1920′s
TWO
Strictly From Memories
The Roaring Twenties
It was under Adjutant Fred Spiller, in 1923, that the corps began its first Junior Band. Gill Sly was appointed bandmaster, and they were a good group that would later form the nucleus of the Citadel “Silver” Band.
Each Sunday, Dart reported, the corps marched from their building and carried on a robust evangelistic efforts. The area had deteriorated somewhat, and large groups of members of the International Workers of the World (I.W.W.) harassed the community with demonstrations and parades. 
In order to stop this, the City passed an ordinance prohibiting street parades of any kind for a six month cooling off period. This closed the Army’s outdoor evangelism down as well. After the six-months the city granted permits to the Army that made possible continued use of the three sites.
A large red shield had been painted on the side of the building at one time. This shield continued to remain visible for decades. The building itself became important as a community center for the skid-row population and the Japanese community following World War II and was used as a rallying point for political demonstrations. Television pictures invariably captured the red shield during these demonstrations.
In 1924, the National Commander, Commissioner Evangeline Booth, created the Western Territory with headquarters in San Francisco. She appointed Lt. Commissioner Adam Gifford Territorial Commander. Gifford was clearly expansionistic – highly motivated to build a strong Army in the West. In 1925, it became evident to Territorial leaders, that the Southern California Division served an overly broad geographical area. It spread from Fresno in the north to include part of Arizona in the south. To remedy this, it appears that two new divisions were created, the Los Angeles-South Coast Division, and the Orange Belt Division. The Southern California name was dropped.
All of the Los Angeles Corps, including the #2 Corps on Weller Street, were transferred to the Los Angeles-South Coast Division with headquarters in Los Angeles. Lt. Colonel Clarence Boyd, who had been the divisional commander in the Southern California division, assumed command of the Los Angeles South Coast division. Staff Captain Robert Eberhardt was the Divisional Assistant, and Captain Wilfrid Higgins was the Divisional Young Peoples’ Officer. Also on the staff was Staff Captain K. Field. Commandant Ballington Rogers directed the relief department. Lt. Colonel William Gooding commanded what was called the Los Angeles District. This included a missing persons program, an employment program and all the Men’s Industrial Centers and thrift stores in Long Beach, San Diego and Los Angeles. (These programs are now called Adult Rehabilitation Centers). The names of those divisional staff members are sprinkled liberally through the corps rolls in Weller Street, and Citadel eras, later to be the Tabernacle corps. Many of their children and, presently, their grandchildren, have continued on those same rolls during more recent years.
Harold Gooding, son of Lt. Col. William Gooding, joined his parents in Los Angeles after he left the service in 1919. He immediately began building a band with some considerable success. Pictures indicate he had about 20 musicians and two flag carriers. The entire horn section was made of women players. In 1920 he led the #2 Corps band, augmented, I suspect with a few additional players, in the Army’s first participation in the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade. He continued to lead the band into the mid-twenties when Captain “Dutch” Higgins assumed the responsibility. Higgins, was the administrator of the Los Angeles Industrial and the son of the Chief of the Staff, Commissioner Edward Higgins who became the Army’s third General with the departure of Bramwell Booth.
In 1923 Gil Sly got a Junior Band started, and it wasn’t too long before they were marching to the street corner for an open-air service. Their corner was far from the senior band, and they marched out and returned with that band. A group of on-fire soldiers had a third open-air stand. They took guitars, drums, mandolins and loud voices. All of the stands were in the general area of Third and Broadway – near where Horace Watson (later a Citadel Band Bandmaster) would soon open his Jewelry Store. At a designated time as the open-air services ended, the senior band would march back to the hall and others would fall in behind. They all needed to be ready because the senior band, playing a rousing street march, never waited.
The band was used a great deal – playing for many divisional events and various parades, including the annual New Years Day Tournament of Roses.
In 1925, the No. 2 Weller Street corps moved into its new facility at 125 E. Fourth Street, between Main and Los Angeles streets, and changed its name to the Los Angeles Citadel. Major and Mrs. Herbert Carroll were the officers. He was a man with a unique personality who was very much loved. Their daughter, Herberta, beame a very active soldier of the corps, and her vibrant attractiveness made her the center piece of several parade floats and dramatic presentations. Carroll, himself, was quite an artist who decorated the facilities with murals, added chalk talks to his sermons and designed the scenery for many of the pageants.
The new building, specially designed for the corps, was a two-story structure that seemed very roomy for its soldiers. The hall was on the main floor with a too small platform. Band and songster rooms were located on each side of the stage. Risers were permanently installed for the band that made any other productions difficult. The female songsters sat facing the audience on the far right side of the auditorium in a small box-like structure. Their seats slanted upward away from the audience. There seemed to be room for only about 20 songsters maximum. The male songsters would leave the band and stand behind the women. The auditorium itself seated a few more than two hundred people in wooden theater type seats. A wide emergency exit with double doors opened on a small walkway down the west side of the building.
A dark, dingy, and smelly alley provided access to a small parking lot at the rear of the building with only sufficient room for four or five cars.
A large “youth hall” – called the “Evangeline Room” was located on the right of the entry with windows providing a view of Fourth Street. Upstairs was a kitchen and a gymnasium. While it was of a dimension considerably smaller than a full size court and provided almost not room for spectators, it was the scene of many “wild” basketball games – some of which were informal and even took place very quietly during the sermon.
The band and songsters flourished. Captain “Eddie” Taylor was the bandmaster now and continued building the band. It now had about 35 members. The songsters had 25-30 singers. These groups were clearly the nucleus of the corps program.
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At the outset of the twenties, the Pasadena corps occupied a store-front building on Raymond Avenue – located just north of Colorado Blvd. and one block east of Fair Oaks. Open-air evangelism continued to be a significant part of the corps’ program in the late teens and early twenties. Three memorable names grew out of those open-air services at Fair Oaks and Colorado around this time: Sparks, Newbould, and Crusberg. These names and the following generation have contributed much to the Army in the West through the years.
Bandmaster Little used to take his small aggregation down to the corner of Fair Oaks and Colorado Blvd. on Sunday evenings – usually accompanied by a drum, beat ferociously by Mr. May, a guitar, several soldiers and an officer – hopefully musical – possibly even playing a concertina.
With Gifford’s expansionism in full flower, the Pasadena corps was transferred to the Orange Belt Division in 1925 and became the Divisional headquarters. Adjutant David Boyd was assigned as Divisional Commander. He had no assistant, but Ensign Lloyd Docter completed the staff as the Divisional Young Peoples’ Secretary. Tragedy struck the Docter household on January 8, 1926 when the 18 month old son of Lloyd and Violet Docter, Wilfrid Barnard Docter, inhaled poisonous fumes from cleaning fluid left unattended by a neighbor. Walking just a step or two behind his mother up through the court of small cottages in which they lived, he spied the pan of clear fluid on the neighbor’s back step, bent over to look at it and collapsed. They tried to revive him and rushed him to a hospital whose emergency room was closed, but all their efforts failed.
In 1927, Brigadiers Samuel and Emily Bradley (grandparents of Major Steve Bradley) were appointed divisional leaders of the Orange Belt Division. Both he and his wife were commissioned directly to the field from soldiership in Canada. They began work to make a permanent contribution to the community. Their divisional headquarters was located on the second floor of the Boston Building.
In early 1928, when Captain Ruth Cox led the corps, the band and the soldiers, with flags flying, drum beating, and horns navigating a march, a woman driver plowed into the back end of the marchers and, tragically, killed Mrs. Cameron, a soldier of the corps. The entire corps grieved this loss, promoted their comrade to Glory, and never stopped having open-air services.
As the 1920s decade began to fade into history, the Pasadena Corps, now a divisional center, began to plan for the purchase and construction of additional property. An excellent location was discovered at the intersection of Fair Oaks Avenue and Walnut Streets. Ground was broken with help from a large crowd, and construction began on the eve of the nation’s worst depression.
In June of 1930, Pasadena community leaders placed the cornerstone into the nearly completed wall of the building. That same cornerstone can now be seen on the inside wall under the stained glass crest at the rear of the Tabernacle auditorium.
Construction was completed in early September of 1930. The architect, Cyril Bennett, also a member of the advisory board, designed what the War Cry later described as “the most beautiful and the best equipped Salvation Army building in the Western Territory.” The Territorial Commander, Commissioner Gifford dedicated the building to the “honor and glory of God and for the good of humanity” before a capacity audience in the “spacious auditorium.” More than 150 people were turned away from the service of dedication. A number of political figures and important advisory board members were present in the service, chaired by Mr. W. H. Holland, a Juvenile and Charity Commissioner for Los Angeles County and an active member of the Pasadena Advisory Board.
The War Cry reported that “for one-half hour preceeding the actual progam the excellent Los Angeles No. 2 Corps “Silver” Band, under the baton of Captain Edwin Taylor, rendered an excellent musical program.”
Adjutant Lorenzen, father of the well known Major Henry Lorenzen, read a statement “setting forth the cost of the magnificent enterprise.” He announced that the entire two-story facility, auditorium, kitchen, offices and gymnasium cost $90,500, and that only $7,000 remained to be raised.
With completion of the new headquarters and corps building, Bradley retired from active officership after 43 years of service. The War Cry gave the story of their retirement an entire page.
“And now the Brigadier, his snow-white hair glistening in the light, his eyes as keen as at any time during his career, stood before us, a man of whom it might well be said: ‘He has done his work nobly.’ The Brigadier bade farewell to his troops and paid tribute to those who had assisted him. He steps aside from active service with the determination to fill his place in The Army until God shall call him home.”
Gifford later installed Brigadier James Dee as the new Divisional Commander for the Orange Belt Division.