Why we got a street named after Frank Stoney

The boys in 342 came from socioeconomic backgrounds ranging from very wealthy to needy, with almost all of us in between. In my time the sons of Roy P. and Josephine Crocker were members. Roy Crocker was CEO of the original Lincoln Savings & Loan. Their names are attached to buildings and endowed chairs at USC, Stanford, Claremont McKenna, and other colleges and universities to which they donated millions. Then there were a few boys from families that were just coping. It was part of 342’s DNA to include them, waive fees, and provide them with uniforms and camping equipment. The scout house had closets full of the stuff. I suspect these boys were quietly referred to 342 through an informal network based in schools and churches. I was asked to mentor one of them.

Trips

Monthly weekend camping trips tended to go to the same spots year after year: Thousand Palms Oasis, with a swim on the way back in pools fed by hot springs; Carpinteria Beach, where newbies soon learned to keep their feet away from patches of tar oozing out of the sand; Calico ghost town before it became a tourist attraction; snow camp in the San Bernardino Mountains; and various campgrounds in the San Gabriel and San Jacinto mountains. 

Three-day weekends allowed for more distant destinations: backpacking through the open Jeffrey pine forest on the Kern Plateau in the southern Sierra; a site on the Colorado River downstream from Parker Dam where we set out our sleeping bags amid dense thickets of tall arrowweed; and an ocean beach 40 miles south of the border near a village called La Misión — that trip included an afternoon excursion to Ensenada.

Learning about guns was another tradition: instruction about gun safety, target practice with .22 caliber rifles at the Pasadena armory and an outdoor firing range in the mountains, and more instruction about gun safety. This was valuable experience.  

The highlight of the year was a week-long summer camp at Aspen Hollow near Hume Lake in Sequoia National Forest (see the map at the bottom of the page). There were no buildings or other facilities at the site, only piped water. We took everything we needed with us in a stake truck and a convoy of cars that left at dawn on a Saturday in June. We stopped for lunch under a stand of valley oaks preserved in Mooney Grove Park in Visalia.

During the week, the older boys went on a five-day backpacking trip in the High Sierra and the others went swimming in the lake, took local hikes, and visited groves of giant sequoias and Boyden’s Cavern in the canyon of the Kings River, which in June was usually raging at high water.

Frank 

Although other dads went on 342 camping trips now and then, there were several stalwarts. Don O’Grady, who worked on the technical side of manufacturing, was a trip planner and organizer, but not a hiker. He loved to sit and talk with us and had a wonderful sense of humor. In the evening he might keep a little glass of bourbon at his side, hidden under a jacket or a towel. In December he supervised the Christmas tree lot. Another stalwart, C.H. “Pete” Lawrence, a tall, slim Christian Scientist, helped lead our backpacking trips and knew a lot about photography and the landscapes we visited. He worked downtown in the financial services industry.  

One of the dads, Frank Stoney (SPHS ’26), stood out because he was a natural leader and a consummate outdoorsman. He had himself joined 342 in 1920 when he was 14 and had remained active in Scouting as an adult leader. Then his own sons, Ed (SPHS ’55) and Gary (’60) joined 342. Frank had held various positions in the South Pasadena city government and by that time possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of the town. 

He also had an impressive fund of knowledge about California native plants and animals. On Scout trips I started taking along two standard guides, the 1,238-page Jepson Manual of the Flowering Plants of California (1951 edition) and George B. Sudworth’s slimmer Forest Trees of the Pacific Slope (1908). Sometimes Frank would ask to consult one or the other and it was obvious he had spent a lot of time with them.   

The invisible rattlesnake 

Among many Frank Stoney anecdotes is the one about the invisible rattlesnake. On our week-long summer backpacking trips, our usual route into the high country of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks was the Bubbs Creek Trail. The trail started at the end of Kings Canyon Road at 5,100 feet elevation.  On the first day we would hike ten miles to Junction Meadow at 8,100 feet and make camp. This time there were about 15 of us, with Pete Lawrence leading and Frank taking up the rear. 

We were about halfway up the trail when Frank sent a message up the line to stop and walk back to where he was standing. With a forked stick, he was holding down a great big rattlesnake. Frank rarely lectured us — he taught by example — but this time we got a talking-to about being observant. The snake had been partially hidden under a rock step in the trail, but most of its thick body was visible, and all of us had walked right over it. 

It was a Northern Pacific rattlesnake, not aggressive but dangerously venomous. Frank called for a shovel, cut off its head, and warned us not to touch it; the head could still bite and release its venom. At camp we roasted the body and shared the sweet meat.                                                                         

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Images (L-R): (1) A Northern Pacific rattlesnake, but not ours. (2) Switchbacks along the Bubbs Creek trail [NPS]. (3) William Keith, Kings River Canyon, 1878 [Oakland Museum of California]. Like most of Keith's work this painting, which measures 6 by 10 feet, expresses emotion rather than topographical facts. Keith (1838-1911) was a fellow Scot and a close friend of Muir. Mount Keith, a 13,982-foot peak on the Sierra Nevada crest, is named for him; snow-melt from its West-facing slopes flows into Bubbs Creek and then into the Kings. (4) A satellite image of Junction Meadow in mid-summer, its grass-like plants turning brown, Bubbs Creek running through it.  

The wrangler 

Frank was strict but fair. I think I saw him get angry only once. This was on the same Bubbs Creek trail at the start of a more ambitious backpacking trip for which we had hired a couple of pack mules with a wrangler on horseback. The wrangler and his animals made much better time than we hikers did and because of a late start it was almost dark as we approached our usual camping spot in Junction Meadow.   

We saw flames and sparks flying high in the air. A forest fire? Lightning often caused wildfires in the Sierra, but there hadn’t been any lightning or thunder that day. We got to the edge of the big meadow and saw what was going on. A snag, a standing dead tree, was on fire. The wrangler was pretty drunk. He told us he set the fire to warm himself and it got out of control, but it was more likely he just wanted some entertainment. Frank told us to stand back while he talked to the man alone.

A chastised Mr. Wrangler carried his bedroll to a far corner of the meadow where he had tied his animals. The flames were subsiding, but Frank appointed a couple boys to find our canvas pails and splash water on the snag, and a couple others to look for places in the forest where firebrands may have caused spot fires. No more was said about the incident, but Frank would inform the next park ranger he saw as well as the manager of the pack station. Fire was taken very seriously in the mountains.

Frank’s fairness 

Frank Stoney was a leader in the local Baptist church and was guided by his Christian faith. My respect for him was reinforced by something that happened when I must have been 15 years old. Sunday mornings on our camping trips always included a simple church service that took around half an hour. This consisted of sitting in a circle, singing a Christian hymn or two, reciting a Christian prayer, and listening to verses of the New Testament. All the boys were expected to attend, and they were fetched if they failed to show up.   

These services made me uncomfortable. My younger brother Tom and I weren’t raised in any church, although our parents both came from nominally Christian traditions. They encouraged us to study religion, talk with them about it, and make up our own minds. I believed in God but was not a Christian.   

I explained this to Frank and told him I would attend the services but sit quietly outside the circle. He gave me a nod, and later I saw him exchanging a few words with boys who questioned the arrangement. (I could have told him, but didn’t, that a young John Muir, who was steeped in the Bible, was asked to teach Sunday school but instead offered lessons in botany as a means of understanding creation.)  

It may seem odd that I give this as an example of Frank’s fairness, but in the 1950s there was less tolerance for being different. 

Stoney Drive, the street named after Frank Stoney, runs through South Pasadena's section of the Arroyo Seco, a canyon and seasonal river that extends 25 miles from its headwaters at 5,200 feet elevation in the San Gabriel Mountains to its confluence with the Los Angeles River near Downtown L.A. (see the maps below). From there the river flows to the ocean through a wide concrete flood control channel.

In 1922, when South Pasadena had fewer than 8,000 residents, its voters approved a $100,000 bond measure to acquire 100 acres of the Arroyo for a city park. More acreage was added over the next few years. The Arroyo was still semi-natural with a free-flowing stream and vestiges of riparian forest. In 1926 the city allowed the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and Camp Fire Girls to build their own cabins on Arroyo land formerly occupied by a dairy farm. The Boy Scouts' site was called Camp Sigler (photo below).

Arroyo Seco means dry stream in Spanish, but every few years winter storms cause torrential flooding. For flood control, starting in the 1930s, the Arroyo stream was channelized, then its bottom was paved. The Arroyo Seco Parkway was built in 1938, and eventually almost all the flat land in South Pasadena's small section of the Arroyo was taken up by a golf course and sports fields, with a three-acre nature park at its southwestern tip. 

Nature can be brought back in such places in ways that accommodate a range of needs, including flood control, water conservation, wildlife habitat, and active recreation. Studies have been done and plans have been made for restoring the natural environment all along the Arroyo Seco, including in South Pasadena, but with few exceptions not much has happened on the ground. 

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Notes: These are good sources of information: Arroyo Seco Watershed Assessment (2011), Arroyo Seco Watershed Ecosystem Restoration Study (2011), Website of the Arroyo Seco Foundation. 

Images (L-R), first row: (1) Northern part of Arroyo Park with Stoney Drive marked in yellow. The South Pasadena/Los Angeles city boundary is the red dotted line. (2) Satellite view of Arroyo Park. From top to bottom: Stables, baseball diamonds, golf course, nature park. The S.P./L.A./Pasadena boundaries are white dotted lines. (3) Sections of the Arroyo Seco watershed with South Pasadena's small part in orange. 

Second row: (4) Camp Sigler in 1928 [South Pasadena Public Library]. (5) A sagging railroad bridge downstream from the York Boulevard Bridge, its supporting structure washed out by the great flood of 1938 (since fixed and now used by the Metro Gold Line). (6) A 1915 map of the region; the red symbol indicates South Pasadena's location. The land to the East was mainly in agriculture, including extensive citrus groves. The mountains were protected in national forests but included substantial private in-holdings. 

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Larry and I drew up a petition asking the city council to name the street Stoney Drive. We started by visiting members of the city council and a few other local luminaries and except for one grumpy fellow had no trouble securing their support. After that it was easy for us to get more signatures. The petition was supposed to be secret, but of course there was a leak and Frank took a lot of kidding from city staff about it. City council approval happened without a hitch. There was a formal dedication at the next Scout Day in Garfield Park. Larry presented Frank with a plaque. 

I had a porcelain enamel sign made to municipal standards with the wording on the image to the right. The city put it up along with the usual street signs. Unfortunately, it was used for target practice and got full of bullet holes. We decided not to replace it because the same thing could happen again. In any case Stoney Drive was already printed on street maps. Nowadays if you enter “Stoney Drive” in Google Earth just by itself, it lands right on the mark.   

Larry had a special connection with Frank Stoney. Larry has artificial legs. When he was in the Cub Scouts, the cubmaster told his parents he couldn’t succeed in the Boy Scouts. Frank urged them to let Larry join Boy Scout Troop 342, they did, and his first 342 camping experience was summer camp at Aspen Hollow. Frank taught Larry how to swim and eventually he earned the rank of Eagle Scout. Frank and Margaret Stoney became close friends of Larry’s parents. When Frank died in 2002 at the age of 95, Larry spoke at his funeral.   

Larry earned a Ph.D. in botany from UC Irvine and taught for 40 years at Vanguard University in Costa Mesa. He has continued living in South Pasadena. In semi-retirement now, Professor Lawrence T. McHargue serves on the board and teaches part-time at Providence Christian College in Pasadena.

Thinking back at why we did it

So why did we want to get a street named after Frank Stoney? In 1958 I think it was a simple matter: Larry and I, along with many others, just wanted to thank and honor Frank, as the sign reads, for "his devotion to South Pasadena and its youth." 

Our friend Félix Gutiérrez recently expanded on that. Félix, SPHS '61, 342 alumnus, and USC emeritus professor of journalism, wrote about Helen L. Burr and Frank Stoney in parallel. Helen Burr (SPHS 1929) taught Spanish at the high school for decades; she was respected for being tough but effective. 

Félix writes, "Both grew up in South Pasadena and dedicated their lives to serving the city and people who are part of it, especially youths. Helen teaching Spanish at SPHS and advising the Bengals [an honorary service club], of which she had been a member. And Frank working in a number of capacities for the city and as a leader of Troop 342, of which he had been a member. Both have been honored and remembered in South Pasadena, Helen by a scholarship in her name at the high school that she funded and Frank by Stoney Drive going down into the Arroyo. Both were inspirational mentors to generations of South Pasadena youths, always expecting us to do our best while showing us how to do it and also having higher ambitions for us and our potential than we might have had in ourselves."

Outcomes

I went off to USC in the fall of 1957.  My mother and father had given me the fundamentals: a strong moral compass, a love of learning, an appreciation of higher culture, and freedom to find my own way. 

Looking back, I realize that Boy Scout Troop 342 did make a man out of me, as my parents wanted, and much more.

A learned a lot about leadership. I watched adult leaders of 342 deal with different kinds of people and situations and realized that those who were best at leadership had styles based on their own personalities, not from a textbook. And I found out that a shy guy like me could lead and others would follow. At first, I was amazed, then it became routine.  

The Stoney Drive project helped me understand how politics works, how an idea could become reality. It was at the grassroots level, but the principles are pretty much the same as you go higher up the ladder.

I got to know a sampling of natural places in Southern California, often returning to them several times. My favorite places were in the Sierra Nevada and the California Desert. Reading about nature and experiencing it reinforced each other.

My parents made lasting friendships through 342. Dad and Pete Lawrence were close friends for decades. My mother was friends with Frank Stoney’s wife, Margaret, and Larry McHargue’s mother, Ila. Mom taught math at the junior high for many years and would pass on to my brother Tom and me and our Dad what she heard about 342 from her students.

Tom, seven years younger than I, joined 342. He made Eagle Scout, which I never did.

Going to 342 summer camp at Aspen Hollow year after year led to my family becoming strongly attached to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and the country around it.

Dad bought ten acres along Kings Canyon Road 15 miles from the entrance kiosk to the national parks. It was grassy oak and buckeye woodland at about 2,200 feet elevation. We called it the Trapezoid T based on its shape. We held it for 50 years but rarely stayed there because it was too hot in summer and too cold in winter, and after a few years its only structure, a flimsy cabin, collapsed in a windstorm. Spring wildflowers can be spectacular in open country at that elevation, and our land was one of the few accessible patches where cattle didn’t graze on them. For many years Larry McHargue took his botany students there.

A botanical false start

At USC, I started as a botany major and soon found I didn’t fit in. It didn’t help that I corrected an instructor when he took our class to a park across the street to learn skills of plant identification. This involved “keying out” a specimen using a printed list of characteristics. He had us form a circle around a tree and went down the list. Finally, he announced the key indicated the tree was a yew. I made the mistake of correcting him. It was not a yew, I said out loud, but a coast redwood, and rattled off the scientific name, Sequoia sempervirens. I was right, of course, and he didn’t appreciate it. 

The real problem, though, was that I was a lot less interested in the parts of plants than in the bigger picture, the interconnectedness John Muir wrote about. This included people and politics.   

I graduated with a major in international relations and a minor in English. My website, www.trzyna.info, covers some of what came later. I would eventually return to nature conservation and combine it with what I learned and experienced in international affairs.  

A coincidence?

For a while, into the late 1950s, a few of us in the same cohort of 342 alumni hung out together. Once we hiked to the top of Mount Whitney. Another time we drove around Baja California. And when three of us went back to hike the Bubbs Creek Trail, as we had done several times as Scouts, something happened that was an odd coincidence, or maybe not. 

We stopped to make camp about halfway to Junction Meadow because it was getting dark. In the morning we took our time making a small fire and boiling water for coffee. I saw two figures descending the trail and as they got closer, I realized they were Frank Stoney and his son Ed. I asked Frank what the chances were of that happening, and he just laughed. He wasn’t a sentimental guy, or at least he didn’t like to show it. 

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I much appreciate comments on earlier versions of this essay from Larry McHargue, Félix Gutiérrez, and Tom Trzyna, but the usual caveat applies: I am solely responsible for the content.