A PHOTO HISTORY

1916 - 2009

1881 After caring for wounded sol-diers in the Civil War, Miss Clara Barton learned about the Red Cross while traveling in Europe. On May 21, 1881, she and some friends met in her home in Washington, D. C. to launch the American Red Cross. She was its first president.

1916 Twenty-five Los Angeles citizens met in Parlor F at the Alexan-dria Hotel in downtown Los An-geles on August 10 to discuss for-mation of a Red Cross chapter. A charter was granted to the new Los Angeles Chapter by the national organization in Octo-ber.

1916 The chapter’s first home was in a small, rented office at 929 S. Broadway downtown Los Angeles. It filled the chapter’s needs for the first year, but it soon became apparent that the growing chapter required more space.

1917 More space in which to organ-ize and provide community services was gained when the chapter rented larger facilities at 772 S. Hill Street, moving later to 10th and Main Streets and even later to Patriotic Hall.

1917 The beginning of World War I presented the chapter with its first challenge, raising suffi-cient funds to equip both a Navy and an Army base hospi-tal and then recruit doctors and nurses to staff the facili-ties.

1917 Nurses were recruited from the California Lutheran and Good Samaritan hospitals. A young nurse graduate from the latter, Grace Williams, became one of the chapter’s first nurses. She served in France and remained a volunteer for more than 60 years.

1918 Canteen Service volunteers, 150 in all, served coffee, doughnuts, candy and fruit to soldiers as they boarded troop trains at the Southern Pacific Station and the Santa Fe De-pot.

1925 A need for transportation prompted the chapter to form a Motor Corps, staffed by vol-unteers. They drove around Los Angeles on a variety of missions, such as delivering food and drink to volunteer work sites, transporting volun-teers to their volunteer jobs and driving veterans from Vet-erans Administration hospitals to recreational activities.

1933 After responding to its first two major disasters, the 1925 Santa Barbara Earthquake and 1928 St. Francis Dam break, the chapter was ready when the 6.4 magnitude earthquake, com-monly known as the Long Beach Earthquake, struck Southern California.

1933 The governor declared the Red Cross to be the official disaster agency, and the chapter pro-vided nurses, first aid stations, feeding and sleeping camps for those affected by the Long Beach Earthquake.

1935 With the purchase of a large house at 1218 Menlo Avenue, the chapter established its first permanent headquarters. Ser-vices provided from the new fa-cility were briefly interrupted when a fire in the building in the late 1930s caused $40,000 in damages.

1935 The Gray Ladies Unit was es-tablished and served until the 1970s, volunteering at the VA hospital in West Los Angeles to provide personal and recrea-tional services for hospitalized veterans. Gray Ladies also served at other hospitals, such as Orthopedic and Rancho Los Amigos hospitals.

Late 1930s Volunteers in the chapter’s Production Department worked long hours to make surgical dressings and gar-ments for the civilian victims of World War II already under-way in Europe.

1940s After the United States entered World War II, the Production Department stepped up its work to begin making millions of surgical dressings for the wounded and continued this activity until the war ended in 1945.

1941 The nation’s entry into World War II required the Los Ange-les Chapter to grow rapidly to meet the needs of a nation at war. The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, long lines formed outside chapter head-quarters as thousands signed up to volunteer their services. There were some 15,000 active volunteers during the war years.

1941 Bowen McCoy became the chapter’s first manager. He was already an experienced Red Cross administrator with 17 years of service and contin-ued to manage the chapter un-til his death in 1972. There were two brief interruptions in his service as the national or-ganization requested his ser-vices to supervise Red Cross activities overseas.

1942 Work was completed on the hastily-built chapter head-quarters built at 1200 S. Ver-mont Ave., across the street from the Menlo Ave. chapter house, to accommodate the burgeoning war relief activi-ties of the chapter. It was meant to be a temporary home, but it served as the chapter headquarters until 1981.

1942 The Los Angeles Chapter joined with other chapters na-tionwide in establishing a blood collection program to provide plasma for the war wounded. A donor center was opened January 20 in a former grocery market at 925 S. West-ern Ave.

1940s Southern Californians re-sponded to the call for blood donors as one way they could help their loved ones fighting in the war. During the war, the American Red Cross col-lected 13.3 millions bottles of blood nationwide.