and finest neighborhood on the outskirts of town. Water still came to the district through an open ditch "La Zanja" that ran down Figueroa Street, one block away. It would not have seemed terribly civilized by eastern standards, but it was very up to date for the Southern Californians.

John "Jack" at 8 months	Jack and Marshall in 1906	En route to Dunkirk, New York

He made his first trip cross-country at the age of three months, traveling with his parents and brother Marshall on the Santa Fe Railroad to Dunkirk, New York to visit his Hinman grandparents. After a week there, the group headed to Kisco, Maine, by way of New York City and Boston, to vacation for a month along with his aunt Rose Garland, a friend of hers, Miss Booth, and his mother's cousin, Adele Miller Clifton. Following another month in Dunkirk, and two weeks at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York, and another month in Dunkirk, the family returned home to Los Angeles in November!

These trips to Dunkirk probably ended after Grandfather Marshall Hinman's death in 1907. Their grandmother Hinman moved to Los Angeles and died there the following year.

Jack was educated at the local grammar school, Norwood, which he used to tell us was one of the toughest schools in Los Angeles. He spent his last year at the Urban Military Academy as a special student, in order to pass the entrance exams for the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut. After four years there, he continued with many of his classmates to Yale University, where he graduated in 1925 with a Bachelor of Science degree from Sheffield, the scientific college. His tales of prep school and college life were always a source of amusement to my brother and me. He obviously had had a very good time at school and made many friends. He managed to stay close to many of these friends, even though he lived the rest of his life in Southern California. A great many of these friends had been members of his club, St. Elmo, which his son Bill would also join.

John Jewett Garland, Hotchkiss School photo

After college he went to work for his father at the W. M. Garland Company as a realtor. The company was involved in a considerable amount of property management in the downtown area. My father always said that the only mistake his father ever made in business was constructing his office building at Ninth and Spring instead of in the Wilshire area. Growth in Los Angeles went to the west, rather than to the south, and it is only now heading south again, long after the garment district has taken over the area.

Jack Garland married Helen Chandler, the daughter of Harry and Marian (Otis) Chandler, on December 29, 1933 at Saint John's Episcopal Church on West Adams Boulevard. He insisted that Helen be baptized before their wedding.

Engagement Announcement	Bride-elect	Wedding Article	Wedding Photo

The Garlands were instrumental in building the Romanesque structure that still stands today surrounded by a vastly different neighborhood. There are amusing stories of the Garlands and their visiting relatives all stopping at the house at 815 West Adams for a glass or two of champagne before going to what they knew would be a dry reception at the Chandler's house at 2224 Hillhurst in the Los Feliz area. The fact that it was Prohibition didn't make much difference to the Garlands. It was a small wedding with only my father's brother, Marshall Garland, and my mother's niece, Camilla Chandler as attendants. My grandfather's cousins, Dick Schweppe, and Dick's brother-in-law, James Rathwell Page, Jack Mitchell and Clarence Mitchell seem to be the Jewett relatives present. My grandfather had only his sister, Rose Garland, to represent the Garlands. The young couple then left on a wedding trip of two months, to tour the Mediterranean, the Holy Land and Egypt. One of the treasures they brought home with them was a blue bottle of water from the river Jordan, which was used for the baptisms of their children and their four Babcock grandchildren.

My parents lived in three different houses in the Los Feliz area, which belonged to my grandmother, Marian Otis Chandler, and were rented by my parents. I, Gwendolyn Chandler Garland, was born on April 2, 1935 at the Hospital of the Good Samaritan, and my brother, William May Garland II, was born fourteen months later on June 25, 1936. By 1940 my mother was getting tired of living in rentals; her family increasingly was moving east from Los Angeles to the Pasadena-San Marino area. She wanted to be with them, so in 1940 we moved to 1999 Oak Knoll Avenue in San Marino, a big, pretty Monterey Colonial with over an acre and a half of land for us to play on.

Gwen, Jack and Bill Garland at 2349 Nottingham	1999 Oak Knoll

Bill and I attended the Children's House Nursery School on South Euclid in Pasadena, a Montessori institution which we always called Mrs. Davies'. I believe that she was the owner. After two years there, we were sent to the Stoneman School, San Marino's public school. Bill started in the first grade, and I started in the second. Within two weeks I came down with a virulent illness, which later was proven to be polio. Thus ended my public school career...and changed many aspects of our lives.

After three weeks of quarantine in the house, I was taken to the Children's Hospital in Los Angeles, where I spent nine months undergoing the Sister Kenny treatment of hot packs and physical therapy for polio. My parents visited me faithfully every day, after obtaining hardship gasoline rationing stamps to fuel my mother's gas guzzling 1942 Cadillac, the first Hydramatic or automatic shift model on the market. Bill must have had a lonely year. Nanny, the nurse who had cared for us in a mildly sadistic fashion, had left to do war work. My mother, after the departure of the cook, had to learn to cook. My father had to give up any thoughts of obtaining a commission in the Navy. I returned home in June of 1943, and spent the next six months catching up on my missed schoolwork with a teacher sent from the San Marino School district.

Jack and his father William May Garland in 1945

After the war ended my parents started traveling with my Garland grandparents on various International Olympic Committee trips. My father attended the 1948 Olympic Games in London alone, since my mother had to stay home with me while I recovered from reconstructive surgery. After the death of his father on September 30, 1948, Jack was elected as a member of the IOC. This was to give him twenty years of great pleasure. He loved the travel, the camaraderie of the Olympic family and the excitement of the politics that went along with any international endeavor. My childhood memories of listening to my father recount stories at the dinner table are always full of both the Olympic Games and the Republican party.

Jack was a delegate to the Republican National Conventions in 1944, 1948, 1952, 1956, and 1960, representing favorite sons, Earl Warren and Richard Nixon. He was one of a small local committee who selected Richard Nixon as a candidate for our congressional district in 1946. They became friends and my father was pleased to see Dick Nixon elected to the presidency in 1968. He and my mother made plans to attend the inaugural in January of 1969, but both died before the end of the year.

Another of Jack's loves was wine. He studied a great deal about wine, and brought both knowledge and enthusiasm to the table.

In 1952, while we were on our first family trip abroad and after we had attended the Olympic Games in Helsinki, my father made a side trip to Bordeaux, where he made arrangements to buy into Chateau Lascombes, which was to be run by Alexis Lichine, the well known wine connoisseur. This proved to be a wonderful investment for us all, paying dividends in cases of the wonderful wine produced there, and giving us a spot to visit on several later trips to France. All of these hobbies were duly chronicled first in black and white photographs, and then later in Stereo Realist slides, Polaroids, or Minox prints. My father always arrived with huge collections of photographs, many of them featuring himself with some celebrity or another. My mother referred to him as a lens louse, but this didn't deter him even slightly!

Helen, Jack & Gwen - 1953	Jack and granddaughters Annie, Susan & Sarah Babcock - 1967	Richard Nixon and Jack Garland - 1968
Jack & Helen Garland and Pope Pius XII	Jack & Helen Garland and Pope John XXIII	Bill, Gwen, Helen & Jack Garland - 1959

My father also served as a wine judge of the Los Angeles County Fair for several years, producing more wonderful stories for the dinner table. He belonged to several wine and food groups, the most colorful of which was the Chevaliers du Tastevin.

Bill, Louise, Helen and Jack Garland	Jack & grandson Billy	Jack & granddaughter Hilary

Jack and Helen both died in 1968, soon after returning from the Olympic Games in Mexico City. Jack succumbed to an abdominal embolism on November 30th and Helen to cancer of the pancreas on December 27th. They had lived to see the marriages of both their children and the birth of five of their six grandchildren. John Carlile Babcock, named for his grandfather, was born July 14, 1969.

Christmas Photo - Los Angeles 1940	Christmas Photo - Finland 1952	Christmas Photo - Kenya 1956
Jack & Helen Garland with Pat & Richard Nixon	John Jewett Garland memorial tablet	Sympathy letter from Nixon