Alice Elizabeth Hodge

Alice Elizabeth Hodge, daughter of Arthur Judson Hodge and Jennie Esther Atwood and a twin of Marian Agnes Hodge, was born 3 July 1913 in Pasadena, Los Angeles County, CA. She and Marian were the younger pair of A.J. and Jennie’s four children, their siblings Esther Louise Hodge and Arthur Oscar Atwood Hodge being quite a bit older. Unlike those two siblings, Alice and Marian did not really get to know their hometown of Pasadena, where the Jacob S. Hodge family had settled in 1887 during that community’s pioneer days. The twins were only two years old when the family moved to Long Beach and lived on a boat in San Pedro Harbor, and then briefly resided in Torrance, the site of their father’s new job with Union Tool (later to become National Supply Company). In 1917, the family moved onto a three-acre parcel A.J. and Jennie had purchased along the Pacific Coast Highway in Lomita, Los Angeles County, CA. This “personal paradise” estate was the milieu Alice knew through most of her childhood. In addition to the family home, the property contained a huge garden, an ornamental pond/swimming pool, a tennis court, orchards, and much more. Her parents would live out the rest of their long lives there.

In the early days of the Great Depression, at a point when A.J. Hodge was concerned he might be laid off from National Supply Company, he helped Jennie found a pottery and garden accessories shop along the edge of the three-acre parcel. Because he in fact was not laid off from his day job, it was up to the women of the household to bear the brunt of the daily operation of the shop. Alice and Marian were an integral part of the venture, not only serving as sales clerks, but taking classes in pottery art and sculpture at University of Southern California (after attending Compton Junior College) so that they could contribute original designs and finished items to the inventory. However, in her early twenties Marian gave this up in favor of becoming a wife and mother, and soon the pottery shop was sold to a Lomita couple who converted the shop into their private residence. It marked the end not only of Marian’s plans for some sort of career in art, but to all intents and purposes, Alice’s as well.

Like her brother, Alice preferred to stay single through her early and mid-twenties. In the summer of 1940, at age twenty-seven, she became engaged to Richard Edward Barton, son of Edward F. Barton and Gladys Lucille Brown. The couple remained engaged for over fifteen months, finally tying the knot 19 October 1941 in Montecito, Santa Barbara County, CA. This marked the beginning of more than twenty years together, all of it spent residing in Long Beach, Los Angeles County, CA.

Dick, born on the Fourth of July, 1916 in El Monte, Los Angeles County, CA, was three years and one day younger than Alice. Long Beach was very much his milieu, having lived there since he was a baby. About the time of his birth, his father went through a change of career. Edward F. Barton had been an engineer -- Dick and Alice thus both knew what it was like to have a father who was an engineer. But Edward chose to get into real estate investing, both for himself and as a broker. In addition, he acted as a stockbroker. Dick went through a similar course. He attended the University of Santa Clara, where he graduated as part of the Class of 1937. He then put his sciences degree to use by becoming an employee of Howard Supply Company of Long Beach, which dealt with hardware parts and machinery for the oil extraction industry. That was his employer at the time he and Alice became engaged.

When World War II ended, Dick decided to go into business with his father. For the first ten years he specialized in insurance. His father handled the bulk of the real estate side of the business, sometimes on his own, sometimes with Dick, and sometimes in tandem with partner E.V. Reed. Dick was soon on the board of directors of the Long Beach Insurance Association, and in the mid-1950s served as its president. After his year in that post was done (summer of 1956), he took a bold step and founded Richard E. Barton Company. His father was then in his mid-sixties and ready to scale back his career. The senior Barton stayed on as an active partner at first, but it was Dick’s company, as the name implies. Together father and son had a brand-new office building constructed at 936 Atlantic Avenue in Long Beach. It housed not only Richard E. Barton Company but offices and display-and-sales rooms for the California Dental Supply Company, with the second floor containing four one-bedroom apartments. The building opened for use in the summer of 1957. (Shown at right as it appeared in the real estate section of the 30 June 1957 edition of the Independent Press-Telegram.) Among the changes the founding of the company wrought was that Dick was no longer “the insurance guy,” but was fully committed to the sort of real estate-based endeavors his father had dealt with. Edward Barton’s test ventures over the previous years had proven just how well a person could do by building and selling condomiums in coastal southern California. The concept of condos was new enough that 1950s and 1960s Barton company advertisements rarely used the term condominium, instead resorting to the phrase “Own-Your-Own Apartments.” Dick brought fresh energy. Soon the Bartons, and later Dick on his own after his father passed away, accounted for the development of one upscale condo complex after another. Two examples among many were The Riviera Apartments at 1001 N. French Street in Santa Ana, which opened in 1958, and La Contessa Apartments, an eighteen-unit luxury condo building on East Second Street in Long Beach, which opened in 1966.

Alice, meanwhile, spent her days as a housewife and mother. She and Dick welcomed two children into their lives during the 1940s, one about a year after the wedding and the other after World War II was done. She had the examples of her sisters to follow and had every reason to lead a successful life, but hers did not end up being a happy tale. Alice became an alcoholic.

Alice’s troubles with her addiction were present even when the kids were small, but for religious reasons Dick was reluctant to seek a divorce. The pair remained together until the youngest child was finishing high school. Even then, they did not divorce at once, instead going through a separation of about three years. Alice moved in with her sister Marian, who in the late 1940s had moved into a home built on a lot carved out of the original three-acre Hodge parcel, and who was still residing there, having finished raising her kids, and having recently become a widow. Alice did not remain there long-term, though. She relocated to an apartment on her own across the street.

Alice did not cope with the divorce well. She became, as a cousin put it, a basket case. It would have been a blessing to her kinfolk if she had chosen to live elsewhere. Instead, Marian and Jennie (also a widow as of 1965) were near at hand to see just how poorly Alice was dealing with life. Yet Alice remained in place until some time after her mother’s death in 1972. Only then did she move to an apartment in San Diego.

Alice’s lifestyle and the long-term effects it had on her health may have been a factor in preventing her from enjoying the longevity shown by other great-grandchildren of Nathaniel Martin and Hannah Strader. She passed away 20 June 1980 in San Diego, San Diego County, CA at not quite sixty-seven years of age. She had become so alienated from others that her body was not found until several days after her death, after neighbors realized they had not seen her for a while and called someone to check on her.

Richard Edward Barton went on to marry Vera E. Nuñes, formerly the wife of George Chalmers, in 1969. Unfortunately Dick and Vera only were able to savor three years together before her untimely death in 1972 at age fifty-six. Dick appears to have remained in Long Beach throughout the decades thereafter, and passed away 24 October 2010.

Descendants of Alice Elizabeth Hodge with Richard Edward Barton

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