HENDERSON:
I'm interviewing Robert A. Kennard, and his lovely daughter Gail Kennard
Madyun is here. For the interview, what I'd like to start with is some
personal data and family background, so I'd like to get your full name
and when you were born, date and place.
KENNARD:
My birth name was Robert Delsarte Kennard. Delsarte was my grandmother's
maiden name on my father's side. But when I was about four years old, my
father changed my name to Robert Alexander, because he had made a pact
with one of his dear friends, whose name was Robert Louis Alexander,
when they were kids that if they had a boy they would name it after each
other. Robert Alexander never had any children, but my dad finally had a
son after having four girls.
MADYUN:
Three girls.
KENNARD:
No, four.
MADYUN:
Oh, four?
KENNARD:
One died at birth.
HENDERSON:
And your birth date?
KENNARD:
September 18, 1920.
HENDERSON:
Can you let me have your father's name and mother's name?
KENNARD:
My father's name was James Louis Kennard and my mother's name was Marie
Louise Bryan (Kennard).
HENDERSON:
Do you remember any name from your grandparents, from that generation?
KENNARD:
Yes. On my mother's side, her father was named Daniel Bryan, and her
mother's name was Mattie Bryan. On my father's side, his father was
named Perry Kennard, and his mother's name was Anna Delsarte. I don't
remember their middle names.
HENDERSON:
That's all right. And your parents or grandparents, do you know where
they moved from or where they lived before coming to California?
KENNARD:
My father was born in Lambertsville, New Jersey, but they moved around
New England a lot because my grandfather on my father's side was a
barber. You know, in those days, many black families, men particularly,
had barbershops because you didn't shave yourself. Barbershops were the
thing. They had beards and they had goatees and things like that. So
they had barbershops. I know one was in Worcester, Massachusetts. So my
father was from the New England area. He was from Lambertsville, New
Jersey, on the Delaware (River) border. My mother's parents were from
Charleston, South Carolina. Her father was a very unusual man, Dan
Bryan. He was what they call an artisan. He carved wood for
mantlepieces, very fancy carving, and he was very successful. Many years
later I visited the house that he'd built for the family in Charleston.
It happened to be on 82 Lee Street. I never will forget my mother
telling me-I visited the house when her stepmother was still living. And
all the homes in those days, there was no central heating, so they all
had fireplaces, and all the mantles were carved by my grandfather.
HENDERSON:
Were you born in California and grew up in California?
KENNARD:
I was born in Los Angeles at Forty-ninth (Street) and Central (Avenue).
Actually, I was born in the (Los Angeles) County (General) Hospital (now
Los Angeles County USC Medical Center).
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
But my family lived at Forty-ninth and Central. And since I was the
fourth of four children, the youngest-I had three sisters. When I was
about four years old my family moved to Monrovia, California, which is
about twenty-five miles east of here. We lived in Monrovia most of the
time I grew up. I was raised in Monrovia. My father had about a half
acre of land, and he raised oranges. That was not his primary
occupation.
HENDERSON:
Was he a barber out there, as well?
KENNARD:
No. He gave up barbering. When he first came out here, when he gave up
barbering his first job was-- He ran on the road (railroad). He was a
Pullman porter.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
After he and my mother got married, I believe they moved to Worcester,
Massachusetts, and he was a barber then. He took over my grandfather's
barbershop. However, when my grandfather died and he gave up the
barbering, he began running on the road. He ran from the East to Saint
Louis. So he's going back and forth to Saint Louis and-Oh, no. I'm
sorry. They moved to Westerly, Rhode Island. They moved to Westerly,
Rhode Island, and he had a barbershop in Westerly, Rhode Island. In
Westerly, Rhode Island, my oldest sister was born--Anna (Kennard-Hunt).
The barbershop business was going down, so he got a job as a Pullman
porter, and he ran on the road to Saint Louis.
HENDERSON:
From the East?
KENNARD:
From the East. He went back and forth to Saint Louis. He kind of liked
Saint Louis, so he talked my mother into moving to Saint Louis. So they
lived in Saint Louis. I'm not sure what he did in Saint Louis, but I
think he still ran on the road. And then he got transferred. He started
running on the road-- And I had a sister that was born in Saint Louis.
HENDERSON:
Oh? And what's her name?
KENNARD:
Marguerite (Kennard). She was born in Saint Louis. Then he ran on the
road to California, to Los Angeles. And going back and forth to Los
Angeles, back and forth to Los Angeles, he decided that this was really
the place of golden opportunity, so they moved to Los Angeles.
HENDERSON:
About what year was that?
KENNARD:
It had to be 1915. It had to be 1915, because Marguerite was born in
1914 in Saint Louis, and my youngest sister was born in 1916 in Los
Angeles. So it had to be then. And then I was born in 1920.
HENDERSON:
Okay. And the youngest sister's name is--?
KENNARD:
Elizabeth (Kennard King),
HENDERSON:
Elizabeth. Now, the reason I perked up when I heard Pullman porter is
that I've been finding out that a lot of the blacks that came to L.A.
came via railroading.
KENNARD:
That's right.
HENDERSON:
Because that was an industry that hired blacks and really used blacks.
KENNARD:
They worked in the dining car and as Pullman porters. And, of course,
that was the first big union; A. Philip Randolph established that. It
was the first big black labor union where he unionized the Brotherhood
of Sleeping Car Porters. My father, when he came here, he drove a
laundry truck, It was a horse and buggy. He had so many children that he
didn't want to run on the road anymore. So he got a job as a laundry
truck driver, although he was educated as a mortician in Philadelphia.
But he lost his hearing, plus he was a very jolly person, and he always
said that being a mortician was just not in his life. And he says,
because every time anybody asked, "Was business good?"-( laughter)
HENDERSON:
You don't know what to tell them.
KENNARD:
And he said it was good, but for everybody else it was bad. And to show
you what kind of person he was, his nickname was "Sunny Jim." So he was
not a person who should have been a mortician. (laughter) Anyway, he
lost his hearing; it was a pretty bad hearing loss. He needed a more
steady job, so he got a job as a custodian with the Los Angeles
(Unified) School District. It was during the Depression, and he worked
real hard. I mean, he worked two or three jobs. He worked for the county
(Los Angeles County) as a custodian. And I remember, during the
Depression he had extra jobs at night. One of the jobs he had--I never
will forget--was in an architect's office downtown. And sometimes he
would take me with him in the evening, and I'd kind of help him, and I
would empty the ashtrays and empty the wastebaskets and go around with
him and help him. By that time, I was probably eight or nine, ten years
old. And I never will forget, I was in this architectural office, and,
you know, years ago everything was done on yellow tracing papers. And I
remember they used to color the yellow trace. Right on the tracing, they
would color it. And then they would mount the tracing. All blueprinting
had to be taken up to the roof, and it was done by sunlight, you know.
HENDERSON:
Oh, I don't remember that.
KENNARD:
Oh, yeah. Before the machines. They'd take it up on the roof and they'd
put the ammonia in it. I don't know how it worked, but it would print
the thing on a blueprint. That's why the background was blue and-
HENDERSON:
And the lines were white.
KENNARD:
Yeah, the lines were white. So it would bleach it out. I don't know the
process, I had no idea of being an architect at the time, but years
later I remembered that he had this job taking care of that one office.
HENDERSON:
You've talked about your father. What do you remember about your mother?
KENNARD:
My mother was a very strong person. She had a lot of strength to carry
her through. I mean, she had a mind of her own. She used to tell us
stories about Charleston, South Carolina, and the segregation. Because
her father was pretty well-off-- He worked for a company that did wood
moldings and fancy carving. He didn't have his own business. He worked
for a company that carved wood.
HENDERSON:
These mantlepieces.
KENNARD:
Mantlepieces. It became a pretty large company. There was one floor
there that did nothing but carving of the mantlepieces. Well, her
father, Dan Bryan, was very good at what he did, and he was very
responsible. My mother tells a story that they finally promoted her
father to head of the whole floor. Now, for that to happen at the turn
of the century to a black man was incredible. And the fellow that ran
the store-- And I'm not too sure about this name, but I think his name
was Hearst. I'm not too sure about that. It just kind of sticks in my
mind. He promoted Dan Bryan the head of it, and, of course,· a lot of
the whites were just very upset. And he said, "I don't care what you
say. If you want to quit, fine, but Dan Bryan's my best man, and he's
here on time, and he's responsible, and that's what's going to happen."
And he kept him. He stayed there and worked till almost his late
seventies. He died at eighty-six. He was a very healthy person. My
mother said she never remembered him going to the doctor at all.
MADYUN:
Well, he was having children until he was in his seventies.
KENNARD:
See, he got married again. His wife died when he was forty-eight, and he
married at around fifty to a woman twenty-four, who was the same age as
my mother. He had six children by my mother's mother, and he had nine by
his second wife, whose name was Mattie, as well as his first. Both their
names were Mattie. It was really interesting. His last child was born
when he was seventy-two.
HENDERSON:
Lord have mercy.
KENNARD:
So I have an aunt and uncle that are younger than I am.
HENDERSON:
Okay. (laughter)
KENNARD:
They are. They're younger than I am. He died at eighty-six. And when he
died it was very unusual, because he was just sitting next door on a
bench talking to the guys at the service station, and somebody cracked a
joke, and in the middle of laughter, (snaps fingers) he was gone. It's a
great way to go.
HENDERSON:
That's the great way to go.
KENNARD:
He was eighty-six years old. She said she never even remembered him
being sick in his life.
HENDERSON:
Well, maybe let me ask you questions about what you remember from
growing up in Monrovia, maybe elementary school, if you remember that
far back, or junior high school.
KENNARD:
Yeah, I remember all that.
HENDERSON:
Oh. (laughter)
KENNARD:
Unfortunately.
HENDERSON:
Oh, well, let me sort through some of the memories and ask you this key
question, okay? Do you remember the first time that you knew you were
black? When the issue of race first sort of came up?
KENNARD:
Oh, I probably knew I was black when I was quite young. I moved to
Monrovia when I was four and a half, and I don't remember being in Los
Angeles, So my first recollections are things, probably, when I was
five, six years old,
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
Monrovia had a population of about twelve thousand people. About 10
percent were black, which is a heavy population for a small town.
Probably another 10 percent were Latino and maybe another 4 or 5 percent
were Asian. So the minority population was pretty large for a small
town. But the street that we lived on was the community dividing line
for the white community and the minority community. Not that some whites
didn't live in the minority community, but no blacks lived north of that
line that I knew of. But on that street, it was really mixed. We had
primarily black and white, but there were a couple of Latinos that I
remember later on. But as the blacks moved into that street, naturally,
the whites were very resentful. So we walked down the street, and they
would call you "nigger." I'm sure that-I don't remember, but I probably
asked my mother what a nigger was. (laughter) And they would sing this
song, "Nigger, nigger, nigger, pull the trigger, trigger, trigger, with
the pink coat and black shoes--" Now, they'd pick out what you wore,
HENDERSON:
Oh, my goodness.
KENNARD:
It was a song they sang. And, of course, when we got older, when we
caught them at any distance from the house, we'd beat the hell out of
them, because the blacks would get together, and sometimes the Latinos
would get together, and there would always be-- Not gang fights like you
have now; the worst thing we had was slingshots with staplers on them.
HENDERSON:
Yeah, they have Uzis now.
KENNARD:
They were little metal staplers, not the stationery staplers. Have you
seen the staplers that carpenters tack things up with?
MADYUN:
They're big, thick ones.
KENNARD:
It's a "U"-shaped stapler.
HENDERSON:
Oh, yes, yes,
KENNARD:
We'd use those, or we'd take a pin and we'd bend it. Of course, we had
very fancy slingshots, so we used the slingshots. The worst thing that
would happen is it might embed in your skin when it hit you. That's the
worst thing. And, of course, there were a lot of rock fights. And you'd
put rocks in the slingshots. Now they have, as you say, Uzis and
eveything else. (laughter) But that's the worst thing. We had little
gangs, you know.
HENDERSON:
Yeah.
KENNARD:
So the gangs, the blacks and whites, would fight. So there was a lot of
calling of "nigger" and ''poor white trash," and stuff like that. I
mean, it was a very racist community, very segregated. The theater was
segregated, the schools were segregated. The only restaurants you could
go into were ones that were owned by blacks. So it was very, very
segregated.
HENDERSON:
Was there any tie between the black community in Monrovia and the black
community in Los Angeles?
KENNARD:
Oh, yes.
HENDERSON:
Like, could you ride into the city?
KENNARD:
Oh, yeah, you would drive back and forth.
HENDERSON:
And what about trolleys?
KENNARD:
Well, they had the (Pacific Electric Railway) red car--you know, the red
car that they'd taken out and now they put back in again. Now they've
got the (Metrorail) Blue Line. My father took the red car in from
Monrovia every morning. He left around five o'clock, then he'd come back
that evening. It was an hour ride. He'd read the paper. It was a great
experience for me when he'd take me in on the red car. And on Sunday you
could ride the red car for a dollar, anywhere on the red car. And I
remember when I was about eleven or twelve he took me one whole Sunday,
and he took me all the way to Venice, Redondo Beach, and we went to the
beach, and all on the red car for a dollar. That's all it cost, because
not many people rode on Sunday. It was mostly for business people during
the week. But there was a big connection with the black community here.
And the reason why is because, with the exception of maybe one or two
white doctors--there was one, I think, that my family went to--when
there was anything serious, we came to town. We had Dr. Gerald Stovall,
who was the black doctor. You've heard of him.
HENDERSON:
I've heard of that name, yes.
KENNARD:
I know his son very well, Gerald Stovall. Dr. Stovall used to come to
Monrovia and Duarte on certain days and treat the people. He was a very
well-respected doctor. And Dr. (H. Claude) Hudson did the dental work.
So we came into town for our dentistry and we came into town for our
doctor. That way you made the connection with the black community in Los
Angeles. You got to know them and some of their children, because there
was not a whole lot of social life in Monrovia. I mean, you socialized,
you went to parties in Monrovia, but Los Angeles was where the action
was, where a lot of the girls were. So when you got to be sixteen,
seventeen, you'd get a car, and you had to come to Los Angeles.
(laughter)
HENDERSON:
Okay. So what do you remember from your school times--elementary school
or junior high school?
KENNARD:
Well, as I said, the elementary schools were segregated. All of my
sisters and myself went to Huntington Drive (Elementary) School, which
was the black elementary school. It was black, Latino, everything, all
minorities. The parents began fighting for integrated schools. There was
only one black family that lived beyond the black community, and their
name was Simons. They were caterers. They had a very good business; they
were caterers throughout the community. But they happened to live way
out. They may have moved out there before the white community got out
there. So they had to go to a school called Orange Avenue (Elementary
School), because there was no way they could get way back in town. It
was about a mile and three quarters, and that's a long way in those days
when not many people had cars. But the parents got together. They said,
''If you all live in this district, why do you have to go to this
school?" Well, it turns out that on Walnut Avenue, where I lived, the
demarcation line is down the middle of the street. So everybody on the
south was supposed to go to Huntington Drive, and everybody on the north
was supposed to go to a school called Wild Rose (Elementary) School,
Well, when my folks and some of the black families that lived on the
north found that out, we decided to challenge the school district.
HENDERSON:
And you lived on the north side?
KENNARD:
I lived on the north side. And I will say that some of the
teachers--most all the teachers were white; in fact, I think all of them
were white--were very supportive. Most of them were not very vocal, but
there was one that was very vocal. Her name, believe it or not, was Mrs.
Savage. She encouraged my family to fight, because she said, "Listen,
your children are very smart, and there's no ~eason they shouldn't be
going to a school that probably has better supplies and everything." It
was very segregated not only racially but in supplies and books and
things like that. Now, she couldn't come out against the board because
she'd lose her job, but she was in the background, very supportive of
the black parents. The thing that was so interesting about her, she was
one of the strictest teachers I've ever had. They used to tease her,
saying that "Mrs. Savage is savage." (laughter) But she was a real good
teacher. She was demanding. So my mother and father, when I was seven
years old, at the beginning of the school year, they were going to send
me to Wild Rose. So every morning my mother would pack my lunch, and I'd
walk--it was about a good three quarters of a mile, because it was the
pretty northern part of the city, but it was still in our district--to
Wild Rose school. And every day they'd send me back. That went on for
weeks. My mother would not send me to Huntingtion Drive; she just sent
me to Wild Rose.
HENDERSON:
But, now, when they sent you back, did she send you to the other school?
Or you just stayed at home?
KENNARD:
I stayed at home. She kept me out of school. I didn't go to school.
(tape recorder off) By that time, my sisters were in junior high. There
was only one junior high school and high school, so they naturally had
to go to an integrated school.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
So every day they sent me back. Up and back. And I used to ask my mother
later on in years, "Why did you subject me to this kind of stuff?" She
said, ''Because I wanted you to know the kind of world you were going to
grow up in. You might as well learn now, because don't think that you're
going to have it that easy." So finally we were going to file suit. My
dad got a lawyer, and we were going to file suit. But I think they knew
they were going to lose. And even though this was before 1954, it was a
big battle. So they finally said, "Well, I'll tell you what. We're not
going to let you go to Wild Rose," because Wild Rose was in a pretty
uppermiddle- class area, but they let me go to Orange Avenue near where
this other black family lived. They were the only black family near
there. But at least they'd concentrate all the blacks in one school. So
I started going to Orange Avenue, which was quite a ways from home. I
had a bike, and I rode my bike and stuff like that. But it was hell
because I was the only black student in my class, except for the Simons
family, and they were in this school but they were not in my class, in
my room. I had a big battle. We played soccer a lot, so some of the
racist kids, they would purposely kick you in the shins and all that
kind of stuff. It was a battle. I mean, we just fought our way up.
HENDERSON:
I'm surprised you played soccer. I would have thought football would
still have been the main thing, or baseball.
KENNARD:
Well, we did play baseball. We played football. I used to play soccer a
lot. I used to like to play soccer. And I played some baseball. I also
was very thin, so I wasn't too good at football. I'd get myself killed.
We played sandlot football, but, I mean, I never went out for it. I was
more interested in track. But I had a good family. My mother and father
were very supportive. They were very supportive about education. And we
were good students, so gradually-- I think in most cases the teachers
either treated you like everybody else or they were very nice to you. I
can remember a few teachers that we knew were prejudiced. But as I got
into high school, I remember several teachers that were extremely
supportive. See, my sisters had gone to the high school, and they were
all very good students. They all got into the California Scholarship
Society. That was the big thing then.
HENDERSON:
So they were going to college after high school?
KENNARD:
Yeah, they all could have gone to college, you know. They had very good
grade point averages. So with three Kennards who were good citizens and
worked hard and everything, by the time I got there they said, "Oh, here
comes another Kennard. They're pretty nice." And my mother and
father--always my mother, particularly--never missed an open house at
the school. She was very careful about being there, talking to the
teachers, seeing what's happening, because teachers are very responsive
if they know the parents are concerned. But it's funny when you look
back at high school and you remember the teachers. There were three
teachers, four teachers, that I remember very well, that made a
remarkable impression on me. One was an English teacher named Coblentz,
Mrs. Coblentz. She just loved literature, she just loved it. And she
encouraged me a lot to get up and speak before the students and recite
poetry and everything. And I remember every year they'd have this Mark
Twain "Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" kind of ceremony. It was a deal
where you celebrated Mark Twain. I didn't want to do it because it was a
kind of a quasisocial kind of thing, and the black students kind of
stuck together. She just insisted that I get up and do it, and she
pushed me toward it. She was very encouraging, whereas a lot of other
teachers may not, would just as soon exclude you. Then there· was
another teacher by the name of Edinger. I can't remember his first name,
but he had sons who were also in school, and he was a biology teacher.
He had a reputation of being one of the most liberal of the teachers. He
was always very nice to the black students. He bent over backwards to
help you and do things for you. Everybody liked his class, and it was a
very interesting class. I had another teacher who was my art teacher.
Her name was Edna Chess.
MADYUN:
Gee, I can't see how you can remember these names.
KENNARD:
See, that's why teachers are so important. The ones that are just
neutral were either racist or they weren't nice, so you forget them. The
other people, the people who were nice to you and supported you and had
interest in you as a person, you don't forget. Edna Chess was my art
teacher. She subscribed to a lot of books and magazines. So when she
finished them she'd say, "Come up Saturday, Bob." Because I used to love
to draw. She said, "You like art. Why don't you come to my house and
I'll give you all my old magazines." So all the magazines, art
magazines, I'd come up on a Saturday a couple of months after she had
read them, and I'd pick them up.
MADYUN:
From her house?
KENNARD:
From her house. I'd go up on Saturday, ride my bike up there, get my
books. She was very encouraging to me. Now, there was one teacher who
was a science teacher. He was a racist son of a bitch. (laughter) He
was. His name was Pfaff. You know, the science classes, they had raised
levels. The seats weren't flat in the classroom. In the chemistry and
science classes, they stepped up.
HENDERSON:
Oh, they had steps. Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
He would always put all the blacks up on the back row, because that was
the way they did it in those days. Blacks sat up in what they called the
''peanut gallery," 20 When you had segregated theaters, you either sat
on one side, or you had to sit up in the last rows of the balcony, or
you didn't get in at all. Well, of course, gradually, the people
complained, and the kids went home and told their parents, and they had
to change the rules in his class. They made them sit in alphabetical
order. That's the only way they changed it. But he was really a racist
bastard.
HENDERSON:
Do you have any friends that you remember from that period that you kept
up with or have kept up with you from those early days?
KENNARD:
I have some that kept up with me for a while, but there was one f·ellow,
aside from the black students, which I kept up with. The black students
I've always kept up with.
HENDERSON:
You mean even now there's still a few? I mean, through college they've
kept up?
KENNARD:
Not so much now. Most of them have died. One of my closest friends just
died a few years ago, Steve Powell. He moved up to Washington (State),
and I just heard that he died.
MADYUN:
Well, Al Hudson.
KENNARD:
Well, Al Hudson, Elbert Hudson, although he was the son of Dr. H. Claude
Hudson, he came to Monrovia when he was eight years old. That's how I
met the Hudsons. 21
HENDERSON:
You mean they moved out there?
KENNARD:
No, Al had asthma, and they sent him out there because Monrovia was a
very healthy climate, and they had a lot of sanatoriums out there. There
was Pottinger's Sanatorium, a very famous tubercular sanatorium. The
climate was really good. Not now it isn't, but it was very clear. It was
high; it was up near the hills. So Elbert came out there, and they had
him live with a family out there. That's how I met Elbert. And, of
course, Elbert's still a very close friend of mine. I've known him since
I was eight, and we've been close friends ever since. So a lot of the
black kids, particularly more in my sister's grade: But I still know the
Milton Simonses. I mean, I see them every once in a while, but I'm not
real close to them. We kind of scattered around the wind.
HENDERSON:
Sure.
KENNARD:
The only person I kept up with for a long time was a very good friend, a
white fellow named George Craig. George S. Craig.
MADYUN:
He was a neighbor?
KENNARD:
No, he wasn't a neighbor. He was in school. He was from an extremely
poor white family, a very nice family, and a very smart family. And
George suffered kind of the same discrimination I did, because he could
never move with the middle-class white kids. They were so poor. And I
remember he really got close to a young woman there whose father owned
the hardware store in town. He was really crazy about this girl, but the
family were very careful not to let George come around too much. George
was very smart, and he went into teaching, and I think he was either
superintendent-- The last time I heard, he was superintendent (of
schools) at Milpitas (California). But I've lost track of him. I just
don't know where he is. I'm not even sure he's alive. But he used to
come down every once in a while, and he'd come by and see Helen (King
Kennard) and I when we were married. And we kept up. We exchanged cards
for a long time, but that's a long time (ago). A lot of people are gone
now. They just dropped out.
HENDERSON:
Let me ask you one more quick question before I cut the tape off. Were
you in the armed forces?
KENNARD:
Yes.
HENDERSON:
Okay. So you served in World War II?
KENNARD:
And the Korean [War].
HENDERSON:
[United States] Army?
KENNARD:
Army, yes.
HENDERSON:
Okay. So you served in World War II? And the Korean (War). (United
States) Army? Army, yes. Okay, okay. All right.
MADYUN:
There are a lot of stories in that, too.
KENNARD:
I can tell you! Just wait till I get to that! (laughter)
HENDERSON:
I listened to the tape from last time. You talked about the elementary
school years and some of the early high school years and high school
teachers, and where I wanted to pick up was in high school.
KENNARD:
Oh, that's right. I remember. I was trying to think of where I stopped.
HENDERSON:
Where I want to pick up in high school is a takeoff of what you told The
Wave newspaper. That was-And let me read from this. It says here:
Kennard, who was born in Watts, stumbled into architecture in high
school. In the eleventh grade at Monrovia High I wanted to take an easy
elective, and a friend whose father taught mechanical drafting suggested
I take her dad's class," said Kennard. The teacher and Kennard's sister
[Anna Kennard-Hunt] told him about the noted black Los Angeles architect
Paul [R.] Williams.
So I'm very curious about when you decided to go into architecture. You
can tie that into your--
KENNARD:
Well, it was a result of that mechanical drafting class. And, as I said,
I always liked to sketch and draw. I was drawing nuts and bolts in this
mechanical drafting class,. because that's all they taught. The
teacher's name was Eller, Mr. Eller. He said, "How would 24 you like to
draw a house?" And he mentioned Paul R. Williams and asked if I knew
about him, and I said no, I did not. And that's when my sister went and
got the information about Paul Williams. Somehow she got a brochure of
his and brought it home to me. And, of course, like most of the black
architects, we were mesmerized by Paul Williams. I mean, we didn't know
any white architects, and then to see a black architect do all this
work.
HENDERSON:
And this was about what year? You were in high school when?
KENNARD:
It was my eleventh year. It was my junior year in high school.·
HENDERSON:
Okay. And that would have been about 1935 or '36?
KENNARD:
It was about '36. I was about sixteen. So I went and started looking up
houses. Instead of drawing nuts and bolts, he gave me the opportunity to
draw a house, which I thought was very nice. I mean, he was a white
teacher, but knowing about Paul Williams I thought was interesting, in
retrospect now, and equating me with that, as a person who liked to
draw, that maybe that's something I'd like to go into. Because in those
days a lot of teachers didn't encourage blacks to do anything but 25
menial work, and I thought that was pretty interesting. He was a very
nice person. He's one of the professors that I remember by name as being
very encouraging to me.
HENDERSON:
I like hearing this story, because it's very different from what I read
that Paul Williams went through himself. That is, his teacher in high
school discouraged him from being an architect.
KENNARD:
Yes, they discouraged him. I read that, too, yes. You know, Monrovia was
a small town, twelve thousand people, and I think there was probably a
little more relaxed and comfortable nature among the, quote, "liberal"
whites. I mean·, they weren't as threatened by blacks. There weren't
that many. [laughter] So, you know, we weren't going to take over the
world. So I started drawing these houses, and I kind of liked it. I kind
of enjoyed it. And that's when my sister brought me Paul Williams's
brochure. I think I stayed in that class through my senior year. I kept
taking drawing. And I began taking more art classes from the teacher I
told you about, Miss Edna Chess, my art teacher. I took more art
classes. And that's when I decided I'd study architecture. I went to
Pasadena Junior College [now Pasadena City College]. I entered in '38. I
26 graduated in the spring of 1938 from Monrovia High School. And I
can't remember whether I waited till June or whether I went right to
Pasadena Junior College. I can look and see. But I went to Pasadena
Junior College. They were one of the few junior colleges that had a
course in architecture.
HENDERSON:
Oh, they did?
KENNARD:
Yes.
HENDERSON:
So you went right to architecture directly?
KENNARD:
Yes, I went right in. They had a course. They were one of the few. And I
stayed there until I got an associate arts degree. It was an interesting
time in Pasadena, because there were very few blacks there. You know,
one of the most famous blacks was Jackie Robinson.
HENDERSON:
Oh, yes.
KENNARD:
He was at school there, and I got to know Jackie pretty well.
HENDERSON:
This was before he became the ball player?
KENNARD:
Oh, yes, way before. He was a student at Pasadena Junior College. See,
he's about my age, or would have been my age.
HENDERSON:
That's right. He grew up in L.A., didn't he?
KENNARD:
Well, he grew up in Pasadena. He and his brother, Mac Robinson, and
Jackie Robinson, the whole 27 family grew up in Pasadena. It's a whole
other story about Jackie, but it's a very interesting story about him.
But I did pretty good at this school. The professor of architecture was
a guy named William J. Stone, red, very fiery red hair, and a tough but
very good teacher in architecture. Very demanding. A lot of racism at
Pasadena Junior College at the time. You know, Pasadena has always been
a very racist town.
HENDERSON:
Really?
KENNARD:
Oh. [laughter] It was no different than Monrovia. They were all pretty
racist. But generally, I will say this about Pasadena: I don't remember
any overt racism by the professors. And Stone was tough, but I saw no
difference in the way he treated me than anybody else.
HENDERSON:
Do you remember anything about the classes themselves? That is, were
they promoting, say, a certain style? Or were they just emphasizing
drafting?
KENNARD:
No, what they did-- In those days there was a strong emphasis on
drawing.
HENDERSON:
Right.
KENNARD:
we had to draw all the Greek columns.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
And we did it with Chinese ink, you know, where you ground the blocks
and practically made the colors.
HENDERSON:
Goodness. 28
KENNARD:
You ground the blocks in water, and you took your brush and you did
shades and shadows. They taught you shades and shadows, perspective
drawing. A great part of it was competence in drawing: perspective,
shades and shadows, the whole Greek columns--Doric, Ionic, and
whatnot--history of architecture, and some study of contemporary
architecture.
HENDERSON:
Oh, really? Modern or international modern?
KENNARD:
Yeah, some of the contemporary architects, the Bauhaus. The Bauhaus
started in the thirties, so it had just happened.
HENDERSON:
Some other architects I've interviewed didn't study Bauhaus architecture
at all at this time.
KENNARD:
Yes, well, I don't think it was a major course of study, but in the
courses of history they gave us a lot of books that we read about
[Walter] Gropius and [Ludwig] Mies van der Rohe.
HENDERSON:
Sounds pretty open.
KENNARD:
Yeah, it was pretty open. Stone was a good teacher. He was a very good
teacher. Funny guy, a very humorous guy, and a pretty demanding guy. And
the kids that went there, we used to call him-- Behind his back we
nicknamed him W. J. His name was William J. Stone. We nicknamed him W.
J, [laughter] The class was upstairs, our drafting room was 29 upstairs,
and it looked down on kind of a quad with the tennis courts. So we hung
out the windows and we'd look at all the girls. [laughter] And sometimes
we'd all be out there looking, and Stone wouldn't be in there. He'd come
in, and when he came in, boy, we just [claps hands], we scrambled back
to our desks. He didn't chastise us too much, but he made some crack
about, "You're never going to make it if you keep looking at girls."
HENDERSON:
[laughter] Any fellow students from there that made it big in the L.A.
scene?
KENNARD:
Yes. There was only one other-- There may have been more than one black
student, but there was only one other real good· black student. It was
Ben [Benjamin F.] McAdoo [Jr.]. Did you ever meet Ben McAdoo?
HENDERSON:
No. I've heard the name.
KENNARD:
Yeah, Ben McAdoo was my good friend. He lived in Pasadena, and he was
studying architecture. And Ben was a Seventh Day Adventist, so he never
went into the service. His family was very nice to me. I used to go over
to their house a lot. After PJC, he moved up to the University of
Washington in Seattle and he studied architecture. He had a practice
there for years, and we kept in touch.
HENDERSON:
Is he in NOMA [National Organization of Minority Architects]?
KENNARD:
He was in NOMA. He died about-- I think Ben's 30 been dead seven or
eight, nine years by now.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
Oh, a lot of the older guys in NOMA know him. He was a very, very
talented architect. But among the other architects who are alive, the
one that was probably more successful, who was ahead of me, was Howard
Morgridge. Howard was a very talented artist. He was a wonderful
delineator. Of course, all of the younger guys in the classes below him
would try to copy his style. He was a very fine artist. He became a
partner in later years. He went to 'SC [University of Southern
California], and he became a partner in Smith, Powell, and Morgridge, a
major firm, a big firm that did a lot of school work. Howard still has a
little one-man practice down in Tustin or Newport Beach or something. In
fact, we did a job with Howard at Lynwood High School. We were a joint
venture. He brought us in on the deal. I haven't talked to him in quite
a while. Now, as a matter of fact, he's consulting architect at Cal
[California] State [University] Northridge.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
The other one was Cal [Calvin C.] Straub. Do you know him? Do you know
Cal Straub?
HENDERSON:
The name Straub is familiar.
KENNARD:
He graduated, went to 'SC, and was a professor in 31 design at USC for
years. Then he went to Arizona [State University]. I think he's retired.
HENDERSON:
Yeah, I've heard that name, Straub.
KENNARD:
But he was at Pasadena. Kemper Nomland-- Oh, a whole bunch of
architects. But Morgridge and Straub were probably the most well known
in the general L.A. area.
HENDERSON:
Was Pasadena Junior College feeding into USC?
KENNARD:
Yes, they fed into USC. See, use recognized Pasadena City College's
associate art degree. So if you had an A.A. degree from Pasadena, you
could start as a third-year student at USC. They would accept you. I
could not go to USC because I couldn't afford to go to use, even though
it was o·nly $14 a unit.
HENDERSON:
Fourteen dollars? Oh, goodness.
KENNARD:
In 1940, it was less than that, because it was $14 when I finally went.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
It was probably $10. But, you know, that was a lot of money.
HENDERSON:
[laughter] Okay.
KENNARD:
So I said, well, the only way I'm going to go is I'm going to have to
stay out and get a job and work and save my money. So when I got out of
school, I tried to get a job. I had won some awards at PJC in
competitions. In fact, there was one competition I won not only first
prize, 32 but I won third prize. prize.
HENDERSON:
Goodness! [laughter] Ben McAdoo won second
KENNARD:
Yeah. It was for a house. And I had a good grade point average. So I
wrote thirteen letters to various small architects in L.A. and Pasadena
to try and get a job. I got an answer from every single one of them, and
seven invited me to come in. I sent some copies of my articles and
stuff, and seven of them invited me- to come in to be interviewed. And
not one hired me. They didn't know I was black.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
Naturally, I didn't broadcast it. I just walked in there-- Some of them
didn't even invite me in. Some of them just said, "Oh, we don't hire
colored people." You know, that's what they called you, "colored." They
probably said "nigger." [laughter] But it made me very discouraged,
because I said, "I can't even get a junior position, office boy,
anything." And I went to all these seven. Some of them were very
encouraging in the letter. When I walked in, they just dismissed you
offhand. It was just awful. So I just got menial jobs for a while. That
was when I told my mother [Marie Bryan], - -I said, "Listen, I see no
reason to go through the university." But finally, after about six to
eight months, maybe 33 about a year, of not getting into any office, I
just said, "Well, I'll go and just knock on the door and see." And I
went to this building that is still standing at Arroyo Parkway and
California [Street]. It was a Spanish building right on California
Street in Pasadena where somebody told me there were a lot of
architects. There were about six or seven architects in that building.
In those days, most offices were one- or two-man offices; they didn't
have a lot. And there was an interior designer in there. So I said,
"Well, I' 11 just go there. I' 11 stop by and I' 11 just knock on
doors." So I knocked on them. A couple of them said they didn't have
anything. But I finally went and knocked on this door, and this
architect, a very tall, very handsome guy, [H.] Curtis Chambers,
answered.
HENDERSON:
Curtis Chambers.
KENNARD:
Curtis Chambers. He was in his shirtsleeves, I never will forget,
working on the board. I think he didn't have anybody working for him at
the time. He did a lot of houses and apartment houses. So I said, "Do
you think you have anything for me, any work or anything?" So I showed
him some of my work. And I never will forget-- He was a very quiet kind
of guy. He looked a lot like Gary Cooper and he acted like Cooper. And I
never will forget, he rubbed his arm back and-- You know, it's funny how
you remember these things. He rubbed his arm back and forth, 34 and he
looked at me, and he said, "I might be able to have something for you."
And, you know, my whole world was opening up. He said, "How about--?''
He said, "What kind of salary?" I said, "I don't know. Whatever you
think is right." So he said, "How about $20 a week?" Fifty cents an
hour? Shoot! I got excited. Man, I thought I was rich. [laughter) Twenty
dollars a week, fifty cents an hour, when I had been doing menial work
at about twenty and twenty-five cents an hour, you know, raking leaves
and stuff. So I started working for Curtis Chambers. I drove from
Monrovia every day in my little old 1928 Pontiac. This was in 194U. And
I learned a great deal from him.
HENDERSON:
And it was just you and him?
KENNARD:
Just me and him most of the time. Most of the time it was myself. Once
in a while he'd bring another person in. There was an old-- Not an old
man, but he was a very senior guy that came in once in a while and
worked for him. But it was a very relaxed office. I mean, it was just he
and I, and we'd talk, and I'd draw. And I'd do everything. I'd run
errands, everything. But the thing, also, that was nice about him,
sometimes he'd go out on a job and say, "Hey, come on, Bob. You want to
go along with me and we'll look around and stuff?" Well, sometimes he
didn't have as much work for me, so 35 there was another architect, Theo
Pletsch, who did a lot of homes, too, out in Santa Anita Oaks. That was
a very nice residential area. You've got to remember, you could build a
nice house for $3.50 a square foot.
HENDERSON:
That's low. What's the price right now? It's about $70, $80, $100 a
square foot?
KENNARD:
I would say a comparable house to the $3.50 would have to be $60, $70 a
foot. If the client had $5 a foot, you had a beautiful house. Well, what
happened, Chambers, when he was slow, would ask Theo Pletsch if he
wanted to use me. So it got so that I was flitting back and forth
between Curtis Chambers's and Theo Pletsch's offices. And Theo Pletsch
wa·s completely different than Curtis Chambers. He was a very
fast-talking guy, very committed to architecture, loved architecture,
and did a lot of very nice homes in the Oaks. I worked on houses there
that had all oak paneling and walnut paneling. And today those houses in
San Marino--this was all in San Marino and Santa Anita Oaks--I'll bet
you those houses are worth $600,000 or $700,000, maybe a million bucks.
I mean, they were beautiful homes. Pletsch did period houses a lot, sort
of English Tudor and stuff, kind of like Paul Williams did.
HENDERSON:
And Chambers wasn't doing that?
KENNARD:
No. Chambers did more California Ranch-type houses. They were kind of
nice houses, though. They were 36 nice houses. So I worked there until
the war broke out. But after Pearl Harbor, the architects were out.
There was just no work. I don't know what happened, whether Pletsch went
in the service, but Chambers, I think, went into the service, and he
worked in the [Army] Corps [of Engineers] or something. I'm pretty sure
he went into the service. But they closed their offices. If Pletsch
didn't close his offices, he didn't have any work. Nobody was building
houses. So I was out of a job. I couldn't afford to go to school. I was
going to probably be picked up in the draft any day. So I told my
mother, "Well, why don't I get a job in the post office?" My dad [James
L.], having been through the Depression, felt that the security of a
government job was the best way to go. My mother was very much against
me just settling for the post office, but I did go into the post office
for a while, and I was a substitute carrier. [laughter] And I never will
forget, it cost me $30 to buy my uniform.
HENDERSON:
Goodness. They made you buy your uniform?
KENNARD:
Yeah, I had to buy a uniform. And I got in there, and I worked down here
at terminal annex.
HENDERSON:
Downtown?
KENNARD:
Yes, downtown. And I got this job at terminal 37 annex. But the post
office was so prejudiced that, as a substitute carrier, if they needed
somebody, they very seldom picked a black. I can't remember who the
postmaster general was, but it was changed a lot when another one came
in. So I didn't get much work, but when I did work and help out--the guy
that taught me the route, you wouldn't believe it! I mean, it's just the
most fortunate thing. Here was my mother pushing me not to get stuck in
the post office, and they put me with, of all persons, Clyde Grimes
[Jr.J's father,Clyde Grimes Sr.], who was a postman. You know who Clyde
Grimes is?
HENDERSON:
No. Who is Clyde Grimes?
KENNARD:
All the black architects knew Clyde Grimes here in L.A.
HENDERSON:
Wait. That Clyde Grimes?
KENNARD:
That Clyde Grimes.
HENDERSON:
But Clyde Grimes's father.
KENNARD:
His father. Clyde Grimes's father was in the post office. Clyde and
Leonard Grimes's father was at the post office, and he had the downtown
route, and they assigned me to him to learn his route so when he took
off I could take the route. As you know, Leonard and Clyde--
HENDERSON:
I know Leonard more than Clyde Grimes.
KENNARD:
You know Leonard? Both of them are very well 38 educated, and that's due
to their father, who pushed them to education. And all the time I was in
there, he just kept telling me, ''I don't care," he said, "don't get
stuck in the post office. It was fine for me in my era. You young people
could do better. Your mother's right. Once you get stuck in here you'll
never get out." I told Clyde this a lot of times--my mother on one side
and Clyde's father on the other side telling me not to stay in the post
office. Well, I didn't have any job, so I still stayed as a substitute,
but finally the die was cast. I got called into the service, and, of
course, I went into the army. And I don't know whether you want to go
through the whole army thing.
HENDERSON:
Yes, I kind of do, because a lot of my interviewees always discuss their
army experiences, and it's--
KENNARD:
Anyway, that was the end of the architecture for a while and Curtis
Chambers, who comes back into the picture later.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
And Pletsch comes back. But it shows you what adults, the influence they
have as role models to young people. Because if Clyde's father said to
me, "Oh, you stay in the post office. It's a wonderful thing. It's very
secure," you know, those words have a lot of 39 impression on you. And I
think that it's a tribute to Clyde's mother and father that Clyde became
an architect and went to [University of California] Berkeley. Leonard
moved very high up in government, you know. I've always respected the
family for that just for kind of giving me another push. But anyway, I
went into the service. I got called in and--
HENDERSON:
And where did you report?
KENNARD:
It was all segregated. I reported to Fort MacArthur right here just as a
staging area. I went to Fort MacArthur, but my first assignment was in
Fort Knox, Kentucky.
HENDERSON:
Excuse me one second. I don't know exactly where Fort MacArthur is. Is
that the one in Palos Verdes?
KENNARD:
Fort MacArthur is right down here at San Pedro.
HENDERSON:
San Pedro where? Near that lighthouse?
KENNARD:
Yes, right.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay. still there. San Pedro, California. I think I know which one.
It's
KENNARD:
Yeah, the barracks are still there.
HENDERSON:
Okay. So you had been sent to Fort Knox?
KENNARD:
Yeah. And it's interesting, because Fort MacArthur is a part of my
architectural experience much later, you know. You never know how things
go back. But 40 it's funny how things come around. Like most blacks, we
were put in supply-type divisions, so I was put in the 3896
Quartermaster Corps, which was a supply company. It was a quartermaster
supply in which we handled petroleum supply that gassed up all the big
tanks. So we handled all the gasoline supplies for the big armored
tanks--all completely black unit with all white officers. I went to Fort
Knox, Kentucky. I went on September 2, 1942. It was a new company of a
cadre of about maybe sixteen or eighteen noncommissioned off·icers. We
were getting mobilized for the war, so there wasn't an entire company.
But we all came in, a hundred or so came in, and then there were·
noncommissioned officers in place--all black, but all white officers. I
could type. I was probably one of the few people who could use a
typewriter. So as soon as they found that out--they asked who could
type, and I said I could type-they put me in the office to help as a
company clerk. Everything was mobilizing. In two weeks I was promoted to
corporal. [laughter] In about a month I was a sergeant. They just moved
you up fast. The reason why that happened is the commanding officer was
a guy not much older than I was. I was one of the youngest in the
service. When I went in, I was twenty-one. I was going to be twenty-two
that month. I was twenty-one years old, and everybody 41 else-- I think
there was only maybe one or two younger than I. Everybody else was ages
from that age all the way up to thirty-eight. They took them up to
thirty-eight. The commanding officer's name was William Iliffe.
HENDERSON:
That's a strange name.
KENNARD:
He was the son of, I believe, a Methodist minister in the Midwest. A
very nice person, very bright, very intelligent, and had some college
like I did. There were only about three of us that really had a
collegebackground. There was a guy who had studied architecture at the
University of Washington, and there was a guy from Atlanta who had
studied accounting, a couple of years of accounting--Jer·ry [Jerome P.]
Jones--and myself. So he needed somebody that could write and do the
paperwork stuff. I got in and I got close to him. I went into a lot of
training, but I always did the compan_y office work. So I moved up
really fast, because one of the things was that he could relate to me a
lot. He could kind of speak on my level. A lot of the guys didn't have
much education. Most of them were from the South, although they came
from California, but they hadn't been out of the South very long. Some
of the blacks were even illiterate. One guy I finally taught how to
write a little bit. So the cadre was not very heavy, and people who
could kind of move with this guy-- So he finally made me a sergeant, and
I was 42 a squad leader. [laughter] But in a training mission, in a
night training mission, I got injured in an accident. It was a night
training mission, and the second lieutenant--not Iliffe, the second
lieutenant--was driving the car. I was in the front, there were a couple
of guys in the back, and we were going out on a night training mission
in the dark, going over rough terrain. Well, this little old second
lieutenant didn't know anything. He hit a ditch, and instead of just
driving into the ditch, which he should have done, he made the turn
left. Of course, the car turned over and I was pinned over. And Sergeant
Butler--he was a motor ser~eant who was a very bright guy--he hurriedly
stopped all the trucks behind us. Otherwise I'd have been killed,
because we'd have been just crushed. But he had the presence of mind to
go back and wave a white handkerchief. Nobody could see anything; it was
pitch dark. But what that did, that put me in the hospital, even though
all I did was break my leg and dislocate my collarbone. If I was home, I
could have just gone on home, but nobody can take care of you there, so
you're in the hospital, which was a very fortunate thing for me, because
it was cold. Colder than hell. In the meantime, we had moved from Fort
Knox to Fort Riley. So this happened in Fort Riley.
HENDERSON:
Fort Riley, Kansas.
KENNARD:
Yeah, next to Junction City. We used to go to Junction City a lot and
party. And that meant I never went through basic training, because all
the basic training was going on while I was in the hospital.
HENDERSON:
[laughter] Basic training is stupid, anyway.
KENNARD:
That's right. So we had all these guys who were sergeants who had been
in the company for quite a while. While I was in the hospital they made
me a first sergeant. Remember, I had only been in three months. Iliffe
came to me and he said, "I want to promote you to first sergeant." I
said, "I know nothing about it. I haven't gone through basic training. I
don't know anything." You know, I was a babe in the woods. I didn't know
anything. All these guys were older than me. And he said, "Well, I know
I can trust you, and I know you understand the regulations, and you'll
just learn it." So when I got out of the hospital, here I'm the first
sergeant. I'm the ranking noncommissioned officer three months in the
army! Well, that caused a lot of stir for the guys who had been
noncommissioned officers before. There were about thirteen of them that
just did not like me at all. And I'm a young kid. They gave me hell.
They gave me a lot of it. There were some older guys in there, and there
was one 44 guy, his name-- The reason why I know all these names is
because every day I took the roll call, so those names are indelibly
meshed in my memory. His name was Aldridge Caver, and he was from the
Oakland Bay area. And Aldridge was about-- To me he was an old man; he
was about thirtyseven. And he taught me something I never forgot. He .
said, "These guys are resentful that you're in this league because you
haven't been in the service very long." He said, "I can understand it."
He said, "But I'm going to show you, I'm going to tell you, how to
handle it. I'm going to take you under my wing, and I'm going to show
you how to handle it." Now, Aldridge had had a club, a nightclub, up i·n
Oakland. He knew the streets. He knew these kinds of guys. You know, I
had lived a kind of sheltered life. [laughter) I didn't know all the
tough stuff. And he told me something. He said, "Listen, there are about
thirteen of them. Some of them you're going to win over to your side,
and the ones you don't win over you're going to get rid of. And the way
you get rid of them is--" The army was just mobilizing up for this big
war effort, and they'd want key people to start another company. So
they'd ask us, "Do you have any sergeants or anything that you want to
send out?" So he said, "When they ask for that, those guys that you
cannot control--"
HENDERSON:
Send them out.
KENNARD:
"--you tell Iliffe." And Iliffe, who was a very sheltered white boy from
the Midwest, was intimidated by some of these rough cats, anyway, so he
didn't have a problem. So Iliffe and I-- You know, after Caver told me
what to do, I'd say, "Get rid of this guy, get rid of this guy" or "We
keep this baby," and I'd promote other people. I mean, I was really
setting the whole company up, because I said, "Hell, when I go overseas,
I've got to have some people behind me." So some of them I won over and
some of them we got rid of, and we went on. It was very interesting.
HENDERSON:
Oh, oh. Wait, wait. When you were about to go overseas, what bity did
you leave from?
KENNARD:
We stayed in Fort Riley. I have the dates of all of this if you need it.
HENDERSON:
That's not crucial, the particular date.
KENNARD:
No, it's not. Yeah. We went overseas in '43. First we were in Fort
Riley, and it wasn't bad. It was kind of nice, because we used to go to
Lawrence, Kansas, a lot on the weekend, where the University of Kansas
is, and there are always a lot of young ladies there, and very pretty
young women. So we had a good time. And there were some guys I ran with,
the sergeants and everything, we had a good time. We got into it. Then
we went on maneuvers, and we went to the 46 Louisiana and Texas area.
You know, Camp Polk, Louisiana, and around there. That was tough. Man,
it was terrible down there. And my father told me, ''You go South," he
said, "you'll never live, because," he said, "those people are not going
to take your lip." And I had some very serious problems in the South.
I've had two people, whites, draw guns on me.
HENDERSON:
While you were in the army in the South?
KENNARD:
In the army in the South.
HENDERSON:
Goodness.
KENNARD:
If you want an anecdote-
HENDERSON:
Hold on just one moment.
HENDERSON:
Okay, you were about to say this anecdote.
KENNARD:
When we were in the South, we were on maneuvers. See, most of the people
in our company--98 percent of them--were originally from the South, but
they had left the South and they'd come to Washington, Oregon, and
California. So when they were ready to go back to the South, they were
prepared. I had no idea. One time we were out on a maneuver. One of our
officers was named Lieutenant Berkowitz. He was a little pudgy-- And we
stopped-- I don't know if you know the South very well.
HENDERSON:
I grew up in Texas.
KENNARD:
Oh, you did? Okay. Well, this was a little country road, and all of a
sudden we're going along and we stop at this little post office and
store.
HENDERSON:
Everything all in one little shack.
KENNARD:
All in one little shack, yeah. So we stopped. And the guys wanted to buy
cigarettes and they wanted to buy gum and everything. So we were all
milling around this place, and I and another guy went over to take a
drink out of the fountain. You know, I'm forgetting that-- It was
prejudiced in Monrovia, but this is different. This big honky white cat
comes out, and he said, "Nigger, you can't 48 drink at that fountain."
HENDERSON:
(laughter) Oh, my goodness.
KENNARD:
So I was pissed. So I said, "What the fuck are you talking about?" You
know. So he comes out, -and when he steps back he pulls out a revolver.
And most of my guys were over here; I was there. He comes out, he says,
"All you niggers get out of here." He had this gun. Well, he was not
quite facing me, and there was a gum machine, and I started to pick it
up and hurl it at the son of a bitch, because he couldn't have seen it.
But there was one guy with me, who stopped me, because if I'd have done
that, he could have shot one of our guys. So we went out. We all walked
out. The guys went back. Wes, you wouldn't believe the number of our
guys that had guns--I mean their own revolvers.
HENDERSON:
Yes, I believe it.
KENNARD:
They had them. I didn't, though. I didn't even realize it. One guy had
two. He said, "Sarge, here. You have one." We didn't have ammunition,
see. We had rifles, but they were just fake, nothing in them. Well,
Berkowitz wasn't around, so we said, "We're going to scare this son of a
bitch." So we just surrounded the place. And, boy, the shades came down,
and, you know, he was scared because all these black cats out there--
But we weren't going to do anything but scare him. (laughter) And when
Berkowitz 49 heard about it, he was so nervous. He said, "Oh, God."
Because he thought he'd be demoted for letting us do that. We said, "No,
we were just scaring the guy." But he was scared to death, too, because
he was from New York somewhere, and he had never handled black folks
from the South before. And then I have some other anecdotes later in the
service that are very interesting about the South. But that was about
it. Then we went to Camp Kilmer to go overseas.
HENDERSON:
Camp Kilmer. Now, where is that?
KENNARD:
That's in New Jersey.
HENDERSON:
So you left from New York? The port of New York?
KENNARD:
Yes. There's another thing I need to tell you about, and then we'll
cover it. When we were on maneuvers there was not much to do. You know,
at night it was dark, and you're just by the lantern and everything. So
the guys would play cards a lot, play poker. There was a guy named
Babyface Harris.
HENDERSON:
(laughter) These names.
KENNARD:
You know, every black had a nickname, "Highbutt" or whatever. (laughter)
And Babyface was a guy also thirty-six, thirty-seven years old. I think
they looked on me as their kind of son. They wanted to kind of protect
50 me. You know, I'm real young, I'm trying to run this tough company,
and they just kind of looked after me, So I used to get in the poker
games, I couldn't play poker, I was losing all the time. So Babyface
finally came to me, He said, "Sarge," he said, "let me tell you
something. Don't get in the poker game, because you can't win." And he
used to play what they call Three Card Molly. You know it?
HENDERSON:
I don't know that.
KENNARD:
You know the shell game?
HENDERSON:
Yes.
KENNARD:
Okay. Well, it's just like the shell game, but it's-- It's a
~leight-of-hand trick. You put three cards out.
HENDERSON:
Right.
KENNARD:
And two of them are red, and one of them is black,
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
And you shuffle, and you bet. "I bet you five dollars you can't tell me
which is black, Sarge. Pick the cards," So you're looking at me real
fast--right?--and you bet me five dollars again. So you said it's this
one, Okay, if it's not black, you lost your five bucks. They either do
it with a shell game like a half of a walnut and there's a little peanut
under it, or they do it with 51 cards. Babyface did it with cards. What
he did, he'd get you sucked into it, and then eventually there wouldn't
be a black card there. (laughter) So he said, "Sarge, don't get in a
poker game with me." He cheated at poker. He said, "I've spent more time
learning card games and crooked cards than most people spend getting a
law degree."
HENDERSON:
Goodness,
KENNARD:
He said, "You can't beat me." So on maneuvers, he said, "Do me a favor,
Sarge." He said, "Would you position me out--" He wanted to go out where
we gassed up these big tanks, because while the soldiers came in to gas
up their tanks, while they were waiting he'd get them in a game, all
thes~ white boys.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay. And take their money. (laughter)
KENNARD:
Also, we had an officer named Armstrong, Lieutenant Armstrong, and
Armstrong thought he could beat him, too, and he was just cleaning out
Armstrong something awful. So he took me aside. He said, "Now, look.
Don't get in my game, because you're not going to win." He said, "But
I'll tell you what I'll do." He said, "Would you--" As he got the money,
he would get a postal money order to himself for $300, because he didn't
want anybody to steal the money from him. So he would go to the post
office, and he'd get himself a postal money order. I'll tell you, for
the whole time of maneuvers, there wasn't a week that he 52 didn't give
me $400 or $500, and he said, "You put it in the safe for me. Will you
keep it?" I mean, he was making a couple of grand a month.
HENDERSON:
Goodness.
KENNARD:
Yeah. So in order for him to have me keep his money for him in the
company safe-- He didn't want me to be taken, too, see. So he said,
"Don't get in the game." So I stopped playing the game. If I played, I
just did it for fun. Babyface had a record. He had some criminal record.
The word was out that he had gotten in a fight on Central Avenue here
somewhere and killed a guy or something. He was a tough caf. They called
him Babyface because he had a real kind of cute face, and he was kind of
a pudgy cat, but he was a tough son of a bitch. One time-- There was a
guy named Parnell in the company--I think his name was Sam Parnell--and
they got in an altercation. I think Sam had done something to Babyface,
and Babyface was going to get him. And I remember one night-- You know,
you go into town and you sit on the truck. Babyface had a-- We had these
gasoline cans, you know, with the nozzles. You know how the nozzle--?
HENDERSON:
It has a sort of a little flexible curve to it.
KENNARD:
Curve. And where you screw it down, he picked up the spout end, and he
sat on the edge. It was dark. So 53 Parnell's climbing up into the
truck--and Parnell had stolen from him or cheated him or something--and
as Parnell jumped in that truck, he just cracked poor Parnell's head. It
didn't kill him; it just cut him all up. Everybody was afraid of
Babyface, so nobody would ever say who did it, you know. I mean,
somebody just hit him in the dark. (laughter) So Babyface-- I don't know
whether I should put this in oral history, because I hope the guy's not
living now, because he was really tough. There was a thing called
Section Eight in the army, and that's habits and traits of character
unbecoming to the service. So he came to me one day, and he sai·d,
"Sarge, I'm not going overseas." We were getting ready to go overseas.
He said, "I'm not going to fight any white man's war, so I'm not going
to go." And he said, "But I want to tell you, you've been real good to
me, really nice," and he said, "but I'm going to raise hell, and you're
going to see I'm going to get out." So I didn't know how he was going to
do it. So he started-- So the white officers-- By that time we had
another commanding officer (Captain Dodd). What was his first name? I
don't remember. But he was a guy that had been on Wall Street and kind
of a high-executive type of guy but was very nervous around black folks.
Kind of a wimpish kind of guy. A big guy, but he was not 54 comfortable.
He had this black company, and he wasn't sure how to handle it. So we
got orders to go. So Babyface started putting out the word. He said,
"Shoot, they give me live ammunition, they'd better never get in front
of me." He said, "They'd better stay in back of me all the time, because
I'd just as soon shoot one of those cats as shoot a German." He made it
a point that the commanding officer would hear that. So one time we were
talking about who was going overseas and who was not. So the commanding
officer told me--he was a captain--he said, "Bob, what do you think
about Babyface?" He said, "You know, this guy's kind of crazy." He
sai·d, "You think we ought to Section Eight him?" And I said, "Well, you
might have to do that." And sure enough, old Babyface got pushed out of
the service on a Section Eight. And I saw him one other time in my life.
Years later--this is jumping ahead--I was standing on the corner of
Cimarron (Street) and Jefferson (Boulevard) with my books getting ready
to take a bus to 'SC, with my sister (Anna Kennard-Hunt) there.
overnight with her a lot. I had my books. 'SC, and up rides this big
black Cadillac. I was staying I stayed I was going to (laughter) There
was a driver and Babyface and this gorgeous woman, black woman, in
there. And I heard somebody say, 55 "Sarge!" And I looked over, and
there was Babyface. Now, this was way after the war. You know, he was
into everything. He said, "Come on, Sarge, come on over," and he said,
"I want to talk to you." And we went over. They had a house near there,
and it was very beautiful. He said, "Look, you're going to school?" He
said, "You need some money?" He said, "If you need some help getting
through school, you call on me anytime."
HENDERSON:
Really?
KENNARD:
Yeah. He said, "Anytime you want, you call on me. You need money to get
books or anything, you call on me." And I said, "Babyface, that's really
nice of you, but, you know-- I mean, he was in the rackets. I mean-
HENDERSON:
Something illegal.
KENNARD:
Oh, yeah. Yeah, he was living so high. And I never saw him again. I
don't know whether he got killed or not, but he never went overseas.
(laughter)
HENDERSON:
Well, before we end, let me ask you this question. As you were leaving
from Camp Kilmer, going overseas, was there anything unusual about the
leaving? People just boarded ships? I guess it was ships. You were
heading to Europe. No panic? No--?
KENNARD:
No. You know, we were going to go on the Queen Mary.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
Yes, we went over on the Queen Mary. They went over in five and a half
days. It was packed and jammed. In fact, I was taking some people down
to the Queen Mary the other day. Have you ever been on the Queen Mary?
HENDERSON:
No, I've never been.
KENNARD:
Well, it shows how the military was packed in there. I think there were
bunks five high. The only thing-- They told us three days before we
went. And Jerry (Jerome P.) Jones, the guy from Atlanta whom I started
running around with--he and I kind of got to be buddies--we went into
New York every night.
HENDERSON:
(laughter) Okay.
KENNARD:
And we stayed there until the last train left at five o'clock in the
morning, just to get time-- We stayed up all night. We stayed up all
night, because there wasn't much to do during the day. You could almost
sleep during the day. You were just waiting around. And we said, "We may
as well enjoy ourselves." So we went to the Stage Door Canteen, and we
just would cat around New York, because we didn't know whether we were
going to be alive. There's a devil-may-care attitude, because you're
young and you just party all the time, drink a lot and just party. And
we'd get back on the train in the morning just in time-for reveille.
(laughter) I was in Atlanta the other day, not too long ago, and I 57
looked in the book--and it was late at night--and I saw Jerome P. Jones
there. I wanted to call him up, but I had to leave early the next
morning.
HENDERSON:
Very interesting. Okay. I've got one other question. Back in high
school, when you had heard of Paul Williams, did you ever meet him at
that time?
KENNARD:
I didn't meet him until Elbert Hudson--you know, Karen (Hudson)'s
father-- Karen's father and I are very close friends. We've known each
other since we were eight years old.
HENDERSON:
Right.
KENNARD:
When he started dating Marilyn (Williams) Hudson, you know, Karen's
mother, that's when I met Paul. I went to see him once to get a job.
Theo Pletsch used to work for him.
HENDERSON:
Oh.
KENNARD:
See, Theo Pletsch had worked for him. He said, "Why don't you, when you
come out, go see Paul Williams." That was when I came out of the
service. And I went to see Paul Williams, but he didn't have anything
for me.
HENDERSON:
Okay. But you didn't see Paul Williams before you went into the service?
KENNARD:
No. No, I didn't. No, I didn't see him until later.
HENDERSON:
You were saying you were glad you got in the service.
KENNARD:
Yeah, I was. In retrospect, I was glad I was in the service, because
when you're raised in a small town by a very close family unit, you are
not able to see what's happening in the world about you and about how
other people live. And by being in the service, the economic level, the
social level, the political level, everybody was together in one place.
So you were thrown together with them in a very close living
relationship. The thing I learned the most was that education cannot be
equated with character. I think a lot of us, when we're young, we look
to educated people, that they have a lot of integrity, they have a lot
of character. I found in the service that some people who had nothing in
their life-- I mean, many of these young people had come from
sharecropper families. We had one fellow, Saul Heard. I never will
forget his name, because he was illiterate. I was determined to teach
Saul how to write his name so that he could sign his check, and I was
finally able to teach him. I wanted to teach him how to read and write,
but he was in his early thirties, and the motivation was gone. But a
nicer person you would never meet. He had just such great moral
character. [tape recorder off] But that was one of the big values of
being in the service. I mean, you get to know people on a very personal
basis, stripped of money, class, intelligence, everything. I mean, you
just get to know them basically.
HENDERSON:
Everyone's in a uniform, and that's it.
KENNARD:
Everyone's in uniform. It's the great leveler, especially in a service
where the draft is-- You know, about ten million men were under arms, so
they had everybody there: the rich, the poor, and everything.
HENDERSON:
Okay. In terms of sequence, we had stopped just before you wer~ going
overseas. That is, you were in New York, and you were with Jerome--
KENNARD:
Jerome [P.] Jones.
HENDERSON:
--Jones. I think you had gone into New York several nights and--
KENNARD:
Yeah, well, we were at Camp Kilmer, which was the staging area for
overseas travel, one of the staging areas, and Jerry Jones and I were
kind of buddies. He was from Atlanta, Georgia. He was an accounting
major. So we'd leave at six o'clock every evening, catch the train, go
into New York, spend all night long there, getting back just in time for
reveille. We didn't have much to do during the day, so you could nap and
sleep around, because you were 60 just waiting to be shipped out. And
one of our first stops in the early evening after we had dinner, we'd go
to the Stage Door Canteen, where all the girls were. That was kind of a
hangout for the GI's.
HENDERSON:
And that was in Manhattan?
KENNARD:
Yeah, that was right in there. I'm pretty sure it was in Manhattan. You
know, New York is-- [laughter] For an old country boy, I couldn't tell
Manhattan from any other-[ laughter] But we had a good time. And we
figured you're going overseas, you don't know what's going to happen,
you might as well enjoy yourself. So we shipped out on the Queen Mary.
It was the fastest route over there, five and a half days. We landed in
Glasgow, Scotland, and then took a train to the southern part of
England. I should really bring a list of the places I was, because I
have it all on a list. Having been the company clerk and first sergeant,
I know where I was at each time, and I kept the dates I was there and
how long I was there.
HENDERSON:
Golly, that's interesting that you would keep all of that.
KENNARD:
Well, see, I kept the records of the company, so it was very easy for me
just to write it down and keep a copy.
HENDERSON:
Now, you were in the Quartermaster Corps?
KENNARD:
I was in the Quartermaster Corps. We were in a petroleum supply depot.
We handled all the fuel for the tanks and whatnot. The headquarters
company finally moved from Devonshire to a town called Ampfield.
Ampfield was the village, Romsey was the incorporated city, and
Hampshire was kind of like the county. You know, in England.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
So it was Ampfield, Romsey, Hampshire. And at that time we had 120 men
and 3 officers. And alL the headquarters company, for which I was first
sergeant, stayed in Ampfield, Romsey, and we were billeted in an old
manor house there. It was very nice. And then our troops were sent out
through England. We had contingents of groups of people that were sent
out to man various petroleum depots throughout England.
HENDERSON:
Oh, oh, okay.
KENNARD:
See, we were in maneuvers most of the time getting ready for the
invasion of France.
HENDERSON:
Oh, so this was pre D day [June 6, 1944].
KENNARD:
Oh, this is pre D day. This was pre D day. And that was quite nice duty
for me. We stayed there for the better part of eighteen months. As a
first sergeant, I had my own room, I had a radio, I had music. deal,
because there was nothing to do. I read a great So I probably read more
books in that period of my life than ever.
HENDERSON:
Where were.you getting the books from? You would just buy them?
KENNARD:
Well, my family sent me books, and I belonged to the Book of the Month
Club and other book clubs and stuff like that.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
I still have a lot of the books. And a very interesting thing happened
to me in Ampfield. It was a very small little village with very thatched
houses and everything. And I had a lot of time on my hands because most
of my troops were gone, so I sketched a lot. I had had two years of
architecture, so I did a lot of sketches, some of which I still have.
I'd go out in the village and sketch and stuff like that in the
afternoon. It's very pretty country. England is beautiful country. I
hadn't been there very long-- In the evening, the only thing to do was
to go to the pub, the local pub. And at the pub, which mostly men
frequented--although some women went to the pub--they played darts, and
you talked, and you drank ale or stout.
HENDERSON:
This is with the local English people?
KENNARD:
With the local English people and with our own soldiers, too. And one
day I was talking with an architect in my company named Ed Young. He was
from Seattle. A black architect. Of course, all of our troops were
black. And he was pretty well read, too. So we got to talking, and I
mentioned that I had just finished reading Thomas Paine's The Age of
Reason. There was an Englishman just sitting a couple of seats from me,
a very distinguished-looking guy, and he broke into the conversation. He
said, 'I'm an heir of Thomas Paine"--you know, I don't know how long
before that. Way back. I never questioned the validity of it at all. But
I got to talking to him. His name was Ted Simpson, and I got to know him
very well. And through him I got to know a lot about the village. He
invited me into his home. His wife's name was Till [Simpson]. So I would
call them Ted and Till. He was a gardener by trade. But when I went to
his house, he had just an incredible amount of books. They didn't have
any children. I was about twenty-one, twenty-two, maybe. He had to be in
his mid-forties. And we just hit it off. I spent a lot of time in their
home. I'd have tea with them, tea at night, and we'd talk. I would go
over to his house in the evening. Sometimes I could just sit in his
library and read his books. He was very well read. The thing that was
such a tragedy was here was this man that was extremely well read whose
father and grandfather were gardeners, and I always was just shocked at
the fact that here's this guy that's so well read who was still a
gardener in three generations, which is symptomatic of the English class
system. And I talked about it to him a lot. I said, "If you'd have been
in the U.S., there's no telling where you'd have gone because of your
education, just your ability to read so well and to understand the
literature so well,'' because he was an extremely bright guy. I learned
a lot from him. And we got to be very close friends. Naturally, he had
relatives in the village, so I always participated in the social life of
the village. I went to the weddings, I went to the funerals. So it was
kind of like being home.
HENDERSON:
Interesting. There was no friction racial-wise?
KENNARD:
No. He was a very decent man.
HENDERSON:
I mean, say, with the other people in the village.
KENNARD:
No. You know, way back in the villages I found nothing. I'm sure that
they may have-- But they hadn't been in contact with blacks. I was one
of the few-- There were only about eighteen of us at the headquarters,
so there weren't many blacks. And a lot of the guys, they'd go other
places. They'd go into the bigger cities like Romsey and whatnot. So I
stayed around the village. I went into the other cities too sometimes,
but it was nice for me to get to know the English countryside and the
people. And when I came back to the U.S., I corresponded with him until
he died. He sent me books, I sent him stuff. First Till died, and then
he died later. I always hoped that I would have enough money to have him
visit the U.S., but I was struggling through school when I got back,
too. Finally, the letters just stopped and I lost track of him. I don't
know what happened to him. After that, for about the last two months, we
went to Chandler's Ford, which is just north of Southhampton. That was a
staging area for the invasion. That was when [Dwight D.] Eisenhower was
making the various feints to the--
HENDERSON:
To the Germans?
KENNARD:
To France.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
They never knew. Some mornings you'd get up and there'd be just· nothing
but planes all over the place, and you'd think it was the invasion, but
it was not. So Eisenhower kept doing this.
HENDERSON:
And even our own troops didn't know when it was--?
KENNARD:
Oh, no. None of us knew. We never knew. Finally, just before we went
over--see, we were pretty well restricted to that area--they gave us a
chance to go to London and travel. So one weekend I went. A bunch of us
went to London, and we would cat around Piccadilly [Circus] and all that
stuff. But I went there with a bunch of guys, and actually all we were
doing was going from one bar to another to drink, you know, and chasing
the girls. [laughter] And I said to myself, "Now, I may never get back
to London, so from now on I'm going to start traveling alone. 11 So for
many, many weeks, on Friday night I would take the train to London--I'd
just go alone--and I would get into a hotel. And before I went I would
get tickets to some of the plays and concerts and whatnot. The reason
why is because all the great artists were in London. They had fled
Germany and France, so you had some of the great artists. I saw John
Gielgud at the Haymarket Theatre playing Hamlet. There were concerts at
the Cambridge Theatre. So I would get a ticket for Friday night,
Saturday night, Sunday matinee. I got all of those things in. I went to
the Royal Albert Hall, I did all that stuff, because I said, "I may
never get back again." When I had some time, I kind of traveled around,
went hitchhiking around. And sometimes I could get a jeep.
HENDERSON:
You mean you officially got one out of the motor pool?
KENNARD:
Yeah, the officers would let me have a jeep, and I'd drive around
England, because they knew I was studying architecture. So I have a lot
of pictures of a lot of cathedrals, and I drove around a lot, And
onetime was driving down the countryside, and I saw this soldier, an
American white soldier hitchhiking, so I picked him up. It was kind of
fortuitous, because his name was Neal Danielsj and he was an
architectural student at the University of Kansas before he went in. So
we kind of hit it off. And whenever we could--he was in another
company--we'd connect and we'd travel together, and it was kind of
interesting~ I kept in touch with him for many, many years after we got
back and went back to school.
HENDERSON:
Great, great.
KENNARD:
We were finally alerted to go overseas, and we were supposed to go at D
plus eight. See, it was D day-- I can't remember when D day was.
HENDERSON:
It was June 6 [1944].
KENNARD:
Yes, ·June 6. We were all alerted, ready to go. See, what they did was
they would alert three or four similar-type companies, knowing that only
maybe one or two would go.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay. So you were D plus eight. That is, after D day, eight days
later, you would go.
KENNARD:
Yeah, but we didn't know when we were going out.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay. Eight might not have even been days.
KENNARD:
No. No, they said, "You're ready to go, and you be ready to go at any
time." So we were always packed and ready to go. We never knew when we
were going to go. But right after the invasion, when [Franklin D.]
Roosevelt made his famous speech that "under the Supreme Allied Command,
Dwight D. Eisenhower has invaded the Cherbourg Peninsula," we still
thought we would go. They didn't pick us to go. They picked another
company. The commanding officer was Captain Dodd, and I have no reason
to believe this is true, but I've always felt that he had some way of
keeping from going and kept our company from going. He would have been a
lousy commander under pressure because he was just so scared. He didn't
inspire the kind of courage needed. So I figure they either didn't let
him go because they said, "We'd better keep this cat back," or he pulled
some strings. I heard that he had been on Wall Street or something and
had a pretty good job, so he may-But anyway, the company that went, it
was a disaster. Out of 120 people, soldiers and 3 officers, they lost
all officers and 90 people within a few days after they were there.
HENDERSON:
Ouch.
KENNARD:
Because, see, it was a very volatile-- When you're handling petroleum,
you know, one bomb can blow you up.
HENDERSON:
Goodness.
KENNARD:
So the word got back about the company that went instead of us. And to
this day, I don't know. Well, maybe they didn't want blacks to kill
Germans or something likethat. That's always a possibility. And I don't
know how many total black companies went on the initial invasion. Doctor
[H. Claude] Hudson's son, Claude Hudson, who went in the service--!
don't know whether I should say this or not--but anyway, he was very
fair, so he passed and went in as white in the service.
HENDERSON:
Oh, he did?
KENNARD:
Yeah. Elbert [Hudson], my friend, refused to do that. Elbert would not
do that. Elbert was more like his dad, but Claude was more like the
mother, who was very much into white things. [laughter] They'll probably
kill me. [laughter] But he went, and he was killed as an infantryman. He
was an officer. He was killed at D day. So there weren't a lot of blacks
sent over in combat duty. I've always heard, and I have felt pretty
strongly, that they didn't want blacks to get used to killing white
folks. See? And I'll tell you later what happened, why I still believe
that, something that happened later in the service. But, anyway, we did
go over. We finally did go over.
HENDERSON:
To France?
KENNARD:
To France. We were stationed in Le Havre, and they needed more officers.
They knew that I had studied architecture, so they asked me if I'd like
to go to OCS [officer candidate school], and I said, "No, I don't want
to go to OCS." But they offered me what they called a field commission.
And Jerry Jones, my friend, and I were both offered a field commission
which sent us to Darmstadt, Germany, for training. He and I both went
over there. We took the train and went with a lot of other soldiers.
See, there was such a big movement to expand the service, they needed
more officers. So we went over there. I asked for my commission in the
Corps of Engineers. I didn't want to be in the Quartermaster Corps. So I
got in the Corps of Engineers. And I think Jerome, his commission, I
think it may have been in the Quartermaster, I don't know, but he got a
second lieutenant's position. We went to Darmstadt. And I never will
forget getting off the train in Darmstadt. The very first word I heard
was "nigger."
HENDERSON:
Oh, my goodness. From who?
KENNARD:
I was corning off the train, I was walking with my bags and getting
ready to be picked up, and I was walking by some southern, white
soldiers that were sitting with some German Frauleins, they called them.
And the Fraulein is the one-- See, the soldiers told them what to say,
and she hollered out, "Nigra, nigra." It was very appropriate, shall I
say, that in Germany, in a fascist land, that the very first word I
heard as I stepped on the German soil was a Fraulein prompted by
southern white soldiers calling me a nigger. Anyway, we stayed in
Darmstadt for about six or eight weeks. It had been leveled by the
British RAF [Royal Air Force]. Darmstadt was destroyed in two
fifteen-minute raids--this is before we got there--as a retribution for
the bombing of Coventry [England] by the Germans, and the place was a
mess. I'm telling you, I never saw such devastation in my life. Where
the buildings had collapsed, they were just on the street, and then they
just built the road right up over the stuff. And it smelled terrible
because there were so many dead bodies in the rubble. There were two
places in Germany that were never touched by the bombs. One was
Heidelberg. Heidelberg was beautiful and was completely untouched. And
the other-When I went to ·Frankfurt, Germany, at the I. G. Farben
industry, which was a beautiful industrial plant on the outskirts of
Frankfurt, flowers were blooming. And, of course, that was the deal:
Don't mess up the industries. They were very selective in their bombing.
That's why I felt that the war was so political.
HENDERSON:
Oh, really?
KENNARD:
Anyway, we stayed in Darmstadt. It was very dull. We went to class all
day. There was nothing to do at night, nothing. There was a song that--
We had a little tiny 45 rpm record.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay. The tiny discs.
KENNARD:
The little ones. Yeah, the tiny discs.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
And I never will forget, the song was Margaret Whiting's "Moonlight in
Vermont."
HENDERSON:
[laughter] Goodness!
KENNARD:
And Jerry was the only guy with me that I knew, so we spent a lot of
time together.· Sometimes we'd play cards at night, and we'd play that
record over and over and over again, because there was nothing else.
There were no other American songs or anything. And to this day, I mean,
I know every word to the song. [laughter] And I just heard one just the
other day, because I have a compact disc in my car, and it's Willy
Nelson singing it.
HENDERSON:
Goodness.
KENNARD:
And it's very good. It's good.
HENDERSON:
Oh, it is? I would think that would be an unusual combination.
KENNARD:
It is, but it's beautiful. I guess it's because I like the song so much,
and Willie Nelson-- But Margaret Whiting, "Moonlight in Vermont." Every
time I hear that song I think of Darmstadt, Germany, and the damned snow
and the Germans and all that. Then I came back, and I was--
HENDERSON:
When you say "came back," where did you--?
KENNARD:
I was assigned a company. I don't remember the name of it. No, wait a
minute. When I first came over, I didn't go to Le Havre, I went to
Cherbourg.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
I was at Cherbourg and Le Havre. I'd have to get the exact dates for
you. But I was assigned this company. It was an all-black company. I was
a second lieutenant.· It was a Corps of Engineers company. We built
roads and stuff like that. And then I went to Le Havre, and then I went
to Cherbourg, and as an officer I had a real nice apartment in Cherbourg
which kind of looked over the peninsula and everything. So I lived very
good then. As an officer, you lived very good. And then we switched and
went to Le Havre, and I had-- Some of our people were doing security
police stuff. Le Havr·e was off limits. It was extremely dangerous for
Americans. The French didn't like the Americans at all.
HENDERSON:
Really?
KENNARD:
Well, the Americans were very arrogant and treated their women real bad.
I mean, it was really bad. See, the French people protect their women
very much, and up until the girls are eighteen, nineteen, twenty,
they're very well protected. They're never out without chaperones or
anything. Even though there's a lot of freedom among older men and
women, where a man will have a mistress and a woman will have a
lover--that's very common in France--the family. unit is very
sacrosanct.
HENDERSON:
I didn't know that. Okay.
KENNARD:
It's not like in America. As a minister friend of mine [Stephen H.
Fritchman] said, "In France and Europe, the relationships are
simultaneous; in the United States, they're consecutive." [laughter] You
know, you discard them.
HENDERSON:
You get married, you get divorced, you get married, get divorced.
KENNARD:
Just throw them out. It's a throwaway society not only in things but in
relationships. In France it's a very tight family group, and the
children, the girls, are very well protected. So American soldiers came
over there, and they were very rude and obscene to a lot of the women
walking down the street. They felt that there was undue American bombing
in Le Havre, so there was a lot of hostility in Le Havre. They did not
like Americans. They didn't like any of them, but they kind of liked
black Americans a little better. I mean, I've always gotten that
feeling, because they knew we were discriminated against, too. So Le
Havre was off limits. There was a curfew. Like at ten o'clock at night
no soldier could be on the streets; we had to be in. So certain officers
took turns patrolling to see that American soldiers were not on the
streets. And it was tough. I mean, I always carried a .45 [caliber
pistol] with me. We were armed. And I remember one night I was out. a
jeep, and I was patrolling the wharf. was like eleven thirty or twelve
o'clock. I had my driver in It was late. It And I'm driving down on the
wharf, and I-- I had driven down to the end of the wharf because I heard
that there was an American soldier, and we wanted to pick him up and
bring him back, and some of our guys, too. So on the way coming back, I
guess these French guys were waiting for us. So when we were coming
back~- You know, it's like a long pier, So I'm coming back, and here's
these three or four guys standing, blocking the road. So we were kind of
trapped. I mean, I had my driver, and I just had my ,45, So there ain't
no way in the world I'm going to be able to take them on. But they
didn't know I was an officer. So I just stepped out. I put one foot out,
and I just had my hand on the thing. Then I told the guys to get back in
and just go right through them. If they're in the way, I'll hit them.
But that's how dangerous it was in Le Havre, And this is from French
people; it's not Germans, now. I mean, they were tough.
HENDERSON:
You know, my stereotype is that all the French love the Americans. When
American soldiers marched through Paris, there were flowers everywhere
and that kind of thing.
KENNARD:
Oh, yeah. That's not true. Well, anyway, while I was in Le Havre, we
lived in a manor house. I moved from my regular apartment. We lived very
well. Black army officers were still segregated, but we had German POWs
[prisoners of war] serving us food and taking care of us. You get up in
the morning as an officer, and you leave your clothes on the bed and
your shoes there, and when you come back they're all clean. You have a
car. You're served. There was one guy named Joseph who was a former SS
[Schutzstaffel] who was in charge of all the German POWs, and he was a
stone-cold trooper. When he walked into our dining room, he would click
his heels to let you know he was in there, and when he left, he would
turn and click his heels and go out. He was so disciplined. You could
tell him to do anything, he would do it. He was so brainwashed. He
couldn't understand Americans, how crazy we were. But he was a
consummate soldier. I had a very good time in Le Havre, though, because
it was the first time as an officer where you have a real nice place to
stay, you have a car, there's a lot of women. And I never dealt too much
with the local people, but there were black women in the Red Cross, so
we got together and we'd have parties, and it was a lot of fun. I met a
fellow, I don't know how. Oh, I know. There was a black woman who was a
director of the Red Cross, Pat Patterson. She was dating a Frenchman,
Roger Bordelique, nicest guy you ever met. And I got to know him really
well. He was a journalist, former journalism student, who was in the
French underground. They were dating together. And Pat said, "You know,
we ought to go to Paris." And I had a car. So she had a friend that she
set me up with. Roger lived in Rauen, so to drive from Le Havre to
Paris, you'd stop in Rauen. Sometimes we'd stop and see his mother, and
then we'd go on to-Paris. We'd spend the weekend and we'd just see
Paris. He knew Paris. Pat spoke French fairly well, but he just knew
French fluently, so he knew where all the places were. He knew where all
the black-market restaurants were. [laughter) Pat and I had the money,
and the girl I went with was very wealthy. She was from the West Indies,
from Jamaica, and she had a lot of money. So money was not an object. So
we lived very high on the hog.
HENDERSON:
Oh, goodness. You all did Paris.
KENNARD:
We did Paris. I saw France. I mean, I went to Paris almost every
weekend, because there was nothing to do. Friday night you leave and you
go. So that's the good part of the army. Don't let people think that
that's so wonderful, because that's about 5 percent of your whole
experience. The other 95 percent is shit. [laughter) People come back
and they glorify all the good times, but most of-the time it was
dullsville. So I actually stayed the rest of my period of time in the
war-- I was a year in France. I'd go to Belgium. We were in Belgium for
a while. I won't tell you all of the little items, because there are so
many places that Jerry Jones and I used to go. We'd go up to Belgium,
and we'd travel all through France. We'd get together once in a while.
So I saw a lot of it. That's why when my wife [Helen King Kennard] and I
went to Africa I wanted to go back to Paris, because she had never been
there. And she had never been to London. So I had seen so much of London
and Paris, I wanted her just to see it.
HENDERSON:
Out of curiosity, was it very much changed from how you remembered it
right after the war in London, Paris, all these places?
KENNARD:
Some places were the same. You know, the parks are the same, and the
rivers, the Seine and whatnot, but it's built up a lot more. You know,
that was a long time ago. But the tourist places, you know, the Eiffel
Tower and the Louvre, they're all the same. Piccadilly, Hyde Park in
London, they're all pretty much the same. It's not a whole lot
different. But Roger Bordelique got to be a good friend of mine too, and
we corresponded for many, many years after that. Some of the other
people there I don't know what happened to, but he's the one who told me
about the structure of the French family. When my friend from Jamaica
left and Pat Patterson was reassigned, sometimes I'd go to [Paris]
France just with Roger. He had some cousins that were young women close
to my age--eighteen, nineteen--but they never would let me take them out
alone, because he said they will not let them go out. He always had to
be with me, because if they're eighteen or nineteen they're just not
going to let them go, especially with an American soldier. And he said
that the structure-- You know, most people don't realize. They think the
French are real loose, but with their children they're not at all.
They're very, very-
HENDERSON:
They're protective.
KENNARD:
Very, very protective.
HENDERSON:
Okay. I know you told me you were in the Korean War, and that may be
another whole story, a chapter in itself.
KENNARD:
Yeah, this kind of ends that. I mean, there are a lot of anecdotes in
the war that I think are very interesting. One thing I think I should
mention, because I mentioned that I was going to bring it up later,
about the racial problem in the war: When we were in England, it was
during the Battle of the Bulge.
HENDERSON:
Okay. I've forgotten that date, but I'll find it. [December 16,
1944-January 31, 1945 at Ardennes, Belgium]
KENNARD:
Yeah. I don't know. I'm going to bring that stuff back to you today so I
can fill in the dates for you. But we were stationed in England, and a
letter came down from a Lieutenant General [John C.H.] Lee, who was
adjutant to General Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Americans were getting
their ass kicked in the Battle of the Bulge, and, you know, they never
wanted black American soldiers to fight on the front lines to kill
Germans. I mean, there were very few black Americans fighting in the
infantry in World War II. I mean, there were a few people from the
Tuskegee Airmen. Very few. Not on the front lines. They served, but they
weren't up there where they were going to take a potshot at a German. So
I was a first sergeant then. The deal came through, and it said--I
almost remember it word for word--"To all colored servicemen: Now we
will give you a chance to fight and die alongside your white comrades."
And then it went on to talk about how they wanted you to volunteer for
training and all that kind of stuff. So I called all my guys together--!
was first sergeant-and I said, "Now, you can go if you want, but my
suggestion is, when the going gets tough, let the white boys figure it
out. Let them fight it out.'' Soon after that-- I was going to send the
article to the Pittsburgh Courier, because I thought it was just so
racist. But within a few days, a directive came from Eisenhower's
command to destroy that memorandum. I guess it got so much flak. You
know, all of a sudden the going gets tough, "You can get out there and
kill yourself now." [laughter] I don't think any of our guys
volunteered. And I went into the hospital for tonsillitis, a
tonsillectomy, and I was there during the Battle of the Bulge, in the
hospital. And you should have seen the people, those soldiers, coming
through.there. Man, they were wiped out. They were bringing those white
soldiers in. They got caught in that pincer movement. Just several
injured. And a lot of them lost their lives.
HENDRESON:
When we had ended the last session, you were still in Europe, or you
were talking about coming back to the United States. This had been after
the Battle of the Bulge. You had been in the hospital and seen
casualties come in from the Battle of the Bulge. What I wasn't clear on
was the process of how you got back to the U.S. and what date you were
coming back.
KENNARD:
Oh, of course, I was in a long time after the Battle of the Bulge. I got
out in June of 1946.
HENDRESON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
Thirty months overseas.
HENDRESON:
And coming back from Europe, you didn't come back on the Queen Mary or
anything significant?
KENNARD:
No, no. No, I came back on a ship, but it was a little small ship.
HENDRESON:
And you came back to where in the U.S.?
KENNARD:
We docked in New York and took the train to Camp Beale.
HENDRESON:
Where is that?
KENNARD:
I think it's up near Sacramento.
HENDRESON:
A question I have about when you were leaving the army is that, at the
time of your separation, were you given any counseling? Or did people
tell you about veterans benefits or say anything to you as you were
leaving the army? Because I've talked to other veterans who said there
was some sort of little ceremony they went through when they were
mustered out.
KENNARD:
Yeah, there may be. I don't remember. I was so anxious to get out of
there that I really don't remember. [laughter] I knew quite a bit about
the GI Bill. So I came home in June of '46, and, of course, I went back
to work right away for [H.] Curtis Chambers, the architect in Pasadena.
HENDRESON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
It was the summer, and he gave me a job. And my mother [Marie Bryan] was
pushing me to go back to university on the GI Bill. I was a little
reluctant because I'd had so much trouble getting a job. You know, I'd
never gotten a job before as a black architect, so I was kind of
discouraged. But as I worked at Curtis Chambers's, he also encouraged me
to go back, which I thought was very nice. So finally, around the end of
August, I said, "Well--" They kind of talked me into going back. So I
went over to 'SC [University of Southern California] to see if I could
get in. I had had two years at Pasadena City College in architecture,
and, of course, that meant I had to go three more years at use. But when
I went over there, the September class was full, so I couldn't get in. I
was walking through the quad at 'SC, and who did I run into but a fellow
that I went to Pasadena City College with, an architect named Calvin
[C.] Straub.
HENDRESON:
Oh, yes. Yes, you've mentioned him.
KENNARD:
He had gotten out of the navy about a year before and he was teaching at
use. He was teaching design. I guess he had gotten out quite a bit
before, because he had gone through school and gotten his degree and
everything, so he probably didn't stay too long in the service. I said,
"I can't get in because it's too late." So he said, "Bob, just a
minute.'' He said, "Let me go and talk to the dean." The dean [of the
Department of Architecture] was Arthur Gallion at the time. He went in
to talk to the dean. Of course, Calvin and I were really top students at
Pasadena City College, and we were good friends, so he must have talked
the dean into it, telling him I was a good student. So finally the dean
called me in, and he said, "Listen, I'll tell you what we're going to
do. We're going to let you start. Cal Straub has talked highly about
you, so we're going to let you start in the fall, September, but you've
got to take sophomore design." See, I couldn't go into junior design. He
said, "But if you make a top grade in- th~ first semester, we will move
you up to where you should be." Well, naturally, I busted my butt. The
guy who was the professor of design was a guy named Clayton
Baldwin--older fellow, nice guy, good instructor. I liked him a lot. I
worked real hard. I got an A in class after that first semester, so that
made me accelerate to where I was. That allowed me to graduate in '49.
And I've always kind of credited Cal Straub with getting me ou~ that
year early just by getting me in, which was kind of nice. I never had
him as an instructor, however. So I went through USC. My grades were
pretty good; I had a pretty good grade point average. And I got into
Scarab, which is a national honor fraternity.
HENDRESON:
I'm not familiar with that.
KENNARD:
Scarab. It's a national honor fraternity. You know, you have to have a
certain grade point average. You don't have to have an A average like
Phi Beta Kappa. See, in architecture, the equivalent of Phi Beta Kappa
is Tau Sigma Delta.
HENDRESON:
Yes, I've heard of that.
KENNARD:
Yeah. Scarab is not quite that level, but you have to have about a
three-point grade average.
HENDRESON:
Oh, at use, the education that you were getting, did you notice it to be
measurably different from what you were getting at Pasadena City
College?
KENNARD:
Oh, yes. Measurably, yes. One of the things- Gallion was a very good
dean. We gave him a bad time--you know how Young Turks are--but he had a
group of very good professors. Garrett Eckbo was teaching landscape,
Clayton Baldwin design, Harry Burge was professional practice. Another
thing that he did, he invited a lot of lecturers, people not only in
architecture but in other fields, to lecture the architects, which
broadened the whole thing, One significant thing that happened to me
that's worth mentioning is that at one time he invited a fellow named
Frank Wilkinson. He was information officer for the city of Los Angeles
housing authority. He spoke to the architects, and he talked about how
architects need to look at social problems more. It's one thing to
design things for very wealthy people 1n corporate America, but we ought
to look at what's happening with the homeless and with poor people and
with housing. And since he was information officer for the housing
authority, he knew it very well. So he invited anybody in the class that
wanted to--and it may have been the whole class, I don't know-- He said,
"Most of you don't know, but within the shadow of city hall, people are
living in abject poverty." And he said, "I want to show you how they're
living." So on a field trip he took us out, and it was true. Just east
of Los Angeles, I mean, within the shadow of the city hall, I remember
he took us to one place where people were living in a garage with a dirt
floor, and, I mean, there were like ten or twelve people living in that
garage, families.
HENDRESON:
Goodness.
KENNARD:
It was really bad. And at that time they were trying to build housing
developments. Those were the days of Nickerson Gardens, Hacienda
Heights, and the whole thing. So they were providing this housing. I got
to know Frank [Wilkinson] very well. I was very impressed with him. So
the last summer before I graduated, I couldn't find a job. Frank
Wilkinson was very much involved in the Citizens Housing Council [CHC],
of which Monsignor [Thomas] O'Dwyer, the monsignor of the Catholic
church, was the chairman. Bob [Robert E.] Alexander was, I believe, the
pr~sident, an architect--and that's how I met Bob. I said, "Well,
listen, I'm not doing a heck of a lot." My dad [James L.] was an
invalid, and I was staying with him. He was in a wheelchair. But I had
the mornings, and I thought, "Well, if you want me to, I'll just come
down there and I'll work for free. I could type very well. So I worked
for the executive director. The executive director was a woman named
Shirley Addleson Siegel. She was a lawyer, probably one of the first
woman lawyers I'd ever met. Just a really lovely woman. Just bright,
very attractive. And I worked for her. Of course, I'd type letters for
her. I was kind of her secretary, you know, just doing everything,
filing and all that stuff. Because I figured, well, Frank Wilkinson had
charged us up and said, "You ought to do something in the social area,"
so I said, "Well, I can--" So all summer long, every morning, I'd go
down there, and I'd type for a half a day, and I'd work on odd jobs the
rest of the day. Then, when I graduated, I went out to look for a job. I
had met Helen [King] about a year before. We were engaged in May of '49.
So when I got out, I wanted to get a job, because I wanted to get
married, and I couldn't get married if I didn't have a job, right? Helen
had graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. She had a
degree in social work, and she was working with Aid to Dependent
Children [ADC] for the county of Los Angeles. So she had a job, but I
needed a job, too. So I made a list of ten architects I wanted to work
for. One of them was Richard [J.] Neutra. [laughter] So I went to
Richard Neutra. I just went down the list. I just started calling on
them.
HENDRESON:
How did you make up the list?
KENNARD:
Well, I just knew the architects. I made a list of-- You know, Richard
Neutra was on the list, [A.] Quincy Jones was on the list, Bob Alexander
was on the list, you know,a lot of the architects that did Case Study
houses at the time.
HENDRESON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
Kind of the Bauhaus architects. But when I went to Neutra, he had this
kind of European atelier situation where you work for nothing.
[laughter] He said, "You can come and work for me, but I can't pay
you.'' And I said, "Well, I want to get married. I've got to make some
money." So he finally offered me $50 a month, to work, but even in those
days $50 a month couldn't cut it. So another person on my list was Bob
Alexander, and the reason why I went to him next was because he was a
very socially oriented architect. I had gotten to know him at the
Citizens Housing Council, because he used to come in the office a lot.
Be saw me there, and I went into affairs and stuff, and so I got to know
him. He's a very friendly guy. He was just doing some finishing touches
on Baldwin Hills Village, and his office was right there on La Brea
[Avenue]. He had a little office, four or five people. So I walked in
there-- In those days, you don't have an appointment; you just walk in.
HENDRESON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
Yeah. [laughter] You probably should have; I just didn't know any
better. So I walked in, and the secretary, whose name was Mary
Carpenter, said, "Well, I'm sorry, but we don't have anything right now,
and Mr. Alexander is busy." But it was a very small office, four or five
people. When he heard my name, he looked around--his door was open--and
he said, "Don't pay any attention to her, Bob. Come on in."
HENDRESON:
Oh. [laughter]
KENNARD:
In a very joking way,
HENDRESON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
Because he knew me from the Citizens Housing Council, and I guess he
said anybody that would work for free for all summer couldn't be all
bad. [laughter]
HENDRESON:
So volunteering does have its dividends.
KENNARD:
Yeah. I'd never dreamed that would happen. Anyway, this was in June or
July. It was probably July.
HENDRESON:
Jury of '49?
KENNARD:
'Forty-nine, yes. So he said, "Let me see your work, la, la, la." So he
said, "Well, we may have something for you." He said, "Give me a call
back in a couple of days." And I remember almost distinctly it was
either a Tuesday or a Wednesday. So I think Thursday or Friday I called
him back, and he said, "Can you start on Monday?" You know, that was
like nirvana. [laughter] What happened, I found out later, after I was
there, that they had a young guy working for them, I guess, an intern,
who wasn't working out too well, so they let-him go, and I got the job.
[laughter] That was a very interesting job, because it was a small
office.
HENDRESON:
Wait, wait, wait. Before we get into that too deeply, I want to ask you
one thing else about your list. When you were looking for architects to
go work with, you didn't think about talking to Paul [R.] Williams? Was
he on the list?
KENNARD:
I had gone to Paul Williams a long time ago. I think he was on the list.
HENDRESON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
I'm sure he was on the list. But I had gone to him some time earlier,
and he didn't have anything for me; he said he wasn't hiring. But I was
really into more contemporary design.
HENDRESON:
That was part of my question, because he did period houses.
KENNARD:
Yes. I was in more of the Case Study house-type guys or people like Bob
Alexander, who was doing socially important, significant housing. Bob
was doing a lot of housing and some school work and stuff like that. I
did a lot of little things at first, but finally they were-- Bob had
just designed Baldwin Hills [Elementary] School, which was right across
from the Village. It's still there. Disuke Nagano was his designer a
very talented designer. He and Bob had designed the school. Bob was very
much involved in design. So they said, "Well, we'll make you job
captain." They had finished the design, but the working drawings hadn't
started. So they said, "You can help Disuke Nagano finish the design,
and you can work on Baldwin Hills School as a job captain." Of course, I
didn't know anything, and I said, "You know, I've never done a job this
size before." They said, "Well, don't worry. We have a guy here, Bob
[Robert] Pierce, who is just a very sharp production guy." Really nice
guy. They said, "If you have any problems, you just ask Bob, and he'll
help you through it." And he guided me through it. Of course, the
building was right around the corner, too, and later on, when we
finished the drawings, I went over there on rriy lunch hour, and I could
watch this job go up, which was exciting to me. I mean, here I am
drawing it, and then the building's going up, and you just can't believe
it. You know, you can find out all the mistakes you made. [laughter] But
Bob Pierce-- They had a couple of other people working for them, but the
two key people were Bob Pierce and Dike Nagano. Bob Pierce more in
production. Bob Pierce was a guy who-- He smoked a pipe. He didn't talk
much; he was a very quiet guy. I remember he said, "More people should
smoke pipes. They won't talk so much." [ laughter] We got to be very
good friends. He loved to cook. He was a bachelor, and he was just a
very good cook. So he invited us over to his house a lot. It was a very
social office. Helen and I and Bob [Alexander] and his wife [Jeannie
Alexander] would go out to dinner. It was very much like a family.
HENDRESON:
Sounds real nice.
KENNARD:
Mary was the secretary. We had a lot of good times. We worked from nine
to six. Bob liked to drink beer, so at five o'clock--since we'd work
from nine to six- He always had beer in the little refrigerator. So at
five o'clock it was always okay if you just went and got a beer. I
didn't drink a whole lot, but sometimes at five o'clock-- The day was
over, but it wasn't over for us. We still had till six o'clock. I guess
he figured we couldn't get plastered till after the hour was over.
[laughter] And I worked on several jobs. One of the very interesting
jobs I worked on was a planning job in Madras, India, and I did some
work under his direction and worked with a woman that he knew from
India. He did a lot of early regional planning. While I was there he was
offered a huge job. He was either the president or a member of the [Los
Angeles] City Planning Commission.
HENDRESON:
I think he was just a member.
KENNARD:
He was a member. He was very close with Frank Wilkinson, they were good
friends, because he had been on the Citizens Housing Council with Frank.
Very much involved in low- and moderate-income housing. He got this huge
job. It was the largest redevelopment job ever commissioned in the
United States.
HENDRESON:
That was what turned out to be Chavez Ravine?
KENNARD:
Chavez Ravine. But for some reason they would not give it to Bob alone.
They wanted another architect, and I think they wanted a "name"
architect. He hadn't been in practice that long, and he didn't have a
lot of work to show, so they wanted him to joint venture. Well, by that
time I had gotten my license, and, of course, he wanted to get me in it,
because naturally he'd have more contr·o1 if I was in it. Of course,
they wouldn't buy me.
HENDRESON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
So I think he talked to Quincy Jones, and he couldn't sell Quincy Jones.
So that's how Neutra got into it, because Neutra was a big name. They
teamed up on this job. As a result, they actually formed a partnership.
It was Neutra and Alexander. The work, the beginning planning work, was
going to be in Neutra's house. He had a studio there.
HENDRESON:
Yes, his famoushouse.
KENNARD:
Yes, his famous house on Silver Lake [Boulevard]. He had a garage--it
was a very nice garage, and he used it as a kind of a study--and they
set up this space in his garage. It was really a nice space, because it
had windows in the door of the garage. They hired Si [Simon] Eisner, who
was professor of planning at USC and had been my instructor, and they
hired me to go over and work on it. For a while it-was only Si Eisner
and myself, and then finally they hired an architect named Hector Tate.
The three of us worked on this job. It was very confidential. We
couldn't talk about it because the real estate lobby was trying to kill
it. They didn't want to have such nice housing for poor people; you
know, it would mess up the whole market. [laughter] It was unusual,
because here I had tried to work for Neutra, and now I was able to work
for him, but I was making a salary, some kind of decent salary.
HENDRESON:
Did you have a lot of interaction with Neutra on the project?
KENNARD:
Oh, yeah, a lot of it. Neutra was a tremendous designer. I learned so
much from him. Very difficult to work for, just almost impossible to
work for, but he was nice to me. But every morning at eight or eight
thirty he would come in the office, and he would bring schemes and
sketches. The whole site-- It would have been just an incredible project
because of the hillside of Chavez Ravine. He designed it in such a way
that they had one bedroom, two bedrooms, three bedrooms, four bedrooms,
and .five bedrooms. But there were some buildings that were actually
three stories. [sketching] There would be a road here.
HENDRESON:
On top of the hill?
KENNARD:
There'd be a road on top of the hill, and then he would have a
three-story building. You'd walk into this level-
HENDRESON:
Okay, in the middle level.
KENNARD:
Yeah, and then you'd walk-down to this one. This could be a two-story
townhouse.
HENDRESON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
And then you'd walk up to this, and this could be two stories.
HENDRESON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
So you had a situation in which you had a five story building with no
elevator that you could just walk in.
HENDRESON:
That's a nice sketch. That's a nice idea.
KENNARD:
Isn't that a nice idea?
HENDRESON:
That's using the hillside.
KENNARD:
That's using the hillside. You'd come in at the middle one, and you
would walk up. So five stories and no elevator. I mean, just incredible.
So what I did is he would give me some ideas, and then I'd work them
out. And Hector Tate would work them out. I did two things. I worked on
the master plan with Eisner. Eisner was doing the master plan. I would
draw a lot of the master plan. I also worked on the buildings with
Hector Tate, who was a licensed architect.
HENDRESON:
Oh, really?
KENNARD:
Oh, yeah. Sometimes he'd stay up half the night, and he'd sketch, and
he'd be doing some schemes. I would leave at five, and I would leave my
work for him.
HENDRESON:
Out for him to look at.
KENNARD:
He would take it and he would fool with it. It was really his studies
that I had refined. Then he'd look at them again, and he'd see something
different. But by eight thirty the next morning he would have sketches
and little vignett~ sketches and all kinds of stuff where he had been up
half the night working. He was just a consummate architect. I remember
one time-- This is very interesting. To show you what-- He taught me a
lot, and he had a strict vernacular of design.
HENDRESON:
What do you mean by "strict vernacular"?
KENNARD:
Well, I mean, see, he was Bauhaus. He worked with [Walter] Gropius and
[Ludwig] Mies van der Rohe, and he was strictly from the Bauhaus. So
what the Bauhaus did was they took an idea and constantly refined it.
HENDRESON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
If you'll notice, his work is very similar, but it's a constant refining
of the thing.
HENDRESON:
Refining, okay.
KENNARD:
It's not as artsy as some of the architects now, where they just can do
some very unusual things. Neutra's work had a simplicity and a
singleness of purpose that was kind of strictly Bauhaus style. But there
are two things he taught me. He said, "One thing--" He wrote a book
called Mystery and Realities of the Site, and I'll tell you, it's a
wonderful book. You should read it.
HENDRESON:
Mystery and Realities of the Site?
KENNARD:
Yes, right. I'm pretty sure that's the name of it. I loaned it to
somebody and never got it back, like so many books. But he was very
conscious of the relationship of the building to the site. The other
thing that he was very perceptive about-- When he walked into a room,
and he designed the room, he'd always think about what you were going to
see when you got into the room.
HENDRESON:
The first thing?
KENNARD:
First thing. You would never go into a room like this where there's a
door over there. You'd never do it. Not in a Neutra house.
HENDRESON:
Oh.
KENNARD:
He'd never do that, because that's not a good thing to look at if the
door's open. [sketching] I mean, if he was going to do it, he would do
this, and then he'd put the door there, so you'd see somethin~ there.
Also, Neutra liked surprises. When you walked in, he never liked to see
that you saw the whole house in one shot. [sketching] I mean, you go
here. If there was something happening down here, you'd just get a
glimpse of it. Then you moved here and then you moved here. Have you
seen his house on Silver Lake?
HENDRESON:
I haven't been in it in years.
KENNARD:
Well, you go in, you look out, and then all of a sudden you see this
garden right in the middle. There's a garden all the way around. So
everywhere you look, the relationship of the house to the garden is very
significant, so that the house is a technological thing-
HENDRESON:
But set in this garden.
KENNARD:
--that relates to the outside. All of his houses are that way. They're
very nice.
HENDRESON:
What I remember from his house at Silver Lake were these mirrors in
places that would confuse me. It made the house seem a lot more open and
airy and a lot-
KENNARD:
Oh, yes. He would take a mirror, and you would never see where the
mirror stopped. The mirror would go up to the ceiling over here. There
was no ridge in it. It made the house look huge and big. And if he had a
cabinet like this-- [sketching]
HENDRESON:
You're wonderful to do all these drawings. [laughter]
KENNARD:
See, he would do this. In many cases he would maybe take the window
right down to the top like that.
HENDRESON:
With no [back]splash, no reveal, no nothing?
KENNARD:
Maybe he may have just a little wood [back-] splash. He would do that a
lot. It was very clean and neat. It was all like [Piet] Mondrian's
painting.
HENDRESON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
Mondrian was a Bauhaus painter. One time--I never will forget--I was
designing a kitchen. [sketching] I'll draw the-- The kitchen-- You know
how a kitchen comes like this?
HENDRESON:
That's the usual kitchen. That's a "U" shape in your drawing, yes.
KENNARD:
I don't remember if that's that way, but I remember there was a
refrigerator right here.
HENDRESON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
The refrigerator's right there. And I know that right here there were
some cabinets, and there was a door right there.
HENDRESON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
From the service area or whatever. So I had the cabinets stop here when
I handed him the picture. And he. asked me, "When you come in here, what
are you going to see?" And I said, "I'm going to see the side of this
refrigerator, which isn't too bad." He said, "No, what you're going to
see is the crack behind the refrigerator, which is going to be full of
dirt and gunk." [laughter] [sketching] So what he did, actually, if he
had the cabinet go like that, he would put a little short wall like
that, and then the refrigerator would sit like that.
HENDRESON:
And hide the refrigerator?
KENNARD:
Yes.
HENDRESON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
You'd see the front of the refrigerator, but you would not see that.
There would be a little wall there.
HENDRESON:
My goodness.
KENNARD:
I mean, what it taught me is that when you're designing, look at what
you're going to see when you come into the room. I never forgot that in
design. I mean, it was a very critical thing to me.
HENDRESON:
That's a certain visual awareness that's very sensitive.
KENNARD:
It's a visual awareness, yes. I never worked on many of his houses, but
I used to visit the houses. He had another person-- John Fisher was
working on a lot of his houses then. But I always visited the houses
under construction to see them go up, and I learned a lot about-- I
mean, he did some beautiful homes. They were really fantastic homes. And
they were all very sensitive to landscaping on the site. I mean, it was
really a remarkable experience to work for him. I think he and Quincy
Jones were two of the top architects in L.A. at that time. Quincy was a
nice person, too, one of the few architects that would hire blacks in
those days--Bob Alexander and Quincy. They were very good. Carey [K.]
Jenkins [Sr.] worked for Quincy as a designer.
HENDRESON:
Oh, I didn't know that. Okay.
KENNARD:
Jim [James C.] Moore [III] worked for him as a designer in those days
when few architects would hire blacks.
HENDRESON:
This was for Quincy Jones?
KENNARD:
Jim Moore, who was my director of design later on-- You know Jim Moore?
HENDRESON:
I've met him through NOMA [National Organization of Minority
Architects].
KENNARD:
Yes, right. He's a very talented designer. He worked for Quincy Jones.
In those days not many architects would hire blacks, particularly in
design. But Carey was a very good designer.
HENDRESON:
We're still talking about the early fifties?
KENNARD:
Yes, this was '49, '50-- In the end of 1950, when I was at 'SC, I had a
friend who was a lieutenant colonel in the reserves in the National
Guard. His name was Wilbert Fisher. He's an old friend of mine from
Pasadena. I was struggling through 'SC. I didn't have much money, right?
HENDRESON:
Right.
KENNARD:
So I had $75 a month that the GI Bill gave me, I'm living at home, my
sister [Elizabeth King] is kind of helping me--she's working and helping
me stay home and get through school. So Wilbert said to me--I'm at
'SC--he said-- This was way back in '48, now. He said, "Why don't you
join the National Guard? You can make some extra money. It's just one or
two nights a week." I said, "Well, you know, I don't want to get back
into the reserves because I don't want to go back in the army." He said,
"Oh, Bob," he said, "there won't be another war for another twenty
years." [laughter] I could kill him. So what happens?
HENDRESON:
Korea.
KENNARD:
I'm in the reserves. In comes the Korean War.
HENDRESON:
Golly.
KENNARD:
So sometime around September 1950 I'm in great shape. I'm working at
Neutra and Alexander, I'm having a ball, just loving it. Helen and I had
just rented an apartment from my brother-in-law [Carl King]. I had fixed
it all up.
HENDRESON:
Oh, where was that apartment? What neighborhood?
KENNARD:
On Hillcrest Drive near Adams [Boulevard]. Hillcrest between Adams and
Washington [Boulevard]. I had fixed it up like architects do, real
cheap, with hemp rug on the floor and [Jorge] Hardey [butterfly] chairs
and painted it really nice. All summer long I had worked on that sucker,
and then in September I got a notice that I had to go into the service.
HENDRESON:
Ouch.
KENNARD:
So Bob Alexander did what he could to try to get me deferred because I
was working on housing and so on, but I couldn't get deferred. So in '51
I went into the service. And that's a whole new story.
KENNARD:
I was a second lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers, so they sent me to
Fort Lee, Virginia, for training to get back into it. So I was in
training--! can't remember how many weeks it was--and there I met an
officer, a black officer, named Carey Redrick. He was from New York. We
got to be pretty good buddies. He and I were both militant.
HENDERSON:
[laughter] What do you mean by militant?
KENNARD:
Well, we just didn't want-
HENDERSON:
You didn't want to be there.
KENNARD:
We didn't want to be there. For one thing, we had served in World War
II. Secondly, we didn't like the segregation on the base.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
Because although we were officers, they had separate facilities for
black officers and separate for whites, and naturally the white
officers' quarters were very nice. So we decided that we were going to
fight it. So at dinnertime or lunchtime or whatever, mainly dinnertime,
we would go over to the white officers' dining room and we would get in
line to go in. We very seldom went together; he'd go one night and I'd
go another. And there was a reason why we did that. I'd go, I'd stand in
line, and, of course-- It was just like a regular restaurant. The
hostess came up and she'd take your name, and you'd stand and you'd wait
to be seated, see. But they would never seat you. They'd just keep
taking people in front of you, even people that came after you. Well,
fortunately all the cooks, waiters, waitresses were black, so I wasn't
afraid to eat there, because I didn't want them to mess with my food.
[laughter] So if they didn't take me, I would just walk in and sit
somewhere. Well, naturally the waitresses and waiters were black. They'd
come and serve me.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
See? But then sometimes, if there was no seat, I would come--they were
all officers, white officers--I'd just come and sit down. I'd come up to
a table, there would be two or three white officers, and I would say,
"Is this seat taken?" Naturally it's not, so I'd sit down.
HENDERSON:
Wow.
KENNARD:
It was very embarrassing to them. [laughter] But a lot of people working
there were "rah-ing" me on. They knew what we were doing. So every time
there was any discrimination, we would challenge it. So finally, to show
you how the service is-- My point is they were violating the executive
order of Harry [SJ Truman]
HENDERSON:
Harry Truman had issued that order at that time? Okay.
KENNARD:
It was unsegregated service, so it was a violation of the order. By the
way, when I went down there, see, I said, "I'm not going to go--" When I
first went in the service, I flew down there. When I came back to get my
wife, I drove my car. I had a 1949 Oldsmobile, so it was a nice
car--fast V-8 [engine]. I drove my car down there, and officers could
have their car, so I always had a car, because I wasn't going to be back
in the South again without a car.
HENDERSON:
[laughter] I forget, Virginia is South.
KENNARD:
You'd better believe it. So they realized I was kicking up a little bit
of BS, So one day, [knocks on table] it was just like the damned
gestapo. They called me in. They tapped me on the shoulder and they
said, "The commandant wants to see you." So I go over to the commandant.
When I walk in there, it's like a fucking court-martial. I mean, here's
a lieutenant colonel, colonel, there's a woman taking--
HENDERSON:
Taking notes?
KENNARD:
Taking notes and everything. And at that time I was taking a lot of
liberal papers. I think I subscribed to the Daily Worker and everything.
It didn't matter to me. [laughter] You know, I didn't care if they
kicked me out anyway. So they called me up and they said, "You seem to
have problems here." And they were taping everything. [taps fingers to
mimic typing] Everything was being taped with a court reporter thing. So
they said, "You seem to be having problems." And I said, ''Yes, because
you are in violation of the president's executive order. You have no
right to segregate this camp. I'm an officer in the United States Army,
and I'm not going to be segregated." So it was a very racist bunch of
bastards. They said, "Well, what do you want to do?" I said, "Well, as
long as I'm staying here in Fort Lee, I am not going to respect that
order." Well, very shortly thereafter-- And they called Redrick in, too,
Carey Redrick. The next thing we knew, we were transferred. We were
transferred to Camp Atterberry, Indiana, Carey ·and I both in the same
company. He was a first lieutenant, so he was in charge of the company,
and I was a second lieutenant. But it was a segregated company, all
black. So I was really pissed at them. I started writing letters.
HENDERSON:
Oh, my goodness ..
KENNARD:
I started writing letters. You know, I could type, and I could just
write some letters. We were sent to Southern Pines, North Carolina, on
maneuvers. I still had my car. And one day I said to Carey Redrick, who
was my commanding officer, "Would you give .. me a three day pass?" See,
they wouldn't give me any leave. And they couldn't send me overseas
because I had thirty months overseas in World War II, and it went on
points. But Carey Redrick had only had seven or eight months, so they
shipped him out. He had orders to leave and he had to go to Korea. So I
said, "Carey, before you leave, do me a favor." He was the commanding
officer; he was my captain in charge. I said, "Would you give me a
verbal order"--that's possible--"to give me three or four days? I want
to go to the Pentagon." I had been writing to the Council on Minority
Affairs. I had called them, and I set up an appointment so I could meet
them. And Carey said, "Yes, I'll be happy to do it." So I got in my car,
and I drove up to Washington, D.C., and I went to the Council on
Minority Affairs, and I told them. I said, "This is ridiculous. I'm
going to bust it wide open in the papers. I mean, I had no reason to be
in a segregated company. I mean, this is a violation. It's ridiculous."
So they duly reported on it. Most of them were black. I don't know what
happened, but about two or three weeks after that, I got a call from the
commandant. It said, "Be at Fort Bragg at two o'clock on--" I remember
it was a Saturday. "Be at Fort Bragg at two o'clock on Saturday. We want
to talk to you." So I drove over to Fort Bragg. I go in there. They sit
me down in this waiting room, they make me wait for about an hour, and
then finally a guy comes in, and he takes me in just a little tiny
interview room. It's like where you interview a prisoner. It's a little
table, and he has a tape recorder, and he's sitting there. What
happened, they had had me under surveillance, and I had been active in
some organizations that they thought were subversive. One of them was
the American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born. David
Hyun, who was an architect here-- You've probably heard of him.
HENDERSON:
David--?
KENNARD:
David Hyun. He was a Korean architect here in L.A. He was a very
liberal-- He fled Korea before the Korean War, and they were trying to
deport him. If they had deported him, he'd have been killed. It was
tough. So a lot of us who were members of the American Committee for the
Protection of the Foreign Born were trying to keep him from being
deported. One of these people was Frank Wilkinson and some of the people
who were more liberal people. So that was one thing. Then they'd heard
the letter that I wrote. I had written a letter, which I can give you a
copy of, that I wrote to the inspector general complaining about
discrimination in .. the armed service. I still have a copy of the
letter. And they said, "You wrote to the inspector general, you did
this, you did that." They were interrogating me. The thing that was
interesting: This racist son of a bitch forgot and said to me, "Was your
mother white?" You know, that was just a no-no for a black to have
married a white woman. That was his implication. So I said, "What's that
got to do with it?" Then he realized what he had said, so he said, "Just
scratch that. I'll take that off the tape." If that was on the tape, it
would have been very damaging, because what's that got to do with it?
HENDERSON:
Nothing at all.
KENNARD:
Nothing at all. So they interrogated me, and I came back, and about a
week later I got orders to leave. It was a good assi~nment. I guess they
said, "I'm going to shut this fool up.'' [laughter] They sent me to the
engineers center, Fort Belvoir [Virginia], to be an instructor on
construction principles and job management. See, I had gotten my license
by then. I had gotten my license in '51, and this was about June of '51.
So I got this job. What I was doing, being an architect, I was teaching
construction principles, job management. You know, they had a lesson
plan for me. And most of the people, they were majors and captains and
first lieutenants and lieutenant colonels who were coming back into the
corps, and we were bringing them up to speed on what had happened since
World War II.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
So I was a teacher there. The interesting thing is that-- In my section,
which was an education section, the captain who was my commanding
officer was a fellow named David Yarborough. He was the brother of
Senator Ralph [W.] Yarborough of Texas.
HENDERSON:
Oh, yes. I've heard of Yarborough.
KENNARD:
They were liberal. They're very nice guys. David was a captain, I was a
second liuetenant. I heard that I was under surveillance in the class
all the time. There was always a plant in my class to see that I was not
being subversive. [laughter] One day, Captain Yarborough called me in,
and he s·aid, "There's a couple of people here to see you." And I knew
it was the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation]. I mean, I just knew.
You can tell. You know, they just smell like it. [laughter] So they come
in-- This is the funny thing. [laughter) It's so funny. They had been
intercepting all my mail and everything, and I was taking the Daily
Worker, which was a communist paper. I wasn't a member of the party, but
I was taking all of this left-wing-
HENDERSON:
This left-wing stuff.
KENNARD:
Left-wing stuff. And they took me in a little room, and they started
interrogating me. They were asking me about all my architect friends,
some of my liberal architect friends back in L.A. Well, it turns out
that there was one architect-- What's his name? There were two
architects. Wes Bonenberger and Al Boeke. Anyway, when I left I had been
doing some little work on the side, some interior work. I was right in
the middle of it. So I asked Bonenberger if he would finish the job for
me. I made a list of all the furniture that I had wanted to order for
this thing, and it had numbers: X,6,Y,4 and all this. [laughter] So he.
asked me, "Do you know Bonenberger?"-. I said, "Yeah, I know
Bonenberger.'' They were trying to decipher this. They said they thought
this was some kind of communist code. [laughter] I thought that was so
funny. So I told them,"This is ridiculous," I said, "You're up here
spending taxpayers' money dealing with this kind of stuff," I wouldn't
answer any of the questions. I was very insolent, because I really
wanted them to kick me out of the army, anyway.
HENDERSON:
Oh, my goodness.
KENNARD:
And I said, "You know, have you been down to Richmond, Virginia?" We
were stationed at Belvoir then. I said, "Have you looked at the poverty
and the stuff that's happening here, and you're sitting here wasting
this kind of money? I think that's absolutely ridiculous."
HENDERSON:
That took some guts.
KENNARD:
Well, I didn't care.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
See, actually, I was hoping they would just kick me out of the army. I
mean, it couldn't have been better for me. My wife had gone back. She
had gotten pregnant, and we were moving all around on maneuvers, so she
couldn't do that. So I had sent her home to Tulare [California] to live
with her mother [Grace D. King]. So here I had only been married about a
year and a half, and I'm a bachelor again. I didn't like that. I was
ticked off, you know. So it was really bad. But Belvoir was nice. If you
had to be anywhere, Fort Belvoir near Washington, D.C., is nice. I had
an aunt [Marguerite Bryan] there who was very nice to me. It's a pretty
town.
HENDERSON:
I've got one question to ask before we quit. I read in Robert
Alexander's oral history [Architecture, Planning, and Social
Responsibility] that in his office in the early days there were a lot of
Bobs. There were four or five or three or four Bobs. Do you remember
that? Do you remember all the different Bobs?
KENNARD:
Yeah. Well, there was Bob Alexander, Bob Pierce, and Bob Kennard.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay. So it was three.
KENNARD:
There was Dick Creddick and Dike Nagano. I don't think there were any
other Bobs. There may be one that was there after I left. I just got a
note from Bob [Alexander] the other day. There was an article on Village
Green.
HENDERSON:
In the L.A. Times?
KENNARD:
Yes. And I ran into Elaine Jones, Quincy's wife, and she said, oh, she
didn't see it. I said, "Well, I'll call him and I'll get a copy." So he
sent me a little note and sent me a copy, and then I sent it over to
Elaine. She wrote me a real nice letter. Do you know Elaine?
HENDERSON:
I've met her, but we haven't talked a lot.
KENNARD:
She's a really nice person. You'll like her a lot. There are a few more
interesting things which I'll continue later.·
HENDERSON:
I found this in the library. This is the book you had talked about,
Mystery and Realities of the Site [by Richard J. Neutra].
KENNARD:
Yes.
HENDERSON:
And I didn't have time to look at all the text, but I was looking at
some of these pictures, and especially this one, which had the counter
which was like what you were describing in our last session.
KENNARD:
Yes.
HENDERSON:
And I see there is no backsplash, there's no reveal, there's no nothing.
KENNARD:
There's no backsplash, no nothing.
HENDERSON:
But it's well detailed.
KENNARD:
I'm sure it is. That's the way he did it.
HENDERSON:
You know, you can see the wall go right across.
KENNARD:
Yeah. He did that in many houses. This may be the house up in Mount
Washington. I'm not sure, but it looks like that, because I remember
that. I did one similar in my bedroom, but I did have a splash. I didn't
like to have a window coming down to the cabinet.
HENDERSON:
All the way.
KENNARD:
They have a tendency to break.
HENDERSON:
Oh. Did you design your own home?
KENNARD:
Yes.
HENDERSON:
Okay. Eventually I want to take a look at that one. [laughter]
KENNARD:
Yes, I'll be glad to have you.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
It was my Neutra period, so it's similar to his stuff. But it's almost
thirty years old now.
HENDERSON:
Okay. We had ended last time talking about your army experiences during
the Korean War.
KENNARD:
Korean War, yes.
HENDERSON:
And you had been interrogated in a small little room.
KENNARD:
At Fort Bragg [North Carolina], yes.
HENDERSON:
No. Was it Fort Bragg? We had gone past that to [Fort] Belvoir
[Virginia]. You were at the engineer's center at Fort Belvoir.
KENNARD:
Oh, yes, at Belvoir, when the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation]
interrogated me.
HENDERSON:
And asked about these furniture numbers. [laughter]
KENNARD:
Yes. I thought that was so funny. That's where we left off. Well, I
don't know whether I told you, but out of every sorrowful or sad
experience, there are always some good things that come out of it. And I
don't know whether I told you that there was a fellow in my company, he
was an enlisted man--I think he was just a PFC [private first class]. He
was in the teaching section at Belvoir. Now, I don't know whether in the
last tape I told you about my friendship with Richard Sommers. Did I?
HENDERSON:
No. No, we did not get to that.
KENNARD:
Okay. It turns out that in the teaching division that I was in at
Belvoir, there were only two people from California. There was myself--I
was a second lieutenant--and then there was a young fellow who was
slightly younger than I. He was in his late twenties. He had gotten into
the [Army] Corps of Engineers, and he was also a teacher, because I
think he had done some development before he came in. Since we were the
only ones from California, we kind of started knocking around together.
HENDERSON:
And he was black also? Or he was white?
KENNARD:
He was Jewish.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
His name was Richard Sommers. We got to be quite friendly. He was
married, and I was married, too, but because my wife was pregnant, she
had gone home and was living with her mother to have our first child.
His wife's name was Dee Dee Sommers. They were very nice to me. It turns
out he was a pretty well-to-do guy. His father had made a lot of money
in the film industry in Hong Kong. So he had a very nice apartment on
the Potomac [River], and he had a boat and all the stuff.
HENDERSON:
That's luxurious.
KENNARD:
So they had invited me to dinner, and I got to be pretty friendly with
them. So we talked about architecture a lot, and he told me, "When I get
out, I want to build a house, and I'd like you to do- it for me." And I
didn't think much of it; I didn't think that would ever happen. But we
kind of stayed in touch. And when I got out, I tried to go back to
Neutra and Alexander, where I worked, but since I was coming back--I had
worked for [Robert E.] Alexander and I had worked for Neutra--Neutra
didn't want to pay me what I was asking. So now that it was a
partnership, both partners had to agree. I didn't want to just jump into
any firm, so I got a temporary, ninety-day appointment in the city of
L.A. [Los Angeles City Department of] Parks and Recreation. I was a
draftsman working under an architect named Martin Fuller. Our offices at
that time were in the second floor of the building overlooking the
swimming pool in Griffith Park. You know where that is? At Los Feliz
[Boulevard] and Riverside Drive.
HENDERSON:
I'm aware of where the streets meet, and there's a fountain there.
KENNARD:
There's a fountain.
HENDERSON:
But I don't know about the building.
KENNARD:
Right across the street there's a big Spanish building, and there's a
swimming pool. You know, it's a public pool.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
And our offices were up above. I had a ninety-day appointment, and I
started working there, and I was just so bored. [laughter] You know, we
didn't do any of the good stuff. We just did all of the remodeling
stuff. And we were never very busy. I just couldn't deal with it. I
mean, it just seemed like the day went so slow. And I probably shouldn't
say this, but--we'd go out to lunch, Martin Fuller and I would go out to
lunch, and we'd usually bring our lunch' most of the time, and we'd sit
in the park up on the lawn. We'd eat lunch, and sometimes we'd take an
hour and a half, two hours for lunch. Finally I went to Martin and I
said, "I'm so bored." I said, "Can't you give me something to do of
interest?" Well, there wasn't anything really of interest. I said,
"Listen, I've got a ninety-day appointment, " so I said, "I thought I'd
look for a job." So I began looking for another job. Well, some friends
of mine worked for Daniel, Mann, Johnson, and Mendenhall [DMJM]. I was
active in the Architectural Panel, and there was a young woman there, a
Zelma [G.] Wilson--she was an architect who went to 'SC [University of
Southern California]--and another architect named Walt [Walter W.]
Beeson, who also went to 'SC. They knew me, and they knew I had done
very well at 'SC.
HENDERSON:
Oh, when you say Architectural Panel--
KENNARD:
The Architectural Panel was a support group. It was a discussion group.
A bunch of young architects would get together once a month and discuss
architecture. Sometimes we'd have a lecture. We'd always bring in some
prominent lecturer, Gregory Ain or Garrett Eckbo or somebody like that,
and we'd do field trips and whatnot. It was just kind of a networking of
architects that were interested in contemporary architecture.
HENDERSON:
Sounds exciting.
KENNARD:
It was very nice. It was very good. And we were liberal, and we took a
lot of social positions in the architectural community. So they told me
that there was an opening at DMJM. DMJM was growing. They had about
eighty people, and they were growing really fast. But DMJM, although
they had Asians on staff, they had never had a black architect. And the
understanding I had--and I can't confirm it--was that the partnership was
divided as to whether they wanted a black architect. But the fellow who
was operations manager, who was not a partner then, was Teff [Tevfik K.]
Kutay. He was a Turkish architect and had gone to [University of
California] Berkeley, a very, very bright guy. They thought he was
amenable and that he would fight for me if he met me. So I had had a
good record at Neutra and Alexander, I had been a good student at 'SC,
so I was interviewed, and they hired me. So I was the first black
architect ever to be hired by DMJM. But I had a ninety-day appointment
with Parks and Recreation, so I couldn't leave till my ninety days were
up.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
I had about forty-five days left. In the meantime, they also interviewed
another black architect, a friend of mine who I studied for the state
board with. His name is Rolland [H.] Cooper. Do you know Rolland?
HENDERSON:
No, I don't.
KENNARD:
Yeah, Rolland Cooper. Very nice guy, really neat guy. So Rolland was
hired, and although I was the first hired, he came to work before I did*
So when I did come, there were only two black architects. That was in
1952, and Rolland just retired this month.
HENDERSON:
Wow.
KENNARD:
And he moved up very high. They sent him all over the world, to Japan
and France. He's been all over for them. In fact, I just called him the
other day and congratulated him and said, "We need to have lunch and
break bread and celebrate your retirement." He's still a consultant to
DMJM. That's how they do; they keep them on as a consultant.
HENDERSON:
Which is pretty good. That's semi-retirement.
KENNARD:
Yes. So I started at DMJM. I worked in the design department under a guy
named Tom Chino, and then I did some job captain work for Walter Beeson.
I learned a lot there, and I moved up into management. What happened is
that they were growing so big that they made me understudy to a very
senior project manager named Visscher Boyd. He handled all the Central
California work: Paso Robles, Atascadero, Arroyo Grande, Santa Maria,
all those schools. So I used to go up with him, being his kind of
understudy. It turned out that later on I actually was handling the
stuff by myself, because they were so busy and growing they gave me the
opportunity.
HENDERSON:
Didn't DMJM become one of the biggest firms in the world?
KENNARD:
They are. Right now I think they're the largest A and E [architecture
and engineering] firm in the United States. I believe they are.
HENDERSON:
I would believe that.
KENNARD:
Yeah, I'm pretty sure.
HENDERSON:
They're somewhere in the top five.
KENNARD:
Yeah, they're very high. If they're not number one, they're close. The
partner that I worked for was a guy named Art Mann, Arthur [E.] Mann.
HENDERSON:
Oh, Art Mann.
KENNARD:
Art Mann handled all the schools. He loved to design stuff like that. He
was really very interesting, and he helped me a great deal. I never will
forget the first time--I was handling a job for Manhattan Beach.
Actually, Walt Beeson was handling it, but Walt was so busy that they
turned the job over to me, and I was supposed to design and be kind of
assistant project manager. And Walt and I wanted to do a lift-slab
concrete school. Of course, they were state-aided jobs, and it was hard
to make the budget. But I went down there with Walt Beeson, and we sold
the district on doing this lift- slab, tilt-up concrete school. Well,
when the partners found out about it, I heard that they had a big
powwow, because they figured we'd never make the budget. And it was
true; we didn't make it. But before that, I remember one time, one
night, I had to go down and make the presentation to the school board,
and it was the first presentation I'd ever made, and Art Mann was going
with me. But although he was the principal, I had to make the big
presentation. I was a nervous wreck. I never will forget, we went down,
and we had dinner before. You know, I'm shaking and I'm nervous. But he
told me something I never forgot which I thought was very nice. He said,
"Bob, I know you're nervous." But he said, "Remember, all we ask of you
is to do the best you can and treat it as if it was your office and it
was your job." And he said, "And if it falls down, at least you did the
best. Nobody will ever fault you for that." And it kind of calmed me
down. I never forgot that. And I told my guys that a lot when they were
the first ones going in, because it kind of relaxes you to know that you
don't have to walk on water. But anyway, to make a long story short, on
that job it went over budget, and we had to do a lot of changes on the
job, and I worked a lot of overtime, which I didn't charge them for,
because I figured I was responsible. I'd come on Saturday and work on
it. During that time, like all architects, I was moonlighting, and one
day I got a call from this fellow Dick Sommers. Dick said, "We have a
lot on Coldwater Canyon [Drive] in Beverly Hills, and we're ready to
build our house." So he said, "I want you to come and meet with Dee Dee
and me about it." So I said, "Okay." Well, his wife wanted to do a
traditional house, you know, a Georgian house or some English Tudor.
Well, I didn't want to do that. For one thing, it was a hillside lot,
and I didn't want them to do that. So I said, "I'll tell you what." I
said, "I don't do that kind of architecture. I don't want to do that
kind of architecture." I wasn't hungry because I had a job. My wife and
I lived on Twenty-ninth Street on the hill just south--you know where
Adams [Boulevard] and Edgehill [Drive] are? Adams and Seventh Avenue?
It's a hill. You know, Adams between Wilton [Place] and Crenshaw
[Boulevard].
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay. Okay.
KENNARD:
And we had an apartment there. It was a very nice little apartment. It
had a nice view. It was only a one- bedroom, but there was a big closet,
and I had made the closet over into a little drafting station. It was
such a small closet that I actually had to open the door and sit in the
doorway to put the drafting table up.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
But I had had it set up so I could do little house remodels and stuff
like that at night and on weekends, because we had one child at the
time, just Gail [Kennard Madyun]. I had a good job. I liked the job a
lot, so I wasn't too hungry to do that. So I said, "But I'll tell you
what. If I can talk you into doing a contemporary house, then I'll do
it." Well, there was a book--and you may have seen this book--written by
somebody by the name of Nelson. I can't remember the first name
[George]. And I used to have the book, but you know how books disappear.
They get loaned and they never come back. It was called Tomorrow's
House. And it took the house room by room and discussed how you design
those rooms from the inside out.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
And I had already gotten a checklist from somewhere, and I still have
the checklist. If you ever do a house, it's a fantastic checklist. It's
a checklist of every room in the house and what people do in the room
and other questions: "Do you have a dog? How many children do you have?
How many animals do you have? Do you like the dog in the house?" All the
kinds of things that lead to a functional house.
HENDERSON:
It's like a prepackaged program.
KENNARD:
Yes, it is. When you interview the owner, you just kind of go down the
list, you know.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
What is their life-style? Do they watch television? Do they entertain
much? All those kinds of things. It gives you an idea of how the house
fits. So I bought this book, and I gave them this book, and I said, "You
know, when you do an English Tudor house, you're not developing it for
your living." And I said, "If you do a contemporary house, it will be
designed just around you." So Dee Dee finally agreed that we could
design the house. So I did this real stark, contemporary house,
[laughter] It was really Bauhaus, a 4,000-square-foot house in Beverly
Hills on a hillside lot. It was the first house I think I did that was
actually built.
HENDERSON:
And it's still up? Do you know?
KENNARD:
Yes, they're still living in it.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay. [laughter]
KENNARD:
It was built in about '58, 1958. I thought I was such a smartass that I
did all the engineering for the house.
HENDERSON:
That's tricky.
KENNARD:
Because I had just come out of school, and I had all my books on
engineering. And it was a house that required caissons and grade beams.
HENDERSON:
Especially on a hillside.
KENNARD:
Yes. So I got the house, I designed all the engineering for the house, I
did the entire house, and I went to get a building permit. There were
only three corrections, and they were very minor, and no corrections on
the engineering, because I found out they didn't check it. You know,
they figure if you're a professional, they don't check it. So then I got
nervous. I said, "Here's this big house sitting on a hillside, I'm doing
grade beams and caissons." I said, "I'd better have an engineer check
it." Well, there was an engineer working for DMJM who did some
moonlighting, too, named Steve Johnson. Very nice guy. I said, "Steve, I
want to pay you just to look at the engineering and see if it's okay."
Well, he looked at it, and he said it was pretty good. There was just
one grade beam that was a little overstressed, and he corrected that.
But it was a critical one, because there was a cantilever, and the whole
house sat on this grade beam. So it was probably pretty good that he
checked it. - But that opened me up to doing residences, because then,
when I was promoting another residence, I could take them to see this
house, or I could have them call Dick and Dee Dee Sommers, and they were
a reference. They said they liked working with me, etc. So that's when I
first started doing houses. Later on, of course, T left DMJM and I went
to Gruen [Associates], which is another story. Maybe I can tell you that
next week.
HENDERSON:
Okay. Well, let me ask this question. In working at DMJM, did you have
any problems with your politics? Did they even ask you about what your
politics were? That is, I'm thinking of during the McCarthy era there
was so much of this red scare that I'm just curious, because I don't
know how influential it was in the thinking of, say, people in terms of
them not getting or getting jobs.
KENNARD:
Oh, yeah.
HENDERSON:
This wasn't hurting you?
KENNARD:
There was a problem with DMJM. It didn't affect me. It did affect a
couple of other people who were actually laid off. I can't confirm this,
but I have heard that DMJM had major connections with the federal
government and the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] in overseas
installations. The reason why I think that's probably true- So they were
doing high-security kind of industrial stuff. And I think that they were
looking at the people in the office and where they were. Two people
there were fired. One was Ed Lind, E. Richard Lind, and the other was
Zelma Wilson, my friend. And I believe that it was related to that,
because both of these people were very liberal. Zelma Wilson was married
to a screenwriter named Michael Wilson. Michael Wilson and Zelma and
Helen and I were very close friends. We were very much into a lot of
liberal stuff. I don't believe Michael Wilson was ever a communist, but
he was a Marxist, and he acknowledged that. And he was not a member of
the Hollywood Ten, but he was very supportive of the Hollywood Ten. He
was an unfriendly witness in the House On-American Activities Committee
[hearings] and was blacklisted along with the Hollywood Ten. He was an
incredibly talented screenwriter. He had written Friendly Persuasion.
HENDERSON:
Oh, I didn't know that.
KENNARD:
Yeah. Which, ironically--Ronald [W.] Reagan, when he was in the [Screen]
Actors Guild, was the one that pushed the blacklist. Ronald Reagan was
one of the key people responsible for the blacklist. And it's ironic
that a few years ago, the last year or two Ronald Reagan was president,
he showed one of his favorite films, and it was Friendly Peruasion.
HENDERSON:
Oh.
KENNARD:
I think it was so ironic. I talked to Zelma about this. Here the guy
that wrote it was a guy that suffered because of--Friendly Peruasion, if
you haven't seen it, is a beautiful movie. Gary Cooper was in it. It's
about the Quakers and their nonviolent attitude. They refused to fight
in the war. It's a beautiful movie.
HENDERSON:
I have not seen it.
KENNARD:
Oh, you should. If you ever get a chance to see it, it's beautiful. He
wrote A Place in the Sun, with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift. He
wrote Lawrence of Arabia.
HENDERSON:
Oh.
KENNARD:
Now, Lawrence of Arabia and The Bridge on the River Kwai were written by
Michael Wilson when he was in Paris. You know, to show you the kind of
hypocrisy that the blacklist was, the blacklisted writers still worked,
they just couldn't work in this country. They all left the country, and
they were still writing under assumed names.
HENDERSON:
[laughter] Golly!
KENNARD:
Because, see, the thing about it, it shows you money transcends
politics. If somebody wanted to make money and they wanted a top
screenwriter, they hired Mike Wilson. They were living outside of Paris.
Zelma Wilson left with their children and went over there with him. He
wrote The Bridge on the River Kwai. He never got credit for it, but he
was actually the writer of The Bridge on the River Kwai. He was a
tremendously talented screenwriter. He wrote a wonderful thing that was
kind of the darling movie of the progressive people called Salt of the
Earth.
HENDERSON:
Oh, I've heard of that. I haven't seen it.
KENNARD:
Yeah, he wrote Salt of the Earth and produced it and everything. Zelma
and I, we were close friends for many, many years.
HENDERSON:
I just happened to meet Zelma Wilson last year at a conference. She came
across as a very vibrant, very alive, still a combative kind of person.
KENNARD:
Yeah, she's a very strong lady. I think she was the first woman
architect, also, to be hired by Gruen.
HENDERSON:
Okay. She's now working in Santa Barbara.
KENNARD:
She has an office in Ojai.
HENDERSON:
Ojai, okay.
HENDERSON:
We should review where we left off the last time. You were still at DMJM
[Daniel, Mann, Johnson, and Mendenhall].
KENNARD:
Right. During my time at DMJM, I did mostly school work. But the thrust
of the firm was changing. I think I told you about the partners that
were pulled out of the office and that they were all promoting--Booz,
Allen, and Hamilton had come in to do a management study of them. So Art
[Arthur E.] Mann, who was my partner in charge, was really out
marketing. All the partners were pushed to marketing in order for them
to grow. And in retrospect I see, having been in the practice now, how
important it was to do that. Architects go into architecture because of
design, and they're not very good at business, and they're not very good
at marketing. So with the competition that's happening in architecture,
a lot of very talented architects really have a difficult time making
it, because they concentrate on design to the neglect of all the other
ingredients that go to make up a very good office.
HENDERSON:
Unless you get a partner who can do that.
KENNARD:
Yes. But in this case, DMJM had eighty people, so all four partners,
really, were instructed to hit the street.
HENDERSON:
Goodness. And what year was this?
KENNARD:
Well, it was probably around '53. I'm not too sure. But what it did to
me, because I was involved in the design of our projects a lot, I
remember the one thing that was the catalyst for me deciding to make a
change.
HENDERSON:
And by "change" you mean leave DMJM.
KENNARD:
Leave there and maybe look for some other experience. I was working
under the director of design, Tom Chino, who was a very good designer,
and I was designing a little elementary school up in Atascadero
[California]. The school was really a fun little school. I had made it
in such a way that it was like a tent.
HENDERSON:
Oh.
KENNARD:
In other words, the structure was columns that pierce the roof, and then
the ceiling was hung just like a large--well, like a catenary [arch],
really.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
So that there were no bearing walls except for the shear areas.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
It was a real fun, kind of circus-looking elementary school. I had a lot
of fun with it, and I was really enthused about it, and the client liked
it.
HENDERSON:
It would have been ideal for open classes and team teaching.
KENNARD:
Yes, real open, and you can move all the class--everything was hung by
this catenary.
HENDERSON:
Right.
KENNARD:
Anyway, I went on vacation right after I had kind of designed the
schematics of it--it was just the schematic--and when I came back, I found
out that the partners and I think Doug Russell, who was an
administrative partner who had been brought in by Booz, Allen, and
Hamilton, said, "No, we are not going to a whole new design again.
You'll design this school like a lot of the other schools we had." In
other words, do more a cookie-cutter kind of thing where they could make
money. I was devastated by it, because I'm an architect, and I wanted to
do something fancy and especially spend DMJM's money. [laughter] In
retrospect now, I understand where they were coming from, but in those
days I was pretty well bent out of shape by it. So I said, "Well, maybe
I ought to leave." I had been there almost two and a half, three years
then--about two years and three months--and I said, "Well, I won't leave
until I finish the jobs I'm on, " because I never believed in leaving a
firm in the middle of jobs. I was offered a position at Gruen [and
Associates], at Victor [D.] Gruen's, because they had been doing a lot
of shopping centers, and they were looking for somebody that had some
school experience, because they wanted to try to diversify. They were so
much into shopping centers. So I was offered this job at a fair amount
of raise, but I didn't go because of the money. I wanted to work with
Rudy Baumfeld, who was chief of design over there. They had some really
interesting people. Gruen was the marketing guy, a very talented guy.
Edgardo Contini was the structural engineer. It was a great, great group
of people. But before I had told DMJM that I was leaving, Mann came and
told me, "We've got a really interesting job for you to do here." He
said, "We want you to be project manager." It was a headquarters for
Moore business forms. So I had mixed feelings, because here I was
getting ready to work on a job that was not a "school, but I had already
accepted the position at Gruen.
HENDERSON:
And had you let Mann know about all that?
KENNARD:
When he came up and told me that they were going to assign me to Moore
business forms and that they wanted me to come to a staff meeting or
something about it, I had to call him aside and tell him. I said, "It's
better for you not to assign me because I am leaving the firm."
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
And I didn't want him to start introducing me to the client and
everything like that and then find out I'm gone. It doesn't look too
good. So I had to warn him.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
So they understood. So I went to Gruen's and tried to get them some
school work, promoting some school work. In the meantime, since they
didn't have a school, I was helping out in their shopping center
division as a job captain--not as a project manager, but I was helping
the project managers put the drawings together.
HENDERSON:
Right.
KENNARD:
But I did several shopping centers with them. We finally got a school.
We got a school for the L.A. [Los Angeles Unified] School District,
Osceola Street [Elementary] School. Ben [Benjamin H.] Southland, who was
a partner, was the partner in charge of it. Rudy Baumfeld did more
interior work, so it turns out that I really didn't get a chance to work
with Rudy. I was really working mainly with Ben Southland, who designed
the schools. I kind of worked under him. Actually, I had less
responsibility in management and design at Gruen's than I had had at
DMJM. But I was out promoting schools quite a bit, and I was talking to
school districts and everything. The thing that turned me off-- I stayed
at Gruen for about two and a half years, and somewhere before I left,
after about two years, they had a lead on a job in Torrance
[California]. And I knew schools better than anybody, so naturally I was
out there trying to promote the work. Well, Torrance, maybe not so much
now, but then it was a pretty racist community.
HENDERSON:
Oh, really?
KENNARD:
Yeah. Victor Gruen was pretty sensitive to this, so my assistant--I can't
remember his name, but he was a white architect that I had gone to
school with--was under me, but Gruen called me in one day and said he
thought it would be better, if I'm architect A and he's architect B,
that architect B did the lead on this thing, because they didn't want to
mess up with the problem of me being a black person. I was upset about
that, because I went to Gruen's because I thought they were more
enlightened than that. Maybe he had a point, but I'm not too sure
that--after all, it was not a minority firm they were hiring; they were
hiring a white firm. But because Gruen was Jewish, I think he was more
sensitive to the prejudice that existed out there, because he had
problems getting started himself. There were a lot of jobs he couldn't
get, too. So, I mean, I kind of understood that a little bit, but it did
bother me. We didn't even get the job, anyway. Gruen didn't get the job.
But I stayed there. And the office got very slow, and they were laying
off a lot of. people. I remember three weeks before Christmas they
dropped about forty people.
HENDERSON:
Ouch!
KENNARD:
I mean, it was a lot. So I stayed there. I didn't have a lot to do, but
they kept me, because I was handling some work for them, and I worked
hard, and I guess they figured it was okay. But finally, in May or June
of 1957, I decided that I wanted to leave.
HENDERSON:
And you were doing this without any direct job prospects?
KENNARD:
Well, I had some house remodels; I had a few houses that I was
remodeling. But I also had a wife [Helen King Kennard]. I had three
children. The youngest had just been born in January.
HENDERSON:
Do you mind if I get all your children's names and when they were born
so I can kind of keep them straight in my mind?
KENNARD:
Oh, yeah. I had three children. See, we were married in '49.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
My oldest daughter, Gail [Kennard Madyun], was born in 1951; Lydia
[Kennard], my second daughter, was born in 1954; and in January of '57,
my son, Bill [William Kennard], was born. So you're talking April or May
when I'm thinking about going out. I've got three little kids. They were
about two and a half years apart. They were all small. My wife, no way
she could work with those kids. So I said, "Well, maybe I ought to just
get another job." I was not too happy there. See, what happened there is
that I never could move up to where I wanted to move.
HENDERSON:
Aha. That was the glass ceiling.
KENNARD:
Yeah, it was a ceiling I wanted to get in to be either project manager
or an associate-type person. I had no dream of being on my own. I just
wanted to move up to have myself a very good, secure, responsible
position. Although, I think--now, this is just strictly based on
intelligence gathering that I did at the company, [laughter]
HENDERSON:
This is not company policy.
KENNARD:
Well, " it's not. I got the feeling that I was not going to move any
farther, although there were people that were for me--I think guys like
Rolf Sklarek.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
At that time he hadn't married Norma [Merrick Sklarek]. But I think he
liked me. He was director of construction. I think Rudy and I got along
very good. I think Herman Guttman--because I made money for the
project--and [Edgardo] Contini all were fine. But Ben Southland was the
block. I heard this from a number of people who indicated to me that
Southland blocked me. And part of the reason is because I kind of
resented when I was promoting school work and writing letters that Ben
just had to rewrite every letter. He kind of controlled everything. He
was a heavy drinker. I mean, I never saw a guy who could drink so much
in my life. He'd go out at lunch and have three martinis. It was just
incredible. At that time I couldn't have one martini, and I still can't
drink at lunch. But anyway, he was not one of my favorite people. And it
was indicated to me by friends of mine who were high up that every time
my name came up for a move, Southland would [hits fist on table] clobber
it. So I figured I wasn't going anywhere at Gruen's. So I said to
myself, "I've got to leave." So I said, "Where am I going to go?" I had
worked for Richard [J.] Neutra, Bob [Robert E.] Alexander, DMJM', Gruen.
Where else are you going to go? I mean, you've gone to some of the
better offices. And at that time, the market was not that good. So I had
a friend who had worked at DMJM--and I mentioned him before--Ed [E.
Richard] Lind, who had been fired from DMJM because of security things.
HENDERSON:
He was like a blacklisted person?
KENNARD:
Well, he was blacklisted at DMJM. I mean, he was not really a communist,
but anybody who was even the least liberal was bad. So they knocked out
Zelma [G.] Wilson and they knocked out Ed Lind. Well, Ed and I we got to
know each other, we were good friends. He and his wife went to the
Unitarian Church, which was the center of all, quote, "liberal" thought
at the time, very socially oriented, supporting the American [Committee
for the] Protection of the Foreign Born and against the [Joseph R.]
McCarthy thing. Ed Lind and his wife went there, and I'd see him a lot.
So we were talking, and I said, "What are you doing?" He said, "Well,
I'm just doing a little bit of stuff on the side." And I said, "Why
don't we get together?" I didn't want to be a partner with him, and he
didn't want to be a partner. I said, "Why don't we just share offices?
At least we won't have all that expense." [laughter] So--
HENDERSON:
Wait. Why do you laugh? [laughter]
KENNARD:
I laugh because he lived on Lucile [Avenue] up in the Silver Lake
district. And Ed Lind was a fantastic architect, I mean, as far as
knowing how to put a job together. I mean, he had run DMJM's Far East
operation in Japan. He was just a fantastic guy. He was older than I was
and a very senior guy. I said, "This is a good guy to be in the same
office with." He wanted to be in an office near his house.
HENDERSON:
[laughter] Okay.
KENNARD:
In fact, he had already some space. It was like a little--have you seen
these little real estate offices? You know, they're all--
HENDERSON:
Like in mini-malls?
KENNARD:
Well, no, no.
HENDERSON:
I guess mini-malls weren't around then.
KENNARD:
No, this was just a little shack. Years ago the real estate office used
to have just a little tiny two- or three-room building that sat on a
lot, and usually a vacant lot, and they were--
HENDERSON:
Like a sales office.
KENNARD:
It was a sales office, yeah. Well, evidently the real estate people were
going out of business, so Ed Lind was renting this place for $45 a
month. It was like a three-room little place with one big room, I think
a little bathroom, and another little storage room. So he said, "Why
don't you come by and we can go together." At the time, Helen and I had
bought a house on South Curson [Avenue] near Washington [Boulevard]. I
lived over there, but I drove; I'd drive back and forth. And if Helen
needed the car--because I only had a Ford station wagon--she would take me
to work and then pick me up, because she needed the car during the day.
I didn't need the car, because I didn't have any clients hardly, and
when I did need the car, we'd work it out.
HENDERSON:
Yes.
KENNARD:
So I said, "Okay, we'll share this space," which meant I paid $22.50 a
month and he paid $22.50 a month. We each had our own phone, and that's
all we needed. We had all our equipment for drafting and everything. So
I'm doing little house remodels and stuff. Well, what I did is I had
$2,000 saved, which in those days was a fair amount of money. Let's see,
in 1957--it's probably worth $8,000 or $9,000 now. But anyway, I had
$2,000 saved, and I was making a little money off of house remodels.
Well, that went along until about September or October, and I'm making
just enough to get by, but I'm cutting heavy into my $2,000.
HENDERSON:
Okay. [laughter]
KENNARD:
[laughter] So finally, Ed Lind, he can't make it anymore. He said, "I
just can't." Ed was not a good promoter. He was a wonderful guy, but he
just didn't market very well. He didn't know. None of us knew how to
market very well. But I was very active in the Democratic Party.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
I had been president of the West Adams Democratic Club. [laughter]
HENDERSON:
You were bringing in clients because you had contacts?
KENNARD:
Well, I hadn't any at that time.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
But I was delegate from the CDC, California Democratic Council, to the
Sixty-First Assembly District. So I moved around. I was very active in
the Unitarian Church, so I got to know a lot of people. I even ran for
county central committee.
HENDERSON:
Of the Democratic Party?
KENNARD:
And I campaigned with a fellow named Ralph Richardson, who eventually
became a member of the Los Angeles Unified School District Board [of
Education]. He won, I lost. The bad news is that I lost. The good news
was that it ended my political career. [laughter] But I had had that
movement around there, and I was involved in a lot of liberal causes and
stuff, and I was out putting leaflets out. We were involved in the
American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born because David
Hyun, an architect, was going to be deported, and we were fighting to
keep him from that. And I was in the Architectural Panel with Zelma
Wilson and all these people. So I knew a lot of people and I always
moved around a lot. But still, that didn't help, because by October Ed
Lind decided to move, to leave, and go back, get a job. So he got a job.
He went to work for Robert Trask Cox running his office for him. Well,
now, what did that do to me? That left me with the full rent, right? My
rent went up 100 percent right then.
HENDERSON:
Yeah.
KENNARD:
So I told Helen, I said, "I can't make it. I'm going to have to get a
job." I mean, the money's just not coming. I'm almost broke. My $2,000
is practically gone. I remember it was so bad that I finally--at one time
somebody owed me some money and they hadn't paid me and everything, so I
went to my mother and I borrowed money for some groceries for the kids.
[laughter] So my mother loaned me some money for the groceries. I needed
$40 or $50 or something like that to get groceries. [laughter] An aside
thing that's very interesting: Norman Cohen, who now has the firm of
Cohen and Conmore, he was an electrical engineer. Whenever I had
electrical work, I hired him. I had helped him get the Osceola Street
School with Marx Ayres when I was at Gruen. We were friends. His brother
was a very successful builder named Irv [Irving] Daniels, who owned
Security Builders. And Norman said, "Bob, my brother's getting ready to
do a little medical building"--I think it was a medical building--"in
Hawthorne or Torrance or somewhere like that." It was about a $350,000
job. You know, that's like a big job.
HENDERSON:
It is, yeah.
KENNARD:
So he said, "I want you to meet him and let him come by." Well, what
happened, instead of me going to them and talking to them, they came by
my office. They said they wanted to come by the office. Well, when they
saw my office--[laughter] I mean, it looked like it was about ready to go
under. It was just a little house. In fact, it was so bad, Wes, that the
building was kind of tilted. It was kind of not even, because if you
dropped your pencil on the floor, it would roll over to the corner.
[laughter]
HENDERSON:
Oh, my goodness.
KENNARD:
It was bad. So we didn't get the job, and Norm Cohen, he said, "Well,
they went by your office." Irv and his partner went by, and they just
felt that I wasn't strong enough to handle the job, and they were right.
I mean, I was devastated. So I told Helen, I told my wife, I said,
"Look, I'm going to have to go back to work, so why don't we just take a
vacation, a week?" My sister [Elizabeth Kennard King] and brother-in-law
[Carl King]-- See, my sister married my wife's brother.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
Brother and sister married brother and sister.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
So my brother-in-law and my sister had a trailer. You know, they'd pull
the trailer. They always liked trailers. So I asked them, I said, "Could
I borrow your trailer for a week?" I couldn't afford to go stay in a
hotel. All I'd need is the gas, and we eat-- Anyway, it didn't cost me
anything. So I said, "Could I borrow your trailer? Because I'm going to
have to give up my business after three, four months." [laughter] And
they said, "Oh, yeah. Fine." - So I took my station wagon, I rented a
hitch, and we went up to the Grand Canyon.
HENDERSON:
Oh, great.
KENNARD:
We had never been there. We went to the Grand Canyon. I was there a
week, and it was nice. It was fun with the kids and everything. I put
the word out that I was looking for a job. So I came back--now, I had an
answering service, and the answering service was on for a week. When I
came back, there wasn't one call. [laughter] Not one call!
HENDERSON:
Oh!
KENNARD:
So you can see how bad things were. So a fellow that I had worked with
at Gruen, John Garritson, he and I remained friends, and we'd have lunch
every once in a while. I always brought my lunch, and I think he brought
his, too, at the time. Everybody brown-bagged it. So I told him, I said,
"John, I need a job. Is there anyplace you know?" He said, "Well, we
have a job here." He was the job captain there. He said, "I've got a big
job that I have to get out." He said, "If you want to come--." He worked
for Koebig and Koebig. They were a big engineering firm. He said, "If
you want to come here, you can work here." He said, "As a matter of
fact, if you want to keep your office open, you can work here in the
evening."
HENDERSON:
That's a good offer.
KENNARD:
So I said, "Boy, that may not be a bad deal." So what I did, I made a
deal with John that I would work from five to midnight. I'd work a
seven-hour thing, and then on Saturday I'd pick up the hours or
something like that. But I think most of the time I just worked from
five P.M. to twelve P.M. I worked a thirty-five-hour week. Leonard Rohr
was a black mechanical engineer, and he was chief mechanical engineer at
Koebig and Koebig, which was very unusual. I thought that was very
interesting. I don't know whether he was chief, but he was mechanical
engineer. He became chief later. He worked there, and later on he became
head guy. So I'm living on Curson, my wife needs the car, so I said,
"I'd better look for a little office near my house." If you know where
Benito's office is now, Benito--
HENDERSON:
Benito Sinclair?
KENNARD:
Yes.
HENDERSON:
I don't know exactly where his office is.
KENNARD:
Well, on Washington [Boulevard], right where Benito's office used to be
is a big plumbing yard, and then there were three little stores that Ed
[Edward H.] Fickett had designed.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay. I've heard of Ed Fickett.
KENNARD:
Yes. They were real simple little stores but not badly designed. There
was a restaurant in one, there was another business in another, and
there was one vacant. And the woman that owned it, they were Armenians,
and they owned an apartment house in back. So I went there, and I said,
"How much will it cost me to rent this space?" It was a much better
space than up there. And she said, "Well, I can rent it to you for $55 a
month." It was still more than the $45, but it was nice space, and it
was clear space. It had a little front office and then all space, just
an open space. So I said, "Do you mind if I build drafting tables and
everything like that?" She said, "No, you can do that." So I rented it
for $55 a month, and I lived right around the corner, so I didn't need
the car. I just used the car when I needed it. The program I had is that
in the morning I would get in very early and I would draw till noon. I'd
put the answering machine on and I never picked up the calls, because
that gave me six hours, because I'd get in real early. I'd get in at
about seven o'clock, sometimes six o'clock, and I'd draw on my
remodeling jobs until about noon or one o'clock. I'd go home for lunch,
see the kids, and then, in the afternoon, I'd return my calls and I'd do
all my running around. On the weekend, I was building drafting tables
out of plywood, and I began fixing up the place. So I'm making it, but
I'm still struggling. Finally--I was doing a house, remodeling a house. I
had been remodeling a house for a year or two for a fellow named Irv
[Irving B.] Zeiger in Westchester. I was doing this remodel for him. But
Irv had an aerospace company. His brother actually owned it, but his
brother had died, and he took over the company. But his business was
going up pretty good; he was beginning to make quite a bit of money. I
knew him from a lot of liberal organizations. One day I was down there,
and he said, "Bob," he said, "I don't think I want to remodel the
house." He said, "I'm going to wait and maybe just build a new house.
Maybe you'll do it for me." But November's coming, I'm still hanging on,
and finally, about the end of November, it was like nirvana. I got three
houses. I got a referral from a friend of mine. This guy wanted to build
a house in Pasadena, and that house was $20,000. He had $20,000 to spend
on a house. In 1957, that's a fair amount of money. It was a hillside
lot. I got a house from Ed and Ruth. Saylan, who had a lot up in Laurel
Canyon, and they wanted to spend $40,000. And Irv Zeiger, within the
space of thirty days, said, "Bob, I think we're going to build our
house," and he wanted to spend about $60,000.
HENDERSON:
Goodness.
KENNARD:
Well, here I had $120,000 worth of work, and with a fee of 10 percent, I
could make about $12,000. Plus, I always had a lot of little house
remodels. So the job ended at Koebig and Koebig, but I had enough work
to keep me busy. And I continued on like that with my little remodels.
Remember Teff [Tevfik K.] Kutay?
HENDERSON:
Yes. He was an engineer.
KENNARD:
No, he was operations manager at DMJM.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
He had designed a house for some people in Cheviot Hills named Larry and
Diane Barr. They wanted to remodel the house. And, of course, he had a
big job at DMJM, he didn't want to do it then, so he referred me to
Larry and Diane Barr. I was remodeling this house, and they were going
to spend $20, 000 on this house,
HENDERSON:
On remodeling?
KENNARD:
On a remodel. It was a three-room addition, two-story, three-room
addition, very nicely done, beautiful looking. They were going to build
a big master bedroom and a couple of children's rooms at the back of the
house. And Larry Barr said, "Now, listen, I know architects never can
stay within the budget." But he said, "We've got $20,000 to do this, and
I don't want it to go over that, because that's all I've got." So we did
this house. They were nice people to work for, and I'm working on my
other houses, and all of a sudden we got it finished, and we bid it--I'm
nervous as a bat--and the bid came in--I remember this like it was
yesterday. The low bid was $19,646. [laughter]
HENDERSON:
Right on the money.
KENNARD:
It left a little money on the table. Anyway, they were very happy with
the house. We built the house, they really loved the house, and we got
to be good friends with them, my wife and I. You did that with most
house people. They had me come to the house, you know, and you got to be
very friendly.
HENDERSON:
Sure.
KENNARD:
This was 1957. About 1958, Larry Barr came to me, and he said, "Bob, I
want to build a youth camp in the Malibu mountains" out near Agoura and
around there, up near Lake Sherwood." He said, "I want to find some
land. I'd like you to come with me and see if you can help me pick it
out and see what you can do." And he said, "And I'd like you to be the
architect." So this was going to be a big job--I mean, a whole new
private school, everything, swimming pool, etc. So this was in the
summer of '58, I think, and he said, "But I've got to have it open and
running by the summer of '59."
HENDERSON:
That's kind of tight.
KENNARD:
Very tight. Now, there were some buildings already on the site that they
could use, so we had to do some remodeling of them. He wanted to build a
big seventy- five-foot AAU [Amateur Athletic Union] pool. We had to do a
lot of the grading. We did a lot of stuff just to get him started. And
there was an old Quonset hut there that people lived in that we
remodeled the kitchen in and everything. I said, "Well, I don't know how
much the fee will be, because I don't know how much work is going to be
done." So he said, "Well, I want you to come and work for me on a
salary." And I said, "Well, I don't really want to do that. I don't want
to give up my practice. I have other work to do." I was alone, I didn't
have anybody working for me, but I just wanted to be independent. So he
said, "Well, because I don't want to get into a whole lot of money at
this time and I don't know how much it's going to cost--." I said, "Well,
I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll work, and I'll get it all done and get
you in by June of '59, but instead of you paying me, like, 10 to 15
percent now, you pay for the consultant's work and give me $2,000 a
month. And even though I finish in June of '59, you can keep running the
$2,000 for the next year or two or whatever it is " Because I figured if
I had $2,000 a month for the next two or three years, my cash flow would
be in good shape. I knew that I'd have income coming in. And that's what
he did. We worked for him for years. In fact, he just sold it a few
years ago.
HENDERSON:
What was the name of that camp?
KENNARD:
It was Hidden Trails [Youth] Camp. To show you how he trusted me, he
bought 125 acres--his attorney was Godfrey Isaacs. He's a very well-known
attorney now; most people know him. It turns out that Barr had a lot of
money. He had a lot of money that he had inherited. And this whole 125
acres--most of it was mountain; only about a third of it's worth
anything. The guy was selling it for $100,000. It was way out in Agoura,
in the boondocks. So I told him, I said, "Larry, what you should do is
don't build it way back in the mountains. Build it up near where the
highway's going, because someday this thing is going to be worth a lot
of money, and by that time you probably will be retired and you won't
want to deal with a youth camp." So he did. He bought it near there. We
found a spot. We had to bring water in. There were no utilities. Over
the years we put sewer, water, electricity, everything in. So I had a
client that lasted for about fifteen or twenty years. Eventually we just
worked on an hourly [basis] with him. But Godfrey Isaacs was going to
represent him, and the owner, a guy named Johnson, wanted to close
escrow by the end of the year, and it was like October. So Barr said,
"If Bob likes the property"--they were going on a vacation to Palm
Springs--"buy it for no more than $100,000." I don't know how I found
out, but I found out that this guy had to sell by the end of the year
because of tax purposes. He didn't have a lot of time, and not many
people had $100,000 cash like Larry Barr. So I told Godfrey, I said,
"Offer him $85,000." And Godfry said, "Well, I'm not too sure about
that." He said, "Boy, if he loses, you know--." I said, "Well, there's
other property around. We'll find it." He got it for $85, 000. I mean, I
made $15,000 for Barr immediately. [laughter] So they loved me. I mean,
I was one of their friends for life. [laughter]
HENDERSON:
We're ready to get started with Willowbrook School. That's where we had
left off the last time.
KENNARD:
Right. Well, it was like '58 or '59, and the Willowbrook School
District, which of course is now the Compton [Unified] School District--
HENDERSON:
Oh.
KENNARD:
It was a separate district of the town, and then it was combined with
Compton.
HENDERSON:
Oh, I didn't know that.
KENNARD:
Anyway, originally, Carey [K. j Jenkins [Sr.] was the architect with
Duckett and Jenkins [Architects]--that was his partner--and he had done
the original school, and they were talking about expanding several other
schools. There were three others. But Carey had left the practice and
had gone and taken a job, a very high position, with the state in the
office of the state architect.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
So we were invited to go for the job. We went down to talk to the
superintendent, who was a guy named Paul Lawrence. I hope that's right.
He was the superintendent. So I went down. His secretary was Martha
Brown [Hicks].
HENDERSON:
You remember all these names? [laughter]
KENNARD:
Well, she's still a good friend of mine.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
Martha Brown was his secretary, a very friendly, nice lady. And then I
walked into Paul Lawrence, and he said to me, "I know you. You were my
instructor at the engineer's center at Fort Belvoir during the Korean
War."
HENDERSON:
Oh! [laughter]
KENNARD:
What happened, when I got called back in the Korean War, they assigned
me to the engineer's center. Did I tell you the whole story of the
Korean War?
HENDERSON:
Yes, you did.
KENNARD:
With all the discrimination and everything?
HENDERSON:
Yes, you did.
KENNARD:
My job was I taught a course in production principles and job
management, and I taught it to incoming high-ranking engineer officers.
I was a second lieutenant, the lowest thing in the world. Nothing is
lower than a second lieutenant. But I was teaching these classes to all
these reserve officers that were coming back on duty. And Paul Lawrence,
who was black, he was a major or a lieutenant colonel. They were a
variety of officers anywhere from first lieutenant all the way up to
colonels. They were taking these refresher courses. And when he said it,
I kind of remembered him, because there were very few blacks in the
class at that time that were high-ranking officers. So naturally we kind
of hit it off really good. We had a lot in common. He said, "Where did
you go? What did you do?" La, la, la. So I think that helped us get the
job. [laughter] I'm just saying how little things affect your career. So
we got this job, and it was my first really big public job. The
construction cost, now it doesn't sound like much, but it was $350, 000,
which at an 8 percent fee was a pretty good job for a one- or two-man
office.
HENDERSON:
And this was in '56, '57?
KENNARD:
No, this was about '58, '59.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
I had" opened my own office. I got to know Martha Brown very well. She
was his secretary. Naturally, I had to go through her a lot, and she was
a very friendly type of person. So we did that job, and it was a pretty
successful job. And then Martha left and went to Compton. She was a very
aggressive, motivated young woman. She was married and had two or three
children. And she was instrumental in getting us several planning jobs
in Compton. She introduced me to people when she went to Compton. We
showed them our work, and we got quite a few jobs. We did a lot of
planning work in Compton in the Rosecrans neighborhood, NDP
[neighborhood development program] and we did the Compton CBD [central
business district]. I say this because Martha went on to be with the
Santa Monica Community Redevelopment Agency, and then from there she
became executive director of skid row development, and we have done work
for her at skid row. Funny thing: I just had lunch with her a couple of
weeks ago, and we were laughing about how, when we went to lunch in
Compton--we used to go, and she'd name the restaurant. And lunch would be
like three dollars, because we were both so broke, we didn't have it. Of
course, now we go and we were wining and dining at the Biltmore [Hotel],
etc. She said she was telling Bill Hill, she said, "Boy, those were
some" struggling days." She said, "Three dollars was a lot for lunch for
both of us." [laughter] We had a hard time making it at the time. I
would pay or she would pay or we'd split the bill or something. But it
was fun. The point I'm making is how architecture is people- oriented.
There are a lot of good architects, and because it's so socially
people-oriented, you get jobs because of the people that see you and
like you and want to work with you. You may not even be the best
architect, but it's a relationship that helps. And all these things
that--we did work for Paul Lawrence and Dick [Richard] Sommers and--Larry
Barr and Martha Brown Hicks and clients that lasted through a good part
of our professional life, where we're still doing work up until a few
years ago. In fact, we're still working with Irv [Irving] Zeiger. So
it's amazing how you keep those people. So then, because of the Hidden
Trails [Youth Camp] job, I was able to hire my first person, who was an
architect by the name of Sheldon [B.] Caris. He was my first employee I
ever had, who's still in practice, by the way. He left some time ago and
opened his own office. My second employee was Ernest [H.] Elwood.
HENDERSON:
I've heard that name.
KENNARD:
Yeah. He was a very senior guy, a very bright guy. He ran my office. My
third employee--we began getting busy. We got Telecomputing Corporation's
Chatsworth plant with T.Y. Lin [an engineering firm], and we got Temple
Akiba, a temple that we got through Irv [Irving B.] Zeiger, actually.
HENDERSON:
Let's see. Temple Akiba. Is that in Culver City?
KENNARD:
Culver City. And Art [Arthur H.] Silvers, whom I had met when he was a
student at 'SC [University of Southern California], had been working at
Albert C. Martin [and Associates], and he wanted to change. He didn't
feel like he was getting the full respect for his talent, so he joined
the firm. And I think the fourth person was a young kid from [Los
Angeles] Trade Technical High School], who was a junior guy, Ray Kimuro.
And we hired a young woman who happened to be my secretary when I was at
Gruen [and Associates], who left Gruen, Margaret Sato. So we had an
office of about four technical people, myself, and Margaret Sato. I had
a nice little office, you know. It was over there on Washington
[Boulevard]. You know, I had left because Ed [E. Richard] Lind had
opened his own office. We began building the business. We were very
busy. I had a lot of work, had houses, a lot of variety of work. We were
going pretty good, and I thought it was nirvana. We were making good
money. And I started building a house in 1960.
HENDERSON:
This was your personal house?
KENNARD:
Yes, my personal house, which was pretty good. My wife [Helen King
Kennard] was not working; she had stopped working. But business was
pretty good. The overhead was very low. My rent finally went up to $85 a
month. [laughter] But we worked a lot. A Telecomputing Corporation check
had overtime and everything, so everybody was doing really good. But all
of a sudden, at the end of '64, the bottom just started dropping out.
You know what happened? We weren't marketing and just were counting on
things coming to us. Finally I just had to start dropping people. I
didn't have any work. And by '65, everybody was gone. I was holding them
as long as I could, but I just couldn't hold them any longer. I think
Ernest Elwood was my last employee that I kept. All of them went to
other offices. Ernest went to Bob [Robert E.] Alexander's office, where
he stayed for many, many years. And I don't know where Art went. And
during 1965 I was holding on and biting fingernails. I went home in the
early part of '65 and told my wife, I said, "I'm not going to make it. I
just can't hold the office together. We aren't making any money." And
she said--"Well, let's see." This was in '65, so my oldest daughter [Gail
Kennard Maydun] was thirteen. Lydia [Kennard] was eleven. Billy [William
E. Kennard] was about eight. But they were all in school. So I said,
"Why don't I just give it up and go get a job." My wife said, "Well,
I'll tell you what. Why don't you hold on for this year. I'll go back to
work. I'll get a job." Because she was a teacher, so you could get a job
real easy. So she got a job at Bell Avenue School in Compton. That year
I think I made $10,000 the entire year, gross. Gross. So naturally it
was Helen's job that fed the children. She kind of took care of it; she
worked. And then in early '65 there was a big job coming up. We weren't
partners or anything, but we heard of this job. He heard of it, and we
talked about it. It was Southwest College. Art was very active in CORE
[Congress of Racial Equality], and he knew a lot of people in the South
Central [Los Angeles] area, and I had been pretty active in the West
Adams Democratic [Club], so we knew the people. So we said, "Let's go
for the job." The community wanted to hire black architects, so we said,
"Why don't we form a partnership?" Actually, it was Kennard, Silvers,
and Williams, KSW--John [D.] Williams. I don't know that I can say this.
We may want to cut this out later, you know, because I don't want to say
anything bad about anyone. But we formed this thing, Kennard, Silvers,
and Williams, and we started pushing this job. And at the time,
Georgiana Hardy was a member of the school board, was very liberal, and
she and the community wanted us to be the architects.
HENDERSON:
This is the L.A. school board?
KENNARD:
L.A. [Los Angeles Unified] School District. It was a $15 million job,
big job. Now, I had done a lot of schools, but only for other firms, and
the only school I had done on my own was Willowbrook. But the community
insisted they wanted a black architect to do the job. We mounted a
campaign. Doug [Douglas] Honnold was the favorite. Honnold and Rex was
the favorite of the district. They wanted to give it to Honnold and Rex.
So Honnold and Rex called us, because I knew Doug Honnold. He called us
and asked us would we go on a joint venture. In retrospect, I probably
should have gone, because we'd have had the job. But we were young,
smart-assed architects. We wanted it alone. So we mounted this huge
campaign. Doug Honnold saw that we couldn't go with him, so he went and
got Carey Jenkins. He and Carey Jenkins joined together. And there was a
guy named Jim Jones on the board, a black member of the board, who was
very tight with Carey. And there-was a. guy named Smoot. I don't know
his first name [Charles R.], but he was a Mormon. Georgiana [Hardy]
fought like crazy for us. We finally" lost. There were seven board
members, and it took seven votes for us to lose.
HENDERSON:
Goodness.
KENNARD:
Well, what we did, when we saw that we were losing, we couldn't get it,
I went to DMJM [Daniel, Mann, Johnson, and Mendenhall] and I went to Art
[Arthur E.] Mann, who was my partner in charge of a job I did. I said,
"Art, we'd like you to come with us. It could be any kind of deal you
want. You've done a lot of schools. But we'd like a joint venture. We
think you would be prime and would be associated--" We just didn't want
to lose. We saw we were losing, so we were reaching for something. So I
remember, I looked at Art Mann, and he said, "How big a job is this?"
And they were a pretty big firm; they probably had over a hundred and
some odd people there. He said, "How big a job?" I said, "Fifteen
million." I never will forget, he said, "That's a respectable job."
[laughter] "Respectable," I said, "shit, to me that's more than
respectable!" [laughter] So they declined. They didn't want to go in
with us. And they figured I don't have it anyway. They probably got the
grapevine on it. So I remember Smoot, who I thought was a pretty racist
guy, I mean, I guess because of the fact that he was a Mormon--.
[laughter] And I never will forget. He said, "You can't come in here and
think you can get a job." He said, "You've got to crawl before you
walk."
HENDERSON:
Wow.
KENNARD:
Those are his very words, you see. And I felt like kicking his ass.
"Crawl before you walk." So, to make a long story short, we lost the
job. But Georgiana Hardy put up such a fight--not many blacks had gotten
schools--that they told us later, "Don't worry, you're going to get a
job. You won't get that job, but you're going to get one. Well, Kennard,
Silvers, and Williams, we had stationery and everything. We didn't have
any employees* We had work. My wife was supporting me, and I think that
John had a little office going by himself, and I don't know what Art was
doing. He may have been working somewhere. But when Williams moved into
our office and started coming over--Art was there a lot. I was out
hustling work. Art got a lot of calls about John Williams's people
trying to collect money from him and everything else. It looked like he
was in some financial trouble. I don't know how well you know John.
HENDERSON:
I don't know him very well.
KENNARD:
Yeah, I mean, John is not known for fiscal responsibility. Nice guy,
good architect, really good architect, good designer, and the nicest guy
you ever met, but behind it all, I found out later that he didn't pay
his consultants. He's had that problem all the time. So I said, "We'd
better get away from this, because we don't want to get any liability."
So that's how we became Kennard and Silvers.
HENDERSON:
Oh.
KENNARD:
We said, "John, we just think you'd better just stay in your own
practice." We may want to cut that out later, because he's still
practicing, and I don't want to hurt him. We're still friends. So we
were fooling around, hustling work, and finally, one day Virgil Vala,
who was head of the building branch of the L.A. school district, called
and said, "We have an elementary school that we'd like you to do, but we
need to come out and visit your office and just check your office out."
Well, it was just Art and I, that's all. So we said, "Oh, my God." So we
called Bob [Robert] Marks, who's our structural engineer, and Ben
[Benito] Sinclair was working for Bob at the time. So we said, "Send
somebody over to sit in our office." And we called all the people that
we were going to use as consultants: Leonard Rohr--do you know Leonard
Rohr?
HENDERSON:
You had told me about him.
KENNARD:
Leonard Rohr, yes. He's a black mechanical engineer. We were going to
use Leonard. I said, "Leonard, can you send one or two people over just
to sit there, to look like we've got some people? And bring some
drawings to be working on." I'll tell you how I learned that trick. And
I didn't have a secretary. Well, we all knew that Vala, who was an older
guy--he was kind of a short, chunky kind of guy, a kind of friendly
guy--we knew, because I had a friend there, that he kind of liked to
flirt with young girls. [laughter] So my niece [Barbara Hunt Procello],
who was either in college or just starting college at UCLA, she was very
attractive. So I asked her, I said, "Barbara, if you're not too busy,
could you come over and just play secretary?" She's very cute, very nice
personality. So we were ready for them. [laughter] Vala comes in here,
and I think Harry Saunders came, and maybe one or two other people. They
came in. Of course, Valla stopped and chitchatted with Barbara a while.
So they said, "Well, we have this school. It's the Hyde Park Elementary
School. We'd like you to do it." So they walked around. We said, "We're
working on this, we're working on that." There's just a lot of big
drawings all over the place. [laughter] And they said, "Well, we'll get
back to you." So naturally, we waited by the phone. They called us back
and they wanted us on the job. Well, it was a $600, 000 job, elementary
school. I felt pretty good about that. And Art and I formed a
partnership, Kennard and Silvers. This was '66. The time could not be
more fortuitous. For one thing, Art was an excellent designer. Both of
us were designing, but I said, "Okay, why don't you design and let me
get out in the street and hustle. I'll handle the business and marketing
stuff. You take care of design." We had done Temple Akiba, so that job
was going pretty good, and it was getting done. So we started hustling.
Well, in 1966, the Watts riots happened, and, of course, the cities were
a mess. I had a friend, Ulysses Montgomery. He was an engineer who I
knew had worked at DMJM in structural engineering. He was up in the [San
Francisco] Bay Area working for, or as a consultant to, the San
Francisco Redevelopment Agency. Justin Herman was a redevelopment
director up there, and a guy named Bill Keller was the senior project
manager for the Hunters Point area.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay. I've heard of the name Hunters Point.
KENNARD:
So these people at Hunters Point said, "We want some black architects to
do the work." They had hired Aaron Green, who was a protege of Frank
Lloyd Wright's, to master-plan Hunters Point. And they had hired Marquis
and Stoller--good firms--and some other firms, but they said, "Listen, we
want some black firms." The community said "We want some black firms."
So they said, "Well, we don't know any black firms." Well, Ulysses
Montgomery, who knew me, he said, "Oh, there are a lot of black firms in
L.A." So he called Harold [L.] Williams, John Williams, ourselves, and
Ulysses said, "Get your butt up here, because there's a lot of work." So
we put Art on a plane, and he went up there. Well, Art is a very
good--you know, he's good-looking, a good talker, a good marketing man.
So we got a job up there. Before you know it, we've got jobs in Oakland.
Our company just started going like hell. There was planning all over
the place and everything. From '66 to '72 we went from two people to
thirty-five. We opened an office in San Francisco in 1968. We were in
San Francisco for a couple of years, then we moved to Oakland. Well, in
about a year, Art was going through some personal problems, so he said,
"I just cannot take the trip back and forth up there." He had a drinking
problem and he was having other problems, so he said, "I just can't take
this trip every week anymore." He said, "Can we switch and I'll stay in
L.A. and maybe you go back and forth?" So I started the trek. I started
the trek in about '68. We didn't open a formal office, but we rented an
apartment on Cathedral Hill where we could work out of, and we could
stay over there all night. It was a real nice apartment on Cathedral
Hill. You know that circular residential tower across from the
cathedral?
HENDERSON:
I'm vaguely familiar.
KENNARD:
It's straight across from the big Catholic church, Saint Mary's
[Cathedral]. So I started making the trek, and I stayed overnight in the
apartment, and I'd leave clothes there. We just built the business. We
built a hell of a business. We had about twenty- five people in L.A. We
had about ten people in Oakland. We just built it up until about '72. We
started building it in '68. Ron [Ronald J.] Delahousie came to us, Jeff
[Jeffrey M.] Gault came. We opened a whole planning division; Jeff Gault
was head of planning, and he was a very good marketer. We just began
getting work all over the state of California--in fact, from Washington,
D.C., Atlanta [Georgia], everywhere. We had work in Mexico, resort
stuff. We were just in heaven trying to start all this work. It was
tough, my work, but we organized it pretty fast. What we did is Art was
head of design, Delahousie managed a lot of the projects, Jeff Gault
managed all the planning. We had seven or eight people who were just
planners. Some people that were graduates at the University of
California [Los Angeles (UCLA)]--Ron Allum was one of the first graduates
who came over and was one of our senior planners. He has his own
business now. Nice guy. We did planning in Long Beach, San Luis Obispo,
San Diego, all over the place. It was just incredible, because, see,
there were a lot of federal dollars to change the face of California and
the city, and it was just incredible. Some of it was in joint venture.
We tied in with Booz, Allen, and Hamilton in development and DRA,
Development Research Associates. We got transit stuff back in
Washington, D.C., with T.Y. Lin and a civil engineer back there. We were
on a roll. Then I made connections. I really marketed the Oakland area.
We moved to Oakland in about '70, and I hit that town every week.
Oakland's a very social town.
HENDERSON:
Oh, it is?
KENNARD:
Oh, very social. See, it's a very strong black community. The head of
redevelopment was a guy named John Williams. He was probably one of the
top redevelopment directors. He had the ability to deal with the
business interests and the community. He was really sharp. And we hit it
off well. We got to be good friends. And my attorney was a guy, a black
lawyer, named Don McCullum, very active in the Bay Area. Don kind of
introduced me to all the powers that be and handled all the legal work
and whatnot. I spent a lot of time with him. I mean, I'd go up there for
either two days and a night or three days and two nights, and it was
breakfast, lunch, and dinner with somebody. I was young, and I was full
of vim and vigor. It's a very social town, so sometimes on the weekend
there were things to go to. Well, I had the apartment, so sometimes my
family would come on weekends and spend the weekend, and sometimes I'd
spend--you know, NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People] was very active, and I was involved in that. So in a
while we were doing work in Oakland, Richmond, San Francisco, school
work, housing--a lot of housing. I had a guy that ran my office up there
named Ernie [Ernest W.] Cannon. He was a very good production guy. He
ran the office. We brought some of the people up here that wanted to
move up here. The firm was just going like a bat out of hell. In fact,
we were as big then as we are now. It was hard organizing it. We had to
bring people in fast. We got some good people, though, when I look back
in retrospect, people who stayed with us a long time. In about '70, Art
began to get restless. He had some personal problems that were
difficult. You know, when you're under pressure of a business and you're
moving fast--you know, we were working sixty, seventy hours a week,
eighty hours a week sometimes. I mean, we were running up and down the
road. I'd get up in San Francisco--I'd get up at five [A.M.], and I'd be
in San Francisco in a meeting at eight thirty.
HENDERSON:
Oh."
KENNARD:
I'd get on a plane at seven.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
I would get in there, I would schedule meetings at eight thirty and I'd
go all day, and I'd have a lunch meeting and dinner and then party at
night. [laughter] John Williams and I spent a lot of evenings together,
and Don McCullum, because they worked a lot of hours, too. We used to go
to the Mirabeau, a restaurant and bar there, which is really a nice
place. We spent a lot of time there. I had the pulse of the community,
and I knew where the power was, so we got a lot of work. The big
breakthrough was there was a huge job in West Oakland, 366 units of
housing. And the architect that was selected was a guy named [A.] Carl
Koch, a very reputable architect out of Boston.
HENDERSON:
In fact, I think I've heard that name.
KENNARD:
Now, the nonprofit organization that did this was called MORH Housing
[Inc.] It stood for More Oakland Residential Housing. There were nine
people on the board--three from Kaiser Engineers and six from the
community. I think they got Carl Koch because he had done a lot of
housing that was kind of--what do you call it? Like Forest Dillon.
HENDERSON:
You don't mean low-income?
KENNARD:
Well, 'yes, it was low-income housing, but it was component housing.
HENDERSON:
Oh. Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
Modular.
HENDERSON:
Modular, okay.
KENNARD:
Modular. He had done a lot of that. Good work. So they said, "Well, we
want a black architect." And there was one woman who was a powerhouse.
Her name was Dolores Rubin, and the family was very active in the West
Oakland community to try to keep the quality of West Oakland. West
Oakland had a lot of nice old houses like the West Adams district, and
they didn't want to tear all that stuff down. But this area was already
leveled for it. Some other architects in San Francisco had done some
work there. I think Sandy and Babcock had done some work there. But
Dolores Rubin said, "Listen, we want a black architect. We're right here
in West Oakland, and we want to give our own people a chance." So they
said, "Well, we don't know anybody." So John Williams told me about it,
introduced me to Dolores. Dolores Rubin's sister [Lillian Rubin] was a
member of the redevelopment company, so they were a powerful little
family. I never will forget the first day I met Dolores Rubin. We were
told to come into a meeting to meet Carl Koch. They were in town, they
were in Oakland. John Williams's office, the redevelopment agency, all
the people from Kaiser, they were going to introduce us to them. And I
never will forget--Dolores was a feisty little lady. We were being
interviewed, because they wanted us to joint venture with Koch. And
we're talking about a big job. At that time it was a $10 million job,
and in 1969, '70, that was a big job. Three twelve-story buildings they
were talking about.
HENDERSON:
Goodness.
KENNARD:
The big stuff. So I must have said something that she didn't like, and
she just blasted me. She just jumped me like crazy. I went back and I
thought for sure we had lost it. But I found out that's just the way she
was. So I really started spending some time, and I marketed the hell out
of that job. So finally, the redevelopment agency and Kaiser and all, we
had to take a trip back to Boston. We wanted to visit some of Koch's
work. Well, Dolores knew the community, so I spent a lot of time with
her. Let's face it, you're out there, you have breakfast, lunch, and
dinner, you're staying at a hotel in Boston, so I had a lot of time. We
were trying to say, "Listen, we want at least 50 percent of the deal."
The community said, "Don't worry." Art was there, too. "You and Art go
over to Koch's office, and you try to "work out the deal." Well, they
were tough. Boston's a racist town.
HENDERSON:
[laughter] It is.
KENNARD:
They were awful. They came in, and they said, "Well, here's how we're
going to do it. We're going to do all the designing and we're going to
do all the working drawings, and we would like you to be the
representative on the construction, because you have an office there and
you're there and you can do that." Well, that's 20 percent of the deal,
and that's the hardest part of it. So we went back; we didn't say
anything. So Art and I, we were very good together. I mean, it's just a
tragedy that he couldn't sustain his being effective in the firm,
because we understood the dynamics of it, and we played the game really
well together. He's a real bright guy. So we said, "Okay, you go in--."
And whenever we went in with any group, we'd say, "Okay, you be the nice
guy, I'll be the [villain]."
HENDERSON:
That's good strategy.
KENNARD:
So on this one, Art was doing the design, and he wanted to do the job,
and he said, "Well, it's a great job." He was really nice, and I'm
getting to be a son of a bitch. So I said, "We don't like the deal, and
we don't think it's a fair deal. This is in a minority community. There
are nine members on the board." The key person from Kaiser Engineers was
a guy named Don Duffy. Dolores had him pretty well on our side. So she
worked on him to bring the Kaiser people along. There was another guy, a
lawyer named Helfinger, who was really a nice guy. These were white
guys. Helfinger was a lawyer who was one of the nicest guys I ever met.
I think they had eleven children or something. They just loved kids, and
they raised all these kids. They were really nice kids. Anyway, we knew
we had a pretty good deal.
KENNARD:
So we went in there, and we said, "We've got to have 50 percent." Well,
they were just ridiculous.
HENDERSON:
You're talking to the board?
KENNARD:
I'm talking about the architects.
HENDERSON:
You're talking to the architects, okay.
KENNARD:
They said, "Go work out a deal." So we said, "When we go back there,
we've got to do more than the construction administration. You know,
we've done housing, we're architects, we have good people." So we know
that the board's not going to go with less than 50-50. Well, he was a
pretty well-known architect, you know. He was kind of like--he wasn't as
famous as Cesar Pelli, but he was pretty famous and pretty conservative,
too. So they were just recalcitrant. They said, "Well, we can't do it
for less than 75 percent." I think they were just terribly greedy. So
that night I talked to Dolores. She said, "We'll just take the whole job
away from them. You'll see."
HENDERSON:
She was that powerful.
KENNARD:
We went back there, and we got the whole thing. We did it all, and we
did it all on time. It's a nice job. Art was in charge of design. It's
really nice. We did three twelve-story buildings with all the single and
one-bedroom units in the towers, and all the others were 126 townhouses
for the big families that were three, four, and five bedrooms. We built
them out of high- strength concrete block. HUD [Department of Housing
and Urban Development] said, "You'll never be able to meet our cost
unless you do it in wood." I said, "Hell, you can't do a high rise with
only wood." We did it like an erector set. We designed it so no blocks
were ever cut. We designed it so every kitchen of 366 units and every
bath was exactly the same.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
So all the plumbing was prefabricated off the site, the whole place".
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
The floors were Spancrete. So it went up just like an erector set. You
did the block, you had no cutting of blocks. Under no condition were we
going to cut these blocks.
HENDERSON:
That will save you money.
KENNARD:
It saved money. And we built that deal for like $18 or $19 a square
foot.
HENDERSON:
Oh, lord, that is incredibly cheap.
KENNARD:
I mean, HUD just couldn't believe it. It's standing today. It looks
good, too.
HENDERSON:
Well, how did you stiffen it for earthquake [code compliance]?
KENNARD:
T. Y. Lin was the structural engineer and Felix Kulka was the project
engineer. They had given us one of our first big jobs, Telecomputing
Corporation. Felix was a good friend of mine. He did the engineering on
my house, and I designed his house when he was down here. So I told him,
I said, "If I ever move up to the Bay Area, you're going to be my
engineer, " because we were real good friends. They did the engineering
job. We built that sucker. Then, it was so successful that John Williams
said, "Listen, we're working on another high-rise building for Episcopal
Homes Foundation, and we really don't like the architect that "designed
it. He just doesn't understand how to design this thing. Would you guys
like to have the job?" I said, "Oh, yes."
HENDERSON:
This is the job up in the Bay Area?
KENNARD:
John Williams was director of the development agency.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
So we did another twelve-story, Oak Center Towers. It's still up. Our
project designer was George Barnes. We worked until 1978 when things
started getting bad in Oakland. '78 is when we closed the office. I'll
tell you about the change in ownership maybe next time.
HENDERSON:
Okay, we were discussing white architects that employed black
architects.
KENNARD:
Well, I think you have to go back to the time when I got out of Pasadena
City College. I don't know whether I went through that. Did I talk about
that at one time?
HENDERSON:
Yes, you did. You talked about getting out of Pasadena City College and
working for [H.] Curtis Chambers.
KENNARD:
And writing letters, etc.
HENDERSON:
Well, you didn't go into all that.
KENNARD:
How I couldn't get a job? Nobody would hire me. Did I tell you?
HENDERSON:
You told me you worked for Chambers.
KENNARD:
Curtis Chambers. I think I told you about how I had a problem getting a
job.
HENDERSON:
Yes.
KENNARD:
Yeah. Well, just to put a point of reference, when I got out in '40--and
I had won some awards--I wrote about thirteen letters, and all of them
answered me, and seven of them offered me to come in--I think I told you
this.
HENDERSON:
Yes.
KENNARD:
But when I got there and they saw I was black, some of them didn't even
ask me to sit down. So, as a point of reference, that is the kind of
climate that black architects were in. Yes, there was Hilyard Robinson
in Washington, D.C., and there was, I think, the fellow [John] Lewis
[Wilson Jr.] in New York. Old-timers. There was Jimmie [James H.]
Garrott, there was Paul [R.] Williams, of course. But the bulk of
offices had an unwritten policy against hiring blacks, and that probably
extended to most minorities, but blacks were the last to be hired. I
think I did tell you about when I was in the Citizens Housing Council
and I met Bob [Robert E.] Alexander and how he hired me.
HENDERSON:
Yes" you did.
KENNARD:
But it was through Bob that I met Reginald Johnson. Bob Alexander, as
you know, did the Baldwin Hills Village with Clarence Stein. I think
Johnson was one of the architects.
HENDERSON:
I believe he was.
KENNARD:
Johnson had been doing a lot of very expensive homes in Hancock Park and
Santa Barbara, but I think that he just got a little tired of it--I may
have mentioned this to you--doing just plushy houses. He really wanted to
get into--
HENDERSON:
Social things?
KENNARD:
--social architecture. And it was then that I realized that he was just a
very progressive guy and that Paul Williams had worked for him.
HENDERSON:
In fact, I believe you told me many of Paul Williams's clients had been
referred to him by Reginald.
KENNARD:
Yes. That's what I heard. I mean, I can't confirm that, but I was told
that that happened. And that was pretty commonplace. When you worked in
an office and the office was getting big, if they knew there was a house
to do, they would refer it to you. It was also through Bob Alexander
that I met [A.] Quincy Jones. That's when I learned that Carey [K.]
Jenkins [Sr.] had been a designer for Quincy Jones.
HENDERSON:
Oh, " you didn't know Carey Jenkins before knowing him through Quincy
Jones?
KENNARD:
No, I knew of him. I had met him, but I didn't know much about his
background. He graduated a year or so before me at 'SC [University of
Southern California].
HENDERSON:
Oh, he did?
KENNARD:
Yes. And he was very good. He was a very talented designer; he was a
very good artist. I always admired him. And then I had heard he had gone
into business with Vernon Duckett, but I didn't know him personally. And
I heard that he had worked or he was working for Quincy Jones as a
designer, and that surprised me, because Quincy, Reginald, and Bob
Alexander were very good architects, very well thought of. So it was
kind of encouraging to hear that Jones had hired him, and not just as a
draftsman but as a designer. And Jim [James C.] Moore [III], who is now
a licensed architect and was formerly my director of design, also had
worked for Quincy. He came here [Kennard Design Group] and he was
director of design here, and he's on his own now. But it was a real
difficult time. I think in one tape I talked to you about how I was the
first black architect to be hired at DMJM [Daniel, Mann, Johnson, and
Mendenhall].
HENDERSON:
Right.
KENNARD:
But gradually, as the people that came out of the McCarthy era, some of
the liberal architects, as they moved into offices in the fifties--and
because they were white, they got fairly good jobs--many of them, I've
got to give them credit for helping to break it up. People like Ed [E.
Richard] Lind and Zelma [G.] Wilson and Teff [Tevfik K.] Kutay, some of
the architects who were not name architects but just had some feeling
for social understanding. When you know somebody, you could be very
prejudiced against them, and you say, "Well, no black person can be an
architect." All of a sudden you meet somebody--
HENDERSON:
And that stereotype explodes.
KENNARD:
It explodes, because you say--I never will forget, when I was working for
Martin Puller, the architect that was in charge of the [Los Angeles City
Department of] Parks and Recreation--remember when I told you that I
worked there?
HENDERSON:
Oh, yes, yes, yes, at Griffith Park.
KENNARD:
Yes, Griffith Park. I was saying we had long lunches and everything, and
sometimes I would bring a book and read because I didn't want to just
chitchat all of them. And I never will forget, there was a young
architect, white, from New York or from somewhere in the East--I don't
remember--and we were lying on the lawn, and I was reading. Have you ever
been reading and you just realize somebody's just looking at you?
HENDERSON:
Yes. Creepy feeling. [laughter]
KENNARD:
Yes. And all of a sudden--I can't remember the guy's name, but he was a
pretty nice guy. I looked up, and he was just staring at me. I said,
"What's the matter?" So he said, "You know, " he said, "you're the first
black person I have ever met"--I can't remember what he said exactly, but
he said--"that has had an education and that would be reading--" I never
will forget, I was reading Newsweek or Time magazine or something like
that. He said, "That would be reading a magazine like that." I thought
that was so strange, because I said, "Where has this son of a bitch
been? Where has he been?" [laughter] He may not have been from New York;
he was probably from some other place. But I thought it was so strange.
I said, "How can anybody be so ignorant about people," you know. Because
he said, "You know, yyou're black," and he said--In other words, "I
didn't know blacks could read," right? [laughter] And if they did read,
they wouldn't be reading Time magazine!
HENDERSON:
[laughter] Okay. And the architects that you were mentioning, like
Quincy Jones and Bob Alexander, all of them weren't exactly doing this
in a conscious way, but it was an unconscious desire to improve social
conditions?
KENNARD:
Well, " I've got to make the observation that even in this racist
society there's just a lot of decent people out there.
HENDERSON:
Yes, yes.
KENNARD:
And the decency runs the gamut of every race, religion, sex, creed,
everything. And you find them in very unusual places. Because all of us
have stereotypes about other races, and if there's one thing that's
true, you just cannot have a stereotype about how somebody looks or--we
have some friends that are dear friends of my wife [Helen King Kennard]
and I, and we've known them since 1956 or '57.
HENDERSON:
Goodness.
KENNARD:
And when I first saw them and met them in a social situation, which was
not really interracial, I looked at them, and they looked like just a
couple of rednecks. They were typical of the people that were so
prejudiced with me in Monrovia. I saw them and got to talking to them,
and I found out--to show you how crazy it is--they were the nicest liberal
people with the least prejudice that I have ever met. They are still our
dear friends over a period of thirty-three years.
HENDERSON:
Thirty-four years.
KENNARD:
The media has had a lot to do with stereotypes. Zelma [G.] Wilson, the
architect I told you about, who was married to Mike [Michael]
Wilson--Mike told me something that I never will forget. He was a very
brilliant screenwriter. But I never will forget, he said, "When you go
to a movie, you are not only entertained, but you are also educated,
because they're sending messages that are for good or bad." Take Walt
Disney. Walt Disney stereotyped blacks for years.
HENDERSON:
If he showed any at all.
KENNARD:
When he did show them at all, they were stereotyped. "Our Gang" comedy,
which was not Walt Disney, but "Our Gang" comedy, where they had the
little black guy with the--
HENDERSON:
Buckwheat.
KENNARD:
Buckwheat. And Stepin Fetchit. I don't fault Stepin Fetchit for making a
living. The guy had to make a living. But the media took it, and what is
it? It sends a message. I don't know about you, but when we were young
and television came in--And I wasn't that young, either; I was in my
twenties. But when I was married and my kids were growing up and a black
face came on television, we hollered through the house to come look at
the set. "There's a black person on the television."
HENDERSON:
Yeah, I think my family had similar reactions to that.
KENNARD:
All right. Now, remember, if children, all they see is white people on
television, and they never see any blacks or Latinos or other races than
white, and when they do see them the blacks are maids or
whatever--There's nothing wrong with being a maid or a janitor. My father
[James L. Kennard] was a janitor. There's nothing wrong with it, but
you've got to balance it. You've got to show--
HENDERSON:
Show the full range.
KENNARD:
There's only one actor, years ago, that started to change the thing, and
that's Lew Ayres. Lew Ayres was the actor that did All Quiet on the
Western Front. Remember that?
HENDERSON:
I remember the movie.
KENNARD:
Yeah. Lew Ayres was a very sensitive guy. I don't know if he had a lot
to do with the movie, but he sure did it. It was a movie against war.
But I remember, later on, when he had a program, sometimes he had blacks
just walk on stage. They may not even have had any lines. I remember
there was a black doctor on a Lew Ayres television [show}. You don't
realize what that does to people when all of a sudden they're not just
the doorman, they're not the janitor, they're not the chauffeur, they're
not the maid. You see a black person portrayed as a doctor. He doesn't
have to have any lines in it, but the message gets through.
HENDERSON:
That is significant.
KENNARD:
Yes. So that's why now they just push the media. I mean, they've still
got a long way to go. I mean, they're even discriminating against women
in the media. I mean, women don't have authoritative, good roles in the
media. There's still discrimination against blacks and Mexicans and
everything in the media, but it is a lot better than it was. But to get
back to the point, if I didn't believe that there just was a lot of
decent people out there, you might as well give up. [laughter] You might
as well give up. Because I look back at, like I mentioned, my art
teacher [Edna Chess] in Monrovia who just took an interest in me, who
didn't have to do it. She didn't have to do it. An English teacher [Mrs.
Coblentz] who said, "Listen--" They'd never had a black in any other
plays in my high school, but she just pushed me. She said, "I want you
to be in this. I want you to be in this." And she gave me a very good
role, and I recited stuff from Mark Twain, and I was very good but
nervous as hell. She said, "I think you deserve it. You're good. I want
you to do it." See, I know that she took a lot of flak from other
teachers. I heard later there were a lot of teachers and parents who did
not want to have a black involved. When you did a play and you were the
only black--plays are very social things. You know, after the play you go
out and you have ice cream or something like that.
HENDERSON:
That's true.
KENNARD:
So you get very much involved. It's why I never belonged to a church.
The only church I ever belonged to was the Unitarian Church, because the
Unitarian Church was not religious in this sense. They were more into
social justice, and it was a very interracial church. But my mother
[Marie Bryan Kennard], who was an atheist--I don't know whether I told
you this story. Stop me if I'm repeating it. My mother was an atheist,
my father was Episcopalian. My father wanted me to go to the church in
Monrovia. Well, there was only one Episcopalian church, and that was
Saint Luke's Episcopal Church, and it was in a white area. And there
were only a few blacks. You know, there are not many black
Episcopalians.
HENDERSON:
That's true.
KENNARD:
My father lived in Massachusetts and Philadelphia, so he came from the
North, so he was Episcopalian. But I got very active in the church,
because I went there, and I got in the choir. And from about eight or
nine, ten years old, I sang in the choir.
HENDERSON:
You haven't told me this.
KENNARD:
I haven't told you this? So I sang in the choir. This is in Monrovia. I
sang in the choir. And I took turns--if you know the Episcopal Church,
you carry the flag and you carry the cross, etc. But the choir was made
up of both young boys and young girls, and I was the only black in the
choir. Well, that was okay. I was eight, I was nine, I was ten, I was
eleven. I got to about twelve, and they started planning things for the
choir. We'd go to a little party Saturday night, or they'd say, "Let's
take the choir and go to the show, and then we'll go out and have some
ice cream." Well, you start getting twelve or thirteen, you know, you
start looking at the other girls, right? So the minister in charge of
the church was a canon. You know, there's a reverend and then there's a
canon.
HENDERSON:
Oh, I didn't know that. Okay.
KENNARD:
Yes, in the Episcopal, it's like the Catholic Church. His name was Canon
Smith, the Reverend Canon Smith. He came one day, and he said he wanted
to talk to my mother and father. He was a nice guy. He said, "I have a
real problem." He said, "There are a lot of complaints from the parents
about Bobby being in the choir." Of course, my mother being from
Charleston [South Carolina], she knew right away what was happening. So
he said, "But I don't agree with it. I do not want you to take him out
of the choir, " and he stood his ground pretty much on that matter. But
remember, the parishioners give a lot of money, and finally he had to
capitulate.
HENDERSON:
Oh.
KENNARD:
And right after that, he left the church. Now, I have never known
whether--he told my mother he just could not be in a church where you're
preaching brotherhood and then you're not practicing it. I always
thought that he left the church because of that. And he came to the
church right up here near the park at Silver Lake. You know the lake at
Silver Lake, at Echo Park?
HENDERSON:
I know Silver Lake.
KENNARD:
There's a church, it's an Episcopal church, there. I think it's still
there. He came in, and he was pastor of that church.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay. I'm not familiar with that church.
KENNARD:
I can't remember the name of it. I pass by it. It's a little tiny
church, a very nice, pretty little church. So I never knew whether he
was fired because he didn't agree with it or whether he left because he
didn't agree with it. But anyway, I was out of the choir. So I said to
myself--I'm fourteen years old--I said, "Now, if this is what happens in a
church, which is supposed to be brotherly love, there's no place for
me." And my mother said, "Well, that's why I'm an atheist."
HENDERSON:
[laughter] You know, to me it is surprising that your mother was an
atheist. Not that I'm questioning her religious values, but blacks,
especially in the South, are supposed to be so religious.
KENNARD:
No, she never was. From Charleston--she was not. She was a fighting lady.
But my dad wasn't fire and brimstone religion. I never went back into
the church again until I joined the Unitarian Church, and the only
reason why I joined the Unitarian Church is because a very good friend
of mine that I graduated from the [University of Southern California]
school of architecture with, Tom Ballinger--Tom and his wife Ellen
[Ballinger] and Helen and I got married on the same day.
HENDERSON:
Oh.
KENNARD:
His wedding was in the afternoon, like two or three o'clock, and our
wedding was at six o'clock, so all of our friends, all the architects
that knew us, went to his wedding and then came to our wedding. Well,
Tom, he hadn't been married very long, maybe six or seven years, and
Ellen died. And Tom was always a kind of a liberal guy. He's one of the
few white guys I know at 'SC that had a real understanding of the civil
rights struggle. In fact, he told me--and I'm talking about this is in
1948.
HENDERSON:
Goodness.
KENNARD:
He told me, "The only way blacks are ever going to get their civil
rights in this country is not through the left-wing movement or the
liberal white movement." He said, "It's going to be through blacks
themselves." And he said, "I will predict it will be through the black
church." I mean, I said, "You know, for a white guy to say that--." I was
just shocked, you know. And I thought about it a lot when Martin Luther
King [Jr.] came along, because that's what happened.
HENDERSON:
Yes, you're right.
KENNARD:
Because the black church is the center of it. I don't know how he knew
it, because he wasn't even from the South. But his wife died very young.
He hadn't been married more than seven or eight years. I went to the
service, and the minister that preached the service was [Reverend] Steve
[Stephen H.] Fritchman of the First Unitarian Church. This was in the
early fifties; it was about '55, '56, something like that. And I was so
impressed. He didn't talk about the hereafter and all that bullshit and
Jesus and all that. He talked about what you do here on earth to make it
a better life. And I told Helen, I said, "You know what--?" Because my
wife was raised as an ME, African Methodist Episcopal, in Tulare
[California], but she got kind of disillusioned with the church, too. So
I said, "We ought to go visit this church. This is really something."
Well, I got very active in the church. I just found my home, because
everybody was in there. You know, Paul Robeson would visit the church,
and, I mean, all the top black civil rights leaders would come to the
church, and the Jewish community and the Mexican and the Asian. It was a
polyglot. I even served on the board, and I was chairman of the finance
committee. I did everything. I was really into
HENDERSON:
And which church was this?
KENNARD:
First Unitarian Church, Eighth [Street] and Vermont [Avenue], famous
church. It was in the forefront in the fight against the loyalty oath.
Steve Fritchman was an unfriendly witness. I mean, he was really
something. We got to know him real well. He was a dear friend, and he
was up to our house a lot, and, I mean, just a wonderful relationship. I
did a lot for the church. A lot of stuff I did pro bono. But he finally
retired, and I told him, I said, "Steve, when you retire, I'm leaving.
When you go, I'm going." Because I said, "I know I'll never find anybody
like you again." And I did. But we still kept being friends until he
died. But when he retired and then died, I may have been back once or
twice. I think my niece [Barbara Procello] got married there. I'm not
against religion. Whatever makes anybody happy and makes them be a
better person I don't have a problem with. In my family, you name it,
I've got it.
HENDERSON:
[laughter] In terms of religion?
KENNARD:
Oh, yes. My brother-in-law [William King] is a priest.
HENDERSON:
Catholic priest?
KENNARD:
Catholic priest. And when I was dating his sister, he was at Dominguez
[Hills Memorial] Seminary. He's about seven years younger than I am, so
he was twenty-two. He used to think I was a real communist pinko.
[laughter] He was just telling me how I should join the church and
everything. So finally, when I married my wife, I said, "Bill, let me
tell you something. I'm going to respect you as my brother-in-law, but
I'll tell you, let's make a pact. I will not try to get you out of the
Catholic Church if you don't try to get me in. So let's not discuss it
anymore." You know, he and I are the closest of friends. We are so
close. He's just the nicest guy. But you know what? He left the church.
He left the church about six or seven years ago. He got disillusioned
with the church. I've always wanted to say to him, "Well, you got out
before I got in." [laughter]
HENDERSON:
We've gotten on a very good tangent. I've enjoyed all these topics. We
have not discussed what your firm was doing in '78--
KENNARD:
Oh, yes. [laughter]
HENDERSON:
--which is the time when it was about to go through some changes.
KENNARD:
That was '78, yes.
HENDERSON:
I don't know if you want to take that up. I have two questions that will
start us in a different direction. You had your partners Gault and
Delahousie. What are their full names?
KENNARD:
Okay, it's Ronald Delahousie and Jeffrey Gault. Yes, I think maybe we
ought to get into '78 later.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
That was a horrendous time. [laughter] That will give you a lesson in
the practice of architecture.
HENDERSON:
Let me ask this question--back to Carey Jenkins. At the time when you
were finding out about him and how he worked for [A.] Quincy Jones, how
aware were you of other black architects at the time in Los Angeles? I
mean, you were aware of yourself and Carey Jenkins, but how many other
people were you aware of at that time?
KENNARD:
I met Carey Jenkins, I had met John [D.] Williams and Harold [L.]
Williams--I knew them--and Art [Arthur H.] Silvers, who was younger than
all of us. When you get in business for yourself, that's when you begin
to realize who's out there, because you want to know who's out there,
who's the competition, and you get to talking. I mean, Carey and I used
to sit and talk a lot about the practice of architecture and how tough
it was. Carey was very nice to me, because when I went to Willowbrook
and he had given up his practice and he was working for the state--he had
done Willowbrook with Duckett and Jenkins--he said, "Listen, Bob, I can't
do it now because I'm working for somebody else, but I'll help you get
the job." Which I thought was very nice. We became competitors later on,
but we were always pretty friendly competitors. I mean, we'd still go
out and have a drink together and talk about architecture. Carey had a
lot of hostility. He was really very bitter about the role of the black
architect.
HENDERSON:
Oh. Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
Yeah. See, Carey had a lot of ego, and he really wanted to be the
biggest black architect in the United States.
HENDERSON:
Wow.
KENNARD:
He didn't say it, but he wanted to be, because he offered to merge with
us.
HENDERSON:
No, I don't think you told me that.
KENNARD:
Yes, well, Art and I were very busy, and we had around thirty-five
people, offices in Oakland and offices here, and Carey was really busy.
Carey had offices in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Saint Louis, and he was
really busy. He had people running the offices, but he didn't have
people of the strength of Art and me.
HENDERSON:
Middle management, associates--
KENNARD:
Middle management, could market. And he came to us once. He came to our
office, and he said, "I have a suggestion. We can be the biggest black
architects in the United States." He said, "We just merge our firms."
And business-wise, it was a hell of an offer. He said, "I don't care
what the name of it is as long as all our names are in it." He said,
"I'll throw my whole firm in," and his firm was bigger than ours.
HENDERSON:
Really?
KENNARD:
Yes. We'd throw all the work together and we'd split it three ways.
That's a pretty good offer.
HENDERSON:
That certainly is.
KENNARD:
Because, although Art and I had 50 percent of ours, he had practically
all of his, so he was taking a big reduction. We had a lot of meetings
about it, but we chose not to do it. We just didn't feel that, having
talked to his partners, Vernon Duckett and [Edward C.] Barker, we just
didn't think we'd ever get along and make it. I may have been wrong, and
it could have been a real good deal. I think it may have worked, but Art
particularly, and me to some extent, thought we'd better back out. We
had a pretty good thing going. Art and I were very good friends, and he
said, "Well, we'd better just stick to the way it is." As it was, Art
left two years later. He was gone.
HENDERSON:
I guess part of my question about what you were knowing of other black
architects was, was there any thought to having an organization at that
time in, say, the sixties, early sixties? Some sort of group of what you
guys were doing at that time?
KENNARD:
No, I think that--you know, after the sixties--after the Watts riots--most
of the black architects were pretty busy, because the whole city broke
loose. You know, John Williams and Harold Williams were all up in San
Francisco, so everybody was pretty busy. Harold, when we did the Van
Nuys State Office Building, he really wanted to merge with us, but at
that time I had pretty well had it with partners. I don't think that I
would do it again now, I mean, unless I had them coming up from within
the office. Actually, I did that before. I never just merged with
another firm. I've had people Who worked for me that became partners. In
fact, all my partners came up through the firm.
HENDERSON:
That includes Gault and Delahousie?
KENNARD:
Yes.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
Delahousie, Gault, Silvers, Shirley Nakamoto-Downs all worked for me in
heavy capacities, and then I offered them a partnership, and they bought
into the partnership. But, see, I doubt whether I would have a partner
that I would just bring in from somewhere, because I think you have to
know a lot about them. There's so much to know aside from just their
technical ability. And even then, when people came up to me I didn't
know them that well. See, there's a lot of difference between being a
senior, top employee and being a partner. As Harry [S] Truman said, the
buck stops there. And a lot of people--and I don't say this with any
gladness, or I don't say it with the certainty it sounds like--but I see
very few people, now that I've been in so long, who come through
architecture, in my business, that are partnership material. I mean,
really, there are very few. The best partner was my first one, Art. And
even then, because of his emotional inability to deal with the stress,
it turned out that he was not good. But as far as intellect, willingness
to work, integrity, competence, talent, Art was undoubtedly the most
superior of all. Now, all these other people had a lot of things going
for them, but the one that I think I could have made it the most with
still would be Art if he didn't have just personal problems. You know,
the stress of life today, you cannot be in a business with this stress
and then go home and not have a pretty serene environment. You just
can't do it. You've got to have a wife that's behind you--which he
did--but you also have to be calm in your own way. You can't have stress
here and stress at home. Something's going to have to give. So if you
don't have a pretty comfortable personal life and a healthful life--I
mean, you cannot drink and smoke pot and think you're going to function.
You've got to look alive and be ready to meet it. It's just a matter of
what you want. If you don't want to do that, then you shouldn't be in
business. You know, as they say, if you can't stand the heat, get out of
the kitchen. You can't do it. So I see very few people that can do it.
And I see them here. I can look at them and tell those that could be a
partner and all that. I mean, I can just see their work habits, their
attitudes. I've got one kid here who hasn't even got a degree, and I'll
bet you, as far as all the capabilities of being a partner, he's one of
the best, because he's so involved in what he does. He's so interested,
he's such a team player, he's such a giving kind of guy. He'll just work
his butt off. And I got him right out of high school. It's just amazing.
And he's going to grow. This kid will be with this office probably
forever, because you move him, you keep moving him up, up, up. And we
make him go to school. He can't afford to stop going to school, but I'll
bet you-- Joe [Joseph] Barcelona said, "You come here with only high
school, you've got to go to school. You've got to go to night school.
You've got to go, and you've got to tell me what you're taking all the
time." I don't think architects realize business is tough, you know.
It's really tough. If I'd have known what it was when I started, then I
probably wouldn't have gone into it.
HENDERSON:
Interesting.
KENNARD:
I'd have been so scared. It's like marriage. You don't know what you're
getting into when you get married.
HENDERSON:
You sure don't. I mean, if you knew the future, you'd be afraid of doing
anything.
KENNARD:
I used to tell my mother and dad about this stuff. Oh, they'd just laugh
at me. She said, "You haven't even eaten your white bread and butter.
You don't know anything." [laughter] And my dad said, "Well, if he knew
it, he wouldn't get married." [laughter] You think you know, but you
don't know. No, I would never have gone through it again. Never. I don't
think I'd want to go through it again, either.
HENDERSON:
My first question was about Shirley Downs.
KENNARD:
Okay. Shirley [Nakamoto-]Downs was a Japanese American. She was married
to the son of a black architect, Tommy [Thomas] Downs. Did you know
Tommy Downs?
HENDERSON:
No, I did not.
KENNARD:
Tommy Downs was an architect who was in my age group who, when I left
DMJM [Daniel, Mann, Johnson, and Mendenhall], came and worked for DMJM.
He worked for DMJM for a long time, and he moved up to a very high
position with DMJM, and we were very good friends. It's through Tommy
that I met his daughter-in-law. She was married to Tommy's son, Rodney
[Downs]. She was an administrative secretary person who worked for a
black contractor whom you know, I know. He's still around. The name will
come to me. I think his name is Williams. A relatively successful black
contractor, very, very hard-working guy. But she heard about our
firm--and I think she wanted to leave his firm, for reasons I do not
know--so I guess Tommy referred her to us, because he said it would be a
good place to work. He knew me pretty well. So Art [Arthur H. Silvers]
and I--that was when it was Kennard and Silvers--interviewed her. She had
a very good background. She had a business administration background.
HENDERSON:
Native of California, I guess?
KENNARD:
Native of California. Her family was from Sacramento. They were
landscape contractors. In fact, her brother is a landscape architect,
one of her brothers is. She joined us in the early seventies. It was
probably maybe even the late sixties or early seventies. Yes, I think
she joined us in the late sixties. It was just shortly after we had
opened an office in the [San Francisco] Bay Area. We opened an office in
the Bay Area of San Francisco in 1968, and Art [Arthur H. Silvers] was
going back and forth for the first year. But then it got too much for
him, and he was going through some personal problems, so I switched and
I said, "Okay, I'll start making the trips, and he can be in the L.A.
office." So Shirley turned out to be a fantastic person. She was
extremely competent, worked hard. I mean, she would really work hard.
Everybody liked her, she was excellent working with people, and she's
extremely smart. We grew real fast after that. I mean, we went from
about ten or fifteen people to about thirty-five people. We expanded.
[Ronald J.] Delahousie joined the firm, Jeff [Jeffrey M.] Gault joined
the firm to do the planning, so we had about twenty-two, twenty-four
people in L.A., and then our office in Oakland built up to about ten
people. So I was traveling a lot. But Shirley was very good. She
practically ran the office for me. In '72, because from '69 to '72, Art
was undecided on whether he wanted to leave the firm or stay in the
firm--did I tell you about that?
HENDERSON:
We didn't go into that in detail. You said you had some major problems.
KENNARD:
Yeah, well, what happened. Art was having personal problems, and there
would be times when the business was just too much for him. That's why
he had a hard time dealing with the traveling up and down. You've got to
have a pretty stable home life and your head pretty well together to be
working those kinds of hours and getting on planes. You know, you'd have
to leave at seven, be up there, come back at night, sometimes stay all
night, and it's a hard trip.
HENDERSON:
Well, let me ask this question. Did things evolve in the firm where you
were doing the business and he was doing design? Or was it ever that
clear-cut?
KENNARD:
We evolved that he was in charge of design and I was in charge of
marketing and the business end of it. I moved out of the design. He
always said, "Well, you really should design." I said, "Art, you can't
design and run all over the map. You can't do both." Design is a very
concentrated kind of thing. Art was a very good designer. He's extremely
smart, has a good sense of judgment with people. Personally, he had
personal problems. I mean, he was drinking a little heavily and it was
tough. So for a period of time from the time he--he became a partner in
'66, and up until about '69 or, say, '70, things were going. We were
real busy. But as his marriage put more pressure on him, because he was
having a problem with home personally, he would be depressed, and he
would sometimes say, "I want to get out of the firm." He did that
several times. I mean, he did it once, and he said, "I just can't take
it anymore. I want to get out of the firm. This is not what I want to do
with my life." It is a lot of pressure, a tremendous amount of pressure.
So I said, "Well, all right. If you want to get out, I'll buy you out."
Well, he'd think about it over the weekend, and then the next Monday
he'd come and he'd say, "Well, no, I want to stay in. I like
architecture." So finally, the second time he did it--and I was under a
lot of pressure, so I said, "Look, you've got to be in or you've got to
be out. I mean, I can't build a firm, I can't do all this stuff, and I'm
running up and down the coast--." And we had work in Washington, DC.,
Jeff was going to Mexico--we were busy. We had a lot of work all over,
all over the U.S. and some in Mexico. We were running. Jeff was doing
the planning, Ron Delahousie was running the production, Art was doing
design, and I'm running all over trying to get work and see that we can
make payroll. So it was tough. So then, finally, the second time--I never
will forget--it was Friday night. A lot of times at evening we'd sit and
talk, and he'd be very depressed, and he'd say, "Well, all right," he
said, "I want to get out." Then, by Monday, he would talk about he
didn't want to get out. So I finally told myself, I said, "The next time
he wants out, I'm going to let him go." So finally, in '72, one day he
was really down and depressed, and he said, "I want to get out." I said,
"Okay. Let's call your attorney." We had an attorney that he had known
for years who was our legal counsel for L.A. work. His name" was Dave
[David B. A.] Finkel, who was a prominent lawyer, and now is recently
councilman in Santa Monica. He and and Art were very good friends. I
said, "Well, let's call him." We met Saturday. I never will forget, we
went down to Santa Monica. We met at breakfast, and I said, "Art wants
to get out. It's the third time he wants to get out. I think he needs to
leave." It wasn't the best timing. It would have been better if he'd
have gone out like in '70, because financially we were in much better
shape. By '72, with all the moratorium on the housing, we weren't in
very good shape. But he had moved into about 50 percent partnership. And
I said, "Art, you know, I like you, you're great, but I've got to have
the commitment." So he finally decided he wanted out, so we met and we
drew up all the papers. I never will forget the night that Art and I
were signing the papers. We were in the office on Washington Boulevard,
and we were signing the papers. Art was in his office and I was in my
office--and it wasn't bitter. But Art finally kind of came unglued. He
realized that he really didn't want to leave. So he sent Dave Finkel
back in to ask me. Dave was telling me, he said, "Bob, would you
consider rescinding this and letting Art come back?" Now, remember, Dave
went to kindergarten with Art. They knew each other better than I knew
him. So I turned to Dave Finkel, and I said, "Dave, you know Art. You
love Art. I love Art. I mean, he's fantastic. Would you be his partner?"
I'm still waiting for the answer. I haven't gotten one yet. I don't know
whether I should put that in the book, because if Art ever reads it,
he'll probably be ticked off. [laughter] But Dave never did answer me.
So we broke up. But I was in a bad bind, because here we had work, God,
all over. Washington, D.C. We were at work in resorts in Mexico. Jeff
was going down there, I'm going up there. It was frenetic. So Jeff and
Ron pushed for being a partner. I didn't mind it too much. Both of them
were very good. Ron's a very good project manager, and Jeff was a good
marketer. So I said okay. I said, "Listen, I can't run this damned thing
by myself, and if you want a partnership, I will make it so you can buy
into it as a partner." And we said, "We'll make it three-way, " and
gradually they would buy into the company. They would get increased
salaries but they would buy in. So that's how from Kennard and Silvers
it went to Kennard, Delahousie, and Gault. That's the way you got the
KDG.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
Shirley was with us at the time and running all the administrative
stuff, and I had a young woman who was just a fantastic accountant
person. Her name was Donna Van Buren. She just handled all the payroll
for up north and everything. She was really good, a very competent
person. So I had a real good structure. Jeff had a top guy, Ron Allum,
who was one of the early graduates of the [UCLA] graduate School of
Architecture and Urban Planning and has been very successful since he
left. He was running the plant. I mean, we had a really good team. We
had a guy named Ward Preston who was an excellent designer. When he left
the firm he went into set design. He won the Academy Award for Towering
Inferno. I mean, we had really good people, and we were building a very
good reputation. But architecture's a funny thing. Well, any business
is. I mean, the thing is, there are not many people who have the stomach
and the staying power to be an entrepreneur. I have learned that over
the years. I can count the people on two hands, probably, and have
fingers left over--maybe one hand--that have been in my office--I'll give
them the benefit of the doubt--two hands--because some people have left
and been entrepreneurs and been very successful. But I would say not
more than a dozen people, and most of them have already gone and opened
their own office, like Ernest [P.] Howard, Jim [James C.] Moore [III],
Escudero-Fribourg [Associates], Adolpho Miralles. All those people
worked for me and had their own office or they've gone into other
businesses, like Bob Bell, who owns a lot of restaurants. So, I mean,
you've got to have a balance in your life. For one thing, your personal
life has to be pretty well together. Secondly, you have to be able to
take the ups and downs. So we were doing really well. We were a
partnership, and we were making pretty good money for that time, the
three partners. But as a partnership, all the money that comes in that's
divided, you have to pay tax on it. Well, I think it was '78 when all of
a sudden we got hit with a lot of tax, and our accountant said, "You've
got to move into a corporation so you can shelter the taxes." But it was
that very year that Ron Delahousie, who was just an excellent project
manager, one of the best I've ever had in the firm, his wife and he
broke up, and Ron kind of came unglued. So he told me one day, he said,
"Look--" I don't know whether I should tell all this in this oral history
or not.
HENDERSON:
It's up to you.
KENNARD:
It's personal stuff.
HENDERSON:
I've got lots of tape.
KENNARD:
Well, we'll have to see. We may have to edit it out.
HENDERSON:
Okay. No problem.
KENNARD:
All of a sudden he had to pay about $18,000 or $20,000 worth of income
tax.
HENDERSON:
Damn. That is a lot.
KENNARD:
And he just went unglued. He said, "My wife Elaine [Delahousie]'s taking
half my money," because she's separating, and he said, "KDG's taking the
other half." He says, "I have to file for bankruptcy." I said, "Ron, the
U.S. government has no word in their dictionary that spells bankruptcy.
If you've got a house, you've got a car, you will pay the tax, so forget
it." So he said, "I want out." He said, "I don't want to be a partner."
Well, having gone through this stuff with Art, I said, "Okay, when?" He
said, "As soon as possible." I said, "In thirty days you're out. I'll
buy you back out." So shortly thereafter, Gault, who had a friend whose
father was extremely wealthy and was an older guy and had taken a liking
to Jeff--and Jeff had been doing some development.
HENDERSON:
Jeff is Gault?
KENNARD:
Yes, Gault.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
Jeff wanted to break off and do some development. It was Gault, James,
Plessett, a three-way partnership. And, you know, you can make a lot
more money on the developing thing, especially when you've got an angle.
So, to make a long story short, Jeff said, "Do you mind if I leave?" I
said, "Listen, if you have an opportunity, leave." Well, all of a sudden
it's 1978, Jeff's leaving, Ron wants to get out, and I've got all these
people, and I'm trying to run this goddamned place. So one day Shirley
and I were sitting down together. I said, "I don't have a problem with
buying out one of these guys, but I don't want to buy them both out." So
I said, "How would you like to buy one of them out, and you'll be my
partner?" So she became a partner.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
The name was changed. We wanted to keep KDG because KDG was what
everybody knew about. So I said, "How am I going to keep the initials
KDG?" Then it all of a sudden dawned on me, "How about Kennard Design
Group?"
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
And that's how we kept the name, but--
HENDERSON:
You kept the initials.
KENNARD:
We kept the initials. But Shirley also had marital problems.
HENDERSON:
Oh, no. Not Shirley! [laughter]
KENNARD:
Well, Shirley had been married once before, and she was having problems
with Rodney [Downs] as if she wanted to leave, and, of course, now she
was making the kind of money where she could afford to leave. Before,
she could not leave when she was just a lowly administrator. But this
way, now she's a partner, she's making good money, so she decided, hell,
she's getting out. So she split. But when she separated from Rodney, she
was then single, and we, a lot of us in the office, helped her move over
to--one of my interior guys helped do her house. She moved into Park La
Brea. She had a nice place. You know, we helped her furnish the thing
and the company loaned her some money to get her furniture, etc. Well,
Shirley's the type of person who cannot be single long. I mean, some
women just can't. So it wasn't long before she wanted to be married
again. And she was not well. During the time she was a partner, she was
out about two years. She had real problems with her back. She'd had a
lot of surgery on her back, so she was in constant pain. So she decided
that she'd--she met this guy and she wanted to marry him, a nice guy, and
he wanted her to stay home. So that was the end of her; she was gone.
HENDERSON:
Oh.
KENNARD:
So I bought her out.
HENDERSON:
And what year was that?
KENNARD:
That was '85. In '85, Shirley was gone. So it was then I happened to
read a book--of course, after all these years, now I learn. But I read a
book--I don't know whether you've ever read the book. It's by [Mark H.]
McCormack. It's called What They Didn't Teach You at Harvard Business
School.
HENDERSON:
I think I've heard of that. [laughter]
KENNARD:
Somebody gave me that book. It's an excellent book. This guy is the guy
that started that big international sports franchise [International
Management Group] in which he promoted people like Arnold Palmer. He put
Arnold Palmer on the map. He took top athletes and ran their careers and
their investments, and they would move in and make money and not just be
broke. And I never will forget, I was reading it, and it said--he is
single. He owns the company. And there's one page in there--it's a very
succinct book. And one sentence says [slaps hand on table], "Don't have
partners."
HENDERSON:
[laughter] Oh, my goodness.
KENNARD:
I said, "Now he tells me." I don't think you can make a blanket thing
like that, but I think there is a lot to say about it. My wife [Helen
King Kennard] always said, "You're the kiss of death." All four
partners, in all the time they were there, they broke up their
marriages. I said, "Listen, it's not my fault." But what I do think is
if your marriage is a little shaky, then the pressure of business will
sometimes push it over the brink.
HENDERSON:
Yes, yes.
KENNARD:
And one thing you've got to have, which I do have, is a wife whose
family was in business, for one thing--but that's not absolutely
necessary--but who understands the kind of flak you have to take to be in
a business. I mean, her father had a restaurant, and they had developed
housing, etc., and she knows that it's a roller coaster. Sometimes it's
up and sometimes it's down, and you've got to ride the wave. Sometimes
you don't get paid. You know, in 1985 I made nothing.
HENDERSON:
Ouch.
KENNARD:
No sales. And then sometimes you do well. I mean, there are a lot of
times when you just can't get paid. I mean, you've got to pay people
first. So you've got to take a lot of flak. Well, of course, now one of
my daughters [Gail Kennard Madyun] is in the company. But I found out
that I learned how to organize it that--see, some people in a business
would never want to be a partner. So the people, I've found out, if they
want to be a partner, and you're not ready to have them as a partner,
it's best to encourage them and help them start their own practice,
which I've done. I mean, I have encouraged a lot of people. Jim Moore,
for instance. He always had a feeling that he just wanted to have a
crack at this one thing in his life. And I said, "Jim, if you want to do
it, do it now, as much as I hate to lose you, " because he's an
excellent designer. He's called me a number of times, and he said, "Boy,
now I know what you went through." Because when people are employees,
they don't see your side of it. But Jim sees it now, you see. Escudero
Fribourg [Associates], they see it now. They see how the grass is not as
green on the other side of the street as it looks. I mean, you put in a
lot of hours. I still put in a lot of hours.
HENDERSON:
Very interesting. Let me switch the conversation to go this way. I don't
know if you recognize this brochure.
KENNARD:
Oh, yeah.
HENDERSON:
It's been kind of water damaged.
KENNARD:
Yeah, The Three Worlds of Los Angeles [United States Information Agency
traveling architectural exhibit, 1974].
HENDERSON:
The Three Worlds of Los Angeles.
KENNARD:
Beata Inaya. Where'd you get that?
HENDERSON:
She gave that to me a couple of years back.
KENNARD:
Who? _
HENDERSON:
Beata?
KENNARD:
Oh, Beata? Yes, Beata Inaya did that.
HENDERSON:
And I was just going to ask you what you remember about that exposition
and her and your work at that time. Tell me about that.
KENNARD:
Yes, I remember it. She took this around the country. We contributed to
it. I remember. I have a copy of this.
HENDERSON:
Do you remember what the thinking was in going into the formation of it?
Did she come to you?
KENNARD:
She came to us, yes.
HENDERSON:
She's from Russia, I believe.
KENNARD:
Russia, yes. She's from Russia. She was a pretty liberal lady, and she
wanted to show the diversity of the United States abroad. It traveled
all over the world.
HENDERSON:
The pictures of you and Art Silver in there, do you know what year those
were taken?
KENNARD:
No. Isn't there a date on this thing?
HENDERSON:
She couldn't remember the date at the time.
KENNARD:
Well, it's got to be '74.
HENDERSON:
'Seventy-four? Okay.
KENNARD:
But I think Art had gone when it was put together in '70, '72, because
Art was gone in '72. Most of this work that we did was before '72.
HENDERSON:
It seemed that part of the work, or at least the descriptions of the
work, was in reaction to the Watts riots.
KENNARD:
Yes, right. See, the 102nd Street [Elementary] School, Central City
Community Mental Health [Facility], Bank of America, all of it came out
of the Watts riots. All the jobs we showed came out of that. Yeah, I saw
Beata not too long ago. I ran into her. Well, when I spoke to the AIA
[American Institute of Architects] on the three architects--you know that
thing--she was in the audience.
HENDERSON:
Three architects?
KENNARD:
Well, Herb [Herbert N.] Nadel was chairman of a series of lectures in
which they would invite three architects.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
And the night I was there--no, four architects. The idea was just for the
four architects to talk about their practice and how they got started. I
was there, Dave [David C.] Martin from Albert C. Martin [and
Associates], [Edward C.] Friedrichs from Gensler [and Associates], and
the fellow that ran the Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill office here.
HENDERSON:
[Richard C.] Keating.
KENNARD:
Keating, yes. Richard Keating. It was kind of funny, because David
Martin was from a real large office, a very successful office, and
Keating is very wealthy.
HENDERSON:
Oh, he is?
KENNARD:
Oh, yes. I believe his family's wealthy. And, of course, he was running
the show at Skidmore. So you had David Martin and Keating. Friedrichs, I
don't think he was very wealthy, but he was in a firm that has been very
successful.
HENDERSON:
Right.
KENNARD:
They were all big firms doing a lot of work, and then there was little
old me. [laughter] I mean, it was a whole different ballgame. Of course,
right after that, Keating left Skidmore.
HENDERSON:
I heard that Skidmore closed its office here.
KENNARD:
I believe so.
HENDERSON:
Do you happen to know if he left and then they closed the office? Or
they were going to close the office and he decided to stay and leave? I
haven't heard what the gossip was.
KENNARD:
I think he probably realized--he got this second big job for Skidmore. He
got it away from [Philip] Johnson, [John] Burgee [and Associates], who
was supposed to do it. I think he probably wanted to leave, and Skidmore
also was thinking of pulling away. I ran into him at the AIA convention,
and Helen and I and he and his wife were talking, and I said, "I hear
you're going out on your own." He said, "Yes, and I'm trying to decide
whether it's a smart thing to do or not." And I said, "Well, Richard,
just jump on out there and do it. I mean, get it out of your system at
least." He said, "Well, I don't know." But he's in with a couple of
other people. I haven't talked to him and found out how he's getting
along, but I think he has good contacts. I think he's a guy who can move
in a whole different milieu of work.
HENDERSON:
He's got star quality.
KENNARD:
Yes, that's right, who runs with the kind of people that hire a lot of
good architects. And I think that's why he moved up in Skidmore, Owings,
and Merrill, because of the corporate thing. His father was an airline
executive. And the reason why I thought he was pretty well off, he lived
in a house that was designed by William Wilson Wurster.
HENDERSON:
Where did he grow up?
KENNARD:
In the Bay Area.
HENDERSON:
I didn't know that. Okay.
KENNARD:
He grew up in Orinda. And he was telling us at this dinner that his
father was an airline executive and they lived in a house designed by
William Wilson Wurster. Wurster was a fantastic architect, so you know
he couldn't have been a poor boy.
HENDERSON:
Oh, yes. Oh, yes. [laughter]
KENNARD:
But Richard's a pretty nice guy. He's a very classy guy. [tape recorder
off]
HENDERSON:
You were saying about how you and Art worked in terms of a design team.
You went back and forth. Can you pick up on that?
KENNARD:
Well, Art was a very, very good designer, and he was so smart that he
had an ability to deal with the client and listen very carefully to what
they said and translate it. And he loved to design.
HENDERSON:
But, now, you and he went back and forth--
KENNARD:
Because I had designed, and I think he respected me as a designer, I
didn't have a problem. He had a problem. He said, "How come you're not
designing?" I said, "Well, I think both of us can't design, but I would
like to always be in on the design." So we worked together many an
evening. We'd sit down after everybody had gone and work out the design.
He called on me, and he could take criticism of mine, because it was
usually constructive criticism. We had a real good ability to work
together on design. We respected each other's ability. And, of course,
Art was honest, very honest, in his personal life. He may have had
personal problems, but he was very honest in who he was, what he wanted
to do, and that integrity spilled over. If he could have dealt with it
in a personal way, his personal side of his life, he was the perfect
partner. He really was. Because he had great stature, people liked him,
except that his personal thing sometimes got caustic with people and he
turned them off. But he was a charming guy. He was a very handsome,
charming guy. And he was committed to social things. He was very
committed to the civil rights movement. So we had that togetherness that
was very good. It was a big disappointment to me. I met Art when he was
still at fSC, and he visited me. I never will forget the first time I
met him. He came and visited me at Gruen [Associates]. He was doing a
paper, and he wanted to know about black architects. I was very
impressed with him. And then, when he went to work for Albert C. Martin
[and Associates] and I was in business, he came and visited me, and I
offered him a job. So it was the beginning of a long relationship. We
did some nice work with him. And we're still close friends; we still
keep in touch. I just got a letter from him the other day.
HENDERSON:
Well, let me ask you this question. When you were working on design,
were you working with a conscious philosophy? That is, at 'SC, did he
pick up something about modernism there? Was that part of your conscious
design? When you were working on a design, was there a conscious
philosophy that you were designing in the midst of?
KENNARD:
Well, I think Art and I both shared one thing: We never went into a
design with a preconceived idea of what it was going to look like. What
we did is we looked at the program and we tried to design it based on
the user and the program and the environment where it was, and as a
result, most of the things that Art designed while he was here, they're
very different.
HENDERSON:
Yes, yes.
KENNARD:
You wouldn't notice that they were designed by the same person. A lot of
things, Central City Mental Health Clinic, 102nd Street School, it's
different than Saint Mark's Lutheran Church.
HENDERSON:
We're looking at the pictures here.
KENNARD:
They're different. This is different, this is a little different. This
was an industrial building; it had to be real clean. Central City Mental
Health--they're all different.
HENDERSON:
You can't say that they're all cookie cutter and they're all the same
unique solution.
KENNARD:
No. No, that's right.
HENDERSON:
But what I guess I'm getting to is that all of these buildings, to me,
look modern. They're kind of a product of their times.
KENNARD:
Yeah, they're all contemporary.
HENDERSON:
Contemporary.
KENNARD:
They're very contemporary.
HENDERSON:
There's use of concrete--
KENNARD:
Richard [J.] Neutra, his philosophy was the Bauhaus, in which you took
an idea and you refined it throughout your professional career.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
That's different than, say, the [Eero] Saarinen office, which I think is
one of the greatest of offices. The Saarinen office and [E.] Kevin Roche
and John [G.] Dinkeloo, who took over the office, and the architects
that came out of the Saarinen office, like [Anthony J.H.] Lumsden and
[Cesar] Pelli--but Saarinen, if you look at it, you can't tell that that
was a Saarinen job. I mean, you look at a Neutra job, you know it's a
Neutra job.
HENDERSON:
Right.
KENNARD:
You can see a [Frank] Gehry, you can almost tell it's Frank Gehry.
HENDERSON:
Yes.
KENNARD:
But you tell me if you can see that the Ford Foundation [Headquarters]
Building or Dulles [International] Airport or the Oakland Museum or the
chapel at Yale [University]-- You'd never know that they were at the same
firm, but they were all from the Saarinen office. Dulles airport is
incredible.
HENDERSON:
Yes, yes.
KENNARD:
I mean, it looks like an airport.
HENDERSON:
It really does.
KENNARD:
It is fantastic.
HENDERSON:
And it looks almost timeless, too.
KENNARD:
The Oakland Museum---• When I had an office up there, I spent so much
time at the Oakland Museum, because I read that when Saarinen looked at
the rate--- They took an aerial view of Oakland. This is what I've read.
I don't know if it's true, but it seems right. Oakland's very urban, and
they said, "There shouldn't be building there, there should be a park
there." Have you ever seen the Oakland Museum?
HENDERSON:
I've seen pictures of it. It's covered--it's an underground building with
plants and things on it.
KENNARD:
They built a building in a park, a park in a building. It is an
incredible piece of urban design. I used to take my lunch and eat there
because it was just such a gorgeous place. Tony Lumsden was the guy that
worked on it. There are very few architects, I think, today--and Art was
kind of like this. I mean, people will probably resent the fact that I'm
putting him in the same league as Saarinen, but Art would take a
building, study the owner's problems, and design it within the budget
and with the site and owner in mind. So our work--especially when Art was
here--does not show a cookie-cutter kind of design. The churches we did,
the houses we did, they don't reflect a particular style. You take a
program, a problem, and you solve it. And that's what I think
architecture should do. That's why I think the Saarinen office--if I had
to name any one office that I admire the most, that's the office. And
Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo, who carried it on, still have done some
wonderful work. The John Deere [and Company] headquarters, there's just
incredible architecture, even more so than Frank Lloyd Wright, although
he was pretty good at that, too. I mean, he had quite a different
variety, but not as much as the Saarinen office.
HENDERSON:
And even Neutra, at the end of his career, when he was going through
some changes--that is, he used different materials, he was using woods--
KENNARD:
Well, he used different materials, but he still had the [Ludwig] Mies
van der Rohe, [Walter] Gropius, Bauhaus philosophy.
HENDERSON:
A very set philosophy.
KENNARD:
A very set philosophy. A lot of it was modular like [Raphael S.]
Soriano. I went through that period, and I liked it, and, I mean, there
are places to use it. My house is very much like that. I mean, it's not
as expensive as Neutra would build, but it's a very simple structure.
HENDERSON:
I want to see your house one day. I haven't been up there yet.
KENNARD:
Yes, I want you to come. One thing I learned about Neutra more than
anything, he wrote a book called Mystery and Realities of the Site.
HENDERSON:
Yes, you've mentioned that.
KENNARD:
And I'll tell you, after the third time I designed my house The first
two times, I couldn't afford what I wanted to do. So finally, when I did
it, I did a complete rectangle, and the siting is what's great about the
house. I mean, the house is simple. I know it has a lot to do with my
experience with Neutra. But the siting is what makes the house. I think
that's the big thing I did that works real well, because it was a tough
hillside. Garrett Eckbo did the landscaping. And when I get in there,
it's a place, it's a place where you are. It's a retreat. Art and I
agreed with that kind of philosophy. We were tremendously compatible in
how we approached architecture, and because we were both black, we had
similar backgrounds. We understood how to deal in a majority situation.
HENDERSON:
Do you think that helped you with some of your black clients as well?
KENNARD:
Oh, there's no question about it, because we understood them. See,
that's why I believe more young blacks should go into architecture,
because the world is changing so fast. We are becoming a multicultural,
multi-ethnic society. When you have been a minority, there is no
question you have more sensitivity to other people and other races, and
you're going to be a better architect. You don't come with any
preconceived idea. And that's one of the reasons why I moved to
Hollywood with my kids, because I wanted them to have that multicultural
respect for other people. Hollywood High [School] had seventy
nationalities. It's the world. And I'll tell you, people that don't
understand are not going to survive.
HENDERSON:
What I wanted to cover today were your favorite projects, some
particular projects that I've looked at, and talk about those and how
they were designed and what some of the factors were that went into
them. You may want to start off with what you think was your favorite
project or projects over a number of years.
KENNARD:
Well, I guess starting with the time when I did single-family
residences, I had a couple of--we did a lot of residential work, but one
of my favorites was one of the earliest, one I did for the Irving [B.]
Zeiger residence. It was done in 1959. They're still in the house.
They're still very good friends, I see them often, and they have kept
the house up very nicely. It's beautifully kept. Garrett Eckbo was the
landscape architect, so the siting is very nice. It's up in the
Hollywood Hills in the Wonderland Park [Avenue] area. Wonderland
Park--maybe before your time, there were several architects, Garrett
Eckbo, [A.] Quincy Jones, Bob [Robert E.] Alexander, a bunch of very
liberal architects, who were trying to develop what was called Mutual
Housing Corporation.
HENDERSON:
I've heard of that.
KENNARD:
They were trying to develop in the west side of the city--I don't
remember whether it was in Topanga [Canyon], but it was somewhere out
far west--a planned community that was just planned from the beginning.
Garrett Eckbo was the landscape architect on the siting and these very
fine architects. There were a number of architects. Gregory Ain was
involved.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
This was going to be an area which would also be multiracial. In those
days, restrictive covenants were still in in most cases. Minorities
couldn't buy anywhere. They never could get financing for it, so in
desperation they all went to an area of Wonderland Park up in the Laurel
Canyon area, and many of them just individually built homes. Garrett"
Eckbo built a home, and I did two or three houses up there. One of them
was for the Zeigers, which is a very nice house. It's a
4,000-square-foot house. It's just a huge gable. The site slopes, but
the gable goes straight, so it's a very interesting house. I was
involved not only in the house but the site, the interiors, etc. That's
one house that I really liked. Another house that I'm very proud of was
done for a woman named Susan Hardyman. She was a widow living alone, and
she built the house. Art [Arthur H.] Silvers was with me, and he was
very involved in the design. We worked on it very closely together, had
a lot of fun doing it. It's in Silver Lake, and it's on a curved street
looking over the lake on a very steep hill, and the house curves with
the street.
HENDERSON:
Oh.
KENNARD:
It's really a nice house. She loved the house, and she lived there till
she died. Those are the houses I did. I've done a lot of other houses,
but those are two, I think, of the nicest houses. They were great
clients that had a real understanding of design and art. Some of the
commercial work we've done--I'm pretty proud of MORH housing in the [San
Francisco] Bay Area, More Oakland Residential Housing [Inc.] We did it
for a community-based, nonprofit organization: 360 units, three towers,
twelve "stories each, with 126 townhouses on ten acres. It was a master
plan. I had a lot of fun doing that job. It was done with HUD
[Department of Housing and Urban Development]. In those days, they had
never done a HUD project in the Bay Area that wasn't wood, and we did it
of high-strength block. T. y. Lin [engineering firm] was the structural
engineer. It's a very good example of planned housing of three and four
bedrooms, townhouses, with all the yards and everything for the big
families, and then in the high rise there were single and one-bedroom,
very few two- bedrooms. But all the family housing was in the three- and
four- bedroom townhouses.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
We built that. That was a nice job. Oak Center Towers, another one,
which is an elderly housing--
HENDERSON:
That one is pictured in your brochure.
KENNARD:
I like the [Charles R.] Drew [Postgraduate Medical] School [At Martin
Luther King Jr. -Charles R. Drew Medical Center] master plan very much.
HENDERSON:
That's the medical school?
KENNARD:
We also did the Medical Education Building. Drake Dillard was very much
involved in that. You know Drake, right?
HENDERSON:
Yes, I do. I didn't know he had worked for you.
KENNARD:
Yes. He was very much involved in that project. He did a nice job on
that project. Central City Community Mental Health [Facility] center, I
think that's a very nice project that we did for a nonprofit
organization. It's reinforced concrete, 100,000 square feet, gymnasium,
swimming pool, designed for preventing mental illness, so it had a lot
of recreational facilities and administrative services. I like the
garages at LAX [Los Angeles International Airport].
HENDERSON:
Oh, you do?
KENNARD:
Yes, I think they're kind of interesting. They're not just a simple
garage. They're very well articulated. Hugh Browning was the project
designer on that job with me.
HENDERSON:
A question about that garage: Just from my looking at it from the
street, it has a sort of Greek ambience to it.
KENNARD:
Yes.
HENDERSON:
Was that intentional?
KENNARD:
Yes, we were trying to do something that was not just a plain old box,
so we articulated the fascia very much.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
And there are some kinds of fun things. The scuppers have--have you
noticed the scuppers?
HENDERSON:
I'll have to think about that.
KENNARD:
The scuppers are where the rainwater comes out.
HENDERSON:
Right.
KENNARD:
It's a smiling face. Did you never notice that?
HENDERSON:
I haven't noticed that one. I was looking at the columns as being
something fluted.
KENNARD:
They're all fluted, yes.
HENDERSON:
I've got this picture here. Do you have a scupper on there?
KENNARD:
None of these. Not on this point. You'll have to see them on another
elevation.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
One thing that's also nice about it is the articulation of the shadow on
it. And you see how the beams are set? The beams sit on a little corbel.
HENDERSON:
Right, like a little corbel of--
KENNARD:
Yes. It's a good building, parking structures numbers 1, 3, and 4. Those
were some of the key things. Another job that I think is really good is
Scott United Methodist Church, which is across from the Gamble House [in
Pasadena, California]. I don't know if you've seen that. It's right
there.
HENDERSON:
I haven't seen that. Every time I go to. the Gamble House, I'm going
there, you know.
KENNARD:
Jim [James C.] Moore [III] was with me at the time, he was director of
design at that time, and that's a very nice building. Although I think
Art was involved, too. Temple Akiba, I'm very pleased with Temple Akiba,
which is based on a hexagon. It's a play on a hexagon. The sanctuary's a
hexagon, and the whole building is built around that shape. I was very
much involved in the design of that, trying for a different form.
HENDERSON:
That temple is on Sepulveda [Boulevard].
KENNARD:
Sepulveda, yes.
HENDERSON:
Culver City [California].
KENNARD:
Yes. Plan-wise it's nice inside, too. Those are some of the things. My
own house I like, which I designed a third time so I could afford it. My
own house, it's a very simple house. It's just 300 [feet] by 100 [feet].
See, the first two I built I couldn't afford. They were different--it was
all crazy stuff, different heights and different levels and everything.
But I couldn't afford it, so I finally went back to a very simple box.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
But what's good about it is the siting. Garrett Eckbo was the landscape
architect, and I planted about forty or fifty trees, so now the
landscaping is developed. That was a period of time when I was very
influenced by [Richard J.] Neutra and his book, Mystery and Realities of
the Site, that the site was more important than the house. It sits
eighty feet back, so I have a lot of privacy. So that's pretty nice.
I've enjoyed it.
HENDERSON:
I do need to get to see that.
KENNARD:
Yes, you ought to come up and see it sometime. Maybe we'll have a party.
HENDERSON:
Any more projects you can think of that you liked in particular?
KENNARD:
Oh, there's a lot of them, but I don't know how many you want to go
into.
HENDERSON:
Well, some of the questions I had involved, maybe, some of the--
KENNARD:
Oh, I liked the City of Carson.
HENDERSON:
Aha. That's what I was going to ask you about.
KENNARD:
The Carson-Civic Center. We did that. That was a three-way joint
venture. That was Bob Alexander, myself, and Frank Sata. It was a nice
collaboration of three architects that got along very well together.
HENDERSON:
Who came up with the major design idea?
KENNARD:
Sata was really the lead designer on that.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
Well, Bob Alexander worked on the overall plan, the master plan. Sata
was the lead designer. We were managing partners of the whole thing. In
fact, the second job, it wasn't even a joint venture. We did it, but we
still kept them in the deal. They still had a part of the deal. They
were smaller offices at the time, and Bob Alexander didn't want to have
a liability policy on it. So rather than have a joint venture, which our
insurance didn't like, I was prime, but we still kept the team together
and we all worked together. We're very happy with that job. Frank's a
very, very good designer.
HENDERSON:
When I went into the courtyard, I think, at the Community Center [of the
Carson Civic Center], it has a very nice, slightly oriental, sort of
Polynesian feel to it.
KENNARD:
Yes, yes. He's very talented. In fact, we have a picture of the court in
our office.
HENDERSON:
In the lobby.
KENNARD:
I'm very fond of that job.
HENDERSON:
What about the Van Nuys State Office Building?
KENNARD:
I like it. It's a departure. When Governor [Edmund G. "Jerry"] Brown Jr.
was--he was more willing to do some interesting things. That was a joint
venture of Harold [L.] Williams, myself, and Jim [James] Dodd. I was the
design partner on the job, and Harold and Jim Dodd did contract
documents and administration. So we were just involved with the design
portion. It's an interesting job. I don't think it's one of my favorite
jobs, because we never got to do some of the things we wanted to do as
far as the space frame above. You know, we were supposed to cover it
with glass.
HENDERSON:
Oh. Oh, okay. See, I see in the picture here that the space frame is up
there. I'd always assumed that it was covered.
KENNARD:
Well, it was supposed to be covered with glass so that when you walk out
in the middle you would have a cover, because all the circulation is on
balconies there. Pietro Beluschi was a consulting design architect on
it. Nice guy to work with, an [American Institute of Architects] gold
medalist.
HENDERSON:
I've heard of Pietro. The reason I was exclaiming about that is that
I've walked around it but never been inside, but I always assumed that
the space frame had glass in it or plastic in it.
KENNARD:
-I don't think they've ever done it. Here's a nice building, Oak Center
Towers. I like that building.
HENDERSON:
Yes, we're looking at the brochure now.
KENNARD:
Art was director of design, but the architect who designed this was
George Barnes. He was an American Indian architect, very good.
HENDERSON:
Oh, really?
KENNARD:
Excellent, excellent architect, wonderful designer. I wonder what
happened to him. I lost track of him. [tape recorder off] The school
work we've done--we're doing one now that I'm really fond of.
HENDERSON:
Oh, which one is that?
KENNARD:
That's Jefferson High School, but it's in design. And also Los Angeles
High School Number One, not the L.A. High School we did before. But
we're doing the one on the Ambassador [Hotel] site.
HENDERSON:
Oh. Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
And I think that's going to be a really nice building, if I live to see
it.
HENDERSON:
Well, we'll be optimistic.
KENNARD:
It will be a while.
HENDERSON:
What sort of design ideas are you thinking about for that, for the
Ambassador site high school?
KENNARD:
Well, right now we're just in master planning of it. We've done four
master planning schemes which we haven't even presented to the Los
Angeles Unified School District board yet. The models are all in our
storage room. We're not supposed to show them to anybody except staff
because it's very controversial. We're waiting on a reuse study that's
being done by the [Los Angeles] Conservancy. They have the site now, you
know. They bought the site.
HENDERSON:
The conservancy bought it?
KENNARD:
No. The L.A. school district bought it.
HENDERSON:
Oh, the school district, okay. That's what I thought.
KENNARD:
They have the site. They took it by eminent domain. Well, they actually
purchased it.
HENDERSON:
They took it from [Donald J.] Trump? They've legally taken it from
Trump, okay?
KENNARD:
Well, Trump pulled his money out of it. But Trump still owns the six
acres on Wilshire [Boulevard].
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
See, the six acres on Wilshire will be commercial. We're on the back
seventeen acres.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
But that's going to be a real nice job. The fellow who's director of
design now, Mahmoud Gharachedaghi, he's a very good designer. We work
real well together. I've had some very good designers I was very
compatible with, because my main thing in my office* aside from managing
and getting work, I get involved in all the design work, and I go to all
the meetings. On Jefferson Senior High and L.A. High School Number One,
I went to all the design meetings. I go to all the meetings with the
clients, because I came into architecture because I like design. I don't
draw it per se, but even with Prank Sata and Bob Alexander, we were all
very much involved in the design, although Frank Sata was the lead and
he had a lot of the ideas about it. I certainly would not deny him that
a lot of it was his input, but we had a lot to say about the form and
everything, because that's what you're in architecture for. I don't want
to be just only a businessman. I want to be involved in the design. But
you can't do it. You can't. You don't have time to draw it. You can just
put your input into it. So I've been pretty lucky. First, Art Silvers
was a great designer and very nice to work with, and then came Dan
[Daniel] Escudero, who has his own firm with Art [Arturo] Fribourg
[Escudero Fribourg Associates]. A very nice person to do design work
with. He was director of design, and then Jim Moore, and now I have
Mahmoud. I mean, they were all people whom I found talented and very
easy to work with.
HENDERSON:
That's a pretty good track record. Did they all come from USC
[University of Southern California]? Did they all go to school at USC?
KENNARD:
Jim Moore and Dan Escudero came from USC, Art came from USC--yes, all of
them came from USC. I never thought of that. Mahmoud came from USC. He
got his undergraduate degree in Tehran, in Iran, but he did his master's
at USC. Isn't that funny? I never made, that connection. [laughter]
HENDERSON:
It shows dominance of a school, but that's a local situation.
KENNARD:
Yes, that's something.
HENDERSON:
These days, since your office is well known in town, how do you think
you get work these days? Is it mostly coming to you? Or do you still
have to go out and get it?
KENNARD:
Well, a lot of it's repeat. I'd say 80 percent of our dollar volume is
repeat, because right now, of the major jobs we have now, we have two
high schools, a police headquarters [Seventy-seventh Street Police
Station, Los Angeles], and the [Martin Luther King Jr.-Charles R. Drew
Medical Center Diagnostic and Pediatric] Trauma Center are all repeat
clients. You know, the L.A. school district we've worked with since
1966, the city of L.A. we've worked for since the late sixties. But the
police headquarters, we answered an RFP [request for proposal], and we
were selected to do a presentation.
HENDERSON:
So you didn't just walk into the job? You had to go and fight for it?
KENNARD:
No. L.A. High School and Jefferson, they just kind of gave to us because
we're on the list and they rotate. I'd say a good 80 percent of our work
is repeat. UCLA we've worked with since the late sixties, California
State University we've worked with for about fifteen years, Metro Rail
rail transportation we've worked with since '72, so we have a lot of
repeat work. But we are going for new work all the time. We're always
trying to get--let me see what job we've gotten recently that wasn't a
repeat. [tape recorder off] The First A.M.E. [African Methodist
Episcopal] Church.
HENDERSON:
The one on Harvard [Avenue]?
KENNARD:
Yes.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
We just got a job there. We haven't signed the contract yet, but that's
a new client.
HENDERSON:
And they're coming to you--I guess part of my question is that you're now
so well known that people come to you?
KENNARD:
Yes, well, they talk to other architects, too, but we had to submit some
qualifications and met with them, and they selected us. We're just
negotiating a contract now. But look at all that. We've done work for
the postal system. We're doing about the fourth job for the [United
States] Post [Office]. Oh, another new client recently was Amtrak; we
got their baggage facility. They're recent. [McDonnell] Douglas
[Corporation] aircraft was relatively recent. We just got a job at UCLA.
We haven't started it yet. Well, we've started some of it. Lynwood
Unified School District is relatively recent, although we've done two
jobs for them. But most all the rest of them are repeats except for
minor jobs we have worked. There are some small jobs we've done. You
have to keep going after work. It's a full market. You see, the
industry's changed so much. We just lost a very large job. We've done
some work in waste water treatment plants, and in '78 or so we did the
Orange County Sanitation Treatment Plant with a firm called Corolla
Engineers. We've gotten to know them and we've gone for other work, but
we haven't gotten it. We went for a job--this was a huge job. It was the
North City Treatment Plant.
HENDERSON:
This was L. A?
KENNARD:
No, city of San Diego. See, they're big engineers, but we do all the
architecture. Now, we did one for DWP [Department of Water and Power]
with another big engineering firm some years ago in Sylmar. We were in
joint venture with Fleuellen and Moody [Architects]. Do you know what
the fee is on this San Diego job?
HENDERSON:
I don't even know.
KENNARD:
Twelve million dollars.
HENDERSON:
That's just the fee?
KENNARD:
The fee is $10 to $12 million. And the architecture alone, just the
architecture base, with the planning and stuff, the fee's probably
$600,000 net to us. We do it the architecture only, because they do all
the engineering. There are two buildings, and there's a master plan, but
we just lost it.
HENDERSON:
Ouch.
KENNARD:
I just found out. I was counting on that job, because it would have
taken us into '92. And I'll bet I spent $5, 000 trying to get that job,
because we were there so much rehearsing the stuff, doing sketches. It
was just ridiculous. See, the problem of the small firm now is that they
do not have the resources to compete for those kinds of jobs. Gail
[Kennard Madyun], that's all she does. Well, she does some personnel
tasks, but I would say that 75 percent of her time is just marketing and
RFPs.
HENDERSON:
That was a question I was going to ask you. I mean, how do you market
yourself now?
KENNARD:
When she markets it, she has to have all the support of the staff.
Mahmoud has to get in if there are sketches to do to present, we have
other people that have to do the graphics and do the graphics proposal.
We have Joe [Joseph] Barcelona, our director of operations, who has to
deal with the man-hours, because most of them now are some kind of price
proposal, so they have to be man-hours, and you have to find out how
many sheets you have to do and what it's going to cost you to do it. We
have one right now that has to be due by Monday. We're going with an
engineering firm, and there's a whole list of stuff we have to do. Then
I spend time, and they spend time, and Gail spends most of her time, and
I'm out a lot talking to people to see that they don't forget who we
are. So 5 to 8 percent a year of your revenue is just spent on
marketing. I'll bet you Corolla spent over a million dollars just going
for the job. They had to spend it. There were so many people in the
meetings. We'd spend all day. They hired a media consultant just to
choreograph, to set it up and figure how long you speak. It's extremely
sophisticated. I was just talking to the partner there the other day
when he told me we lost it. He said, "You know. Bob, it's just
ridiculous. It used to be people just walked in and gave you a job."
[laughter] And I remember that. They'd hear about you. Paul [R.]
Williams didn't have any marketing people. They heard of Paul Williams
and they gave him a job. Now it's a major thing. That's why the small
architect has such trouble. For one thing, there's not many custom
houses to build, which started you off when I started. And one person
says to another person who tells them, "See Bob Kennard. Do this, do
that." Now you don't have that. How many people can afford to build a
custom house now?
HENDERSON:
Not that many. Not in L.A.
KENNARD:
Merv Griffin. [laughter] Now you have RFPs. A small office can't afford
to take a week to spend on the proposal. Who's he going to bill? So in
the marketing effort, the overhead costs are very tremendous. The
architecture firms are getting larger and larger.
HENDERSON:
Now, how many are in your staff?
KENNARD:
We have thirty-five people.
HENDERSON:
Thirty-five. Now, see, I see you as a fairly large firm when I look at
black organizations.
KENNARD:
But I've heard 80 percent of all the architecture firms in the United
States are less than ten people.
HENDERSON:
Yes, yes. I've heard those figures.
KENNARD:
So when I say I have thirty-five people, they say, "You've got a big
firm." They say above twenty is a big firm. But even now, I was reading
in PSMJ [Professional Services Management Journal] where firms under 120
can have it very difficult. And I see it coming that way, because the
jobs are getting bigger, and in order to compete, you've got to do a lot
of marketing and a lot of staffing up, and it's really rough. It will be
a challenge for us to stay even where we are and try to make any kind of
decent profit with thirty-five people, because you have to have real
large jobs, jobs that, when you get them, you've got people who are
going to work on that job for three or four years. Any other job, if it
stops and starts, what do you do? In the last few months we have not
worked up to capacity. I have people who are not that busy. So what are
we doing? We're using them to help us get jobs. I have four jobs right
now that are on hold. L.A. High Number One is $50 million, Jefferson
High is $40 million, the trauma center is $30 million, and the police
headquarters is $30 million. How much is that?
HENDERSON:
I don't know.
KENNARD:
$150 million. I have $150 million worth of work, and not one of those
jobs we're working on right now.
HENDERSON:
Ouch. Well, do you attribute that to a general economic slowdown in the
U.S., or--?
KENNARD:
Well, Jefferson senior high, the bond issue didn't pass, we finished
design, so they stopped. And we'll know maybe in May whether it's going
to go. They have problems with contaminated soil.
HENDERSON:
Yes.
KENNARD:
L.A. High, we finished schematics. It's waiting on a reuse study.
Trauma, it stopped because they decided to add four floors. So our work
has stopped. Langdon- Wilson [Architects and Planners], our joint
venture partners, has continued on design. Our work will start on March
4 for working drawings. Police headquarters just got started, but it's
in the programming phase. We're doing very little of the programming.
Garner [V.] Grayson [III] of Steinman, Grayson, and Smylie is doing the
programming. So you've "got four major jobs that really nobody in our
office is working on. People say, "Well, Bob, you've got a lot of good
work." That's not all that great. Right now the only thing that we're
doing is a post office near Magic Mountain, which is a huge job with
Jacobs Engineering. And then we have a lot of smaller school work,
Lynwood, a fire station, community center, stuff like that that we're
busy working on. But the problem is, when you get large, you can't just
hire and fire. You've got to keep your key people. You have a project
manager who's not working under great pressure. He might be able to work
on two or three jobs when right now he's only working on one job.
HENDERSON:
They add up.
KENNARD:
Very bad. I mean, that is the problem. So I've often said there are only
two ways to practice architecture: be a single practitioner or get big.
There is not much in between. I mean, you either work out of your house
as one person or you get big, because as soon as you have one or two
employees, you've got to keep those people busy, and that pushes you to
constantly get work. The disadvantage when you're small is you can never
do big work, so you've got to do houses, and there are not many houses,
and there are not many remodels. So it's pretty rough. That's why our
offices are getting bigger. You know, Ellerbe-Becket [Associates],
[Thomas P.] Ellerbe [and Associates] merged with [Welton D.] Becket [and
Associates]. Look at what they do. Now they've got a thousand people.
HENDERSON:
Ouch. Yeah.
KENNARD:
You know, DMJM [Daniel, Mann, Johnson, and Mendenhall] has 1,500 to
1,800. And you can take on mega million-dollar jobs. You know, we were
with a team--and I won't say who we were with--to get Euro Disney. We were
one of the architects with the team. And do you know what? Although this
firm that we were with has total employees of 640 people--
HENDERSON:
That's pretty big.
KENNARD:
Very big, and the other firms that went had anywhere from 200 to--do you
know who got the job? The job is so big, Euro Disney is so big, that
they said, "You're going to need 200 people working throughout the
project engineers and everything." DMJM and Bechtel [Group] got it in a
joint venture.
HENDERSON:
Goodness!
KENNARD:
Now, you know how big they are.
HENDERSON:
They're super big.
KENNARD:
I mean, I don't think DMJM could have gotten it alone. They got it with
Bechtel.
HENDERSON:
Huge construction firm.
KENNARD:
They're 60,000 to 70,000. I don't know how many people they've got.
They've got loads of people. Now, this is a big job, it's a megabuck
job, and they didn't think that the firm I went with was big enough.
And, frankly, I don't think they were, because, if you're going to have
200 people working--
HENDERSON:
On just that project.
KENNARD:
--where are you going to get them? Even in a recession period they're not
walking the street. But Bechtel with 50, 000, 60, 000 people, engineers
and all, and DMJM with maybe 2, 000 or 3, 000, they can begin to do it.
They've got the top structure to pull it together. It's just incredible
how architecture's changed. You know, I still encourage kids to come
into architecture, because I think there are still always going to be
the small firms. And you don't have to have a practice. You can work up
into a firm where you have a major role in the firm. And I encourage
minorities to come in, because I believe in the next generation. The
infrastructure of the United States is getting to the point where it has
to be replaced.
HENDERSON:
Yes, definitely.
KENNARD:
And who better than ethnic minorities are better to do that? They
understand. They're city dwellers. They understand the dynamics of it.
And I don't think a lot of majority firms "can deal with it. I don't
think they can deal with the kinds of things that you have to deal with
in the inner city. I think they're going to learn to deal with it,
because that's where the work's going to be, but they're going to be
bringing in a lot of people that understand it. You know, my daughter
Lydia [Kennard], who's doing work in planning, can go into a minority
community or in Chinatown and deal with it because my kids went to
Hollywood High [School]. They understand. They don't have the baggage of
dealing with a diverse population like a lot of majority people have.
HENDERSON:
[laughter] What do you mean by baggage? You mean a sort of cultural--?
KENNARD:
Well, see, I think a lot of majority architects, white architects, do
not know how to deal with minorities. Here's a case in point. Here's a
very good case in point. I just read today in I think it was L.A. [Los
Angeles] Business Journal about the increase in hate crimes in America.
HENDERSON:
Yes.
KENNARD:
All right. Now, the newspapers and everything talk- about Japanese
people buying up America, and the average man in the street believes
that the Japanese are basically buying up America. And yet, if you look
at the statistics, the French, the Australians, the British, the Germans
own more of America than the Japanese own. When an English firm bought
Crocker Bank, you didn't see this stuff about England buying up America.
So the press feeds the fire when anybody other than members of Western,
European civilization buy it out. But if the truth was told, even with
what the Japanese have bought already, they're still about fourth or
fifth as far as foreign countries buying it out. How many people know
the Kuwaitis own Santa Fe International [Corporation], the big
industrial company? Most people don't know that.
HENDERSON:
I didn't know that*
KENNARD:
Not the Santa Fe Railway; this is Santa Fe International. They bought it
almost in cash. How many people know that HDR, a big firm in Nebraska--
HENDERSON:
HDR?
KENNARD:
Henniston, Durham, and Richardson.
HENDERSON:
I've not heard of them.
KENNARD:
They're owned by a French firm. They were purchased. Because we went
with them on a job. But most people don't know. You don't read that in
the paper. But if Japanese, Asians buy it, or Koreans buy it, or
somebody like that, it's all over, and they talk about, "They're buying
it up." There's an arrogance of power among the white power structure.
They can't face the fact that a lot of minorities are smarter than they
are. [laughter]
HENDERSON:
Especially an Asian minority.
KENNARD:
Ron [Ronald] Brown, who is one of the most brilliant guys you can meet,
chairman of the Democratic Party, when they write about him, I see
little things that creep into a discussion about him that have nothing
to do with his ability.
HENDERSON:
Such as what?
KENNARD:
Okay. There was an article about him. He's a sharp guy, and he's
brilliant. They talked about the fact that he drives a Jaguar and he
wears a Rolex watch. I have never heard anybody say that about a major
white cabinet officer or committee member.
HENDERSON:
Correct, yes.
KENNARD:
What they do is they pick up on the fact--because basically they're
saying that as if this is something good about him, but back there
basically there's a resentment of where he has gotten to. That's what I
feel. Now, maybe I'm overly sensitive, but I don't think so.
HENDERSON:
Yes, those kinds of discussions have nothing to do with his work.
KENNARD:
I mean, I never hear that about George Schultz. I don't even know what
kind of car he drives. What damned difference does it make what kind of
car he drives or whether he wants a Rolex watch? It has nothing to do
with his inner life or anything. I don't know whether you read just
recently, but--I can't remember his name [Martin Bernal]. He's a famous
writer, and he wrote a book called Black Athena: [The Afroasiatic Roots
of Classical Civilization].
HENDERSON:
Oh, yes. Yes, I read that in the newspaper.
KENNARD:
Did you see that? I mean, it's just rocking them, because what they're
saying--he says civilization did not arise through the Europeans, that
there were a lot of Egyptians and blacks. There's a big fight at
Stanford [University] now--fortunately, the students are fighting it--to
get more study of other civilizations other than, quote, "Western
civilization."
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
I also don't agree with [George H. W.] Bush and this Gulf War. There's
an arrogance of power that they thought they could go in there and, "Oh,
it will be over in a week."
HENDERSON:
You know, that reminds me, the last time we had our session, when we
were here, was on the day that it started.
KENNARD:
Is that right?
HENDERSON:
Yes.
KENNARD:
It was going to be over soon? It ain't over yet. In fact, they're scared
to hit a ground war. I mean, they are very nervous about hitting a
ground war. Because what happens? They always underestimate Third World
people.
HENDERSON:
They do, yes.
KENNARD:
We're always thought of as not quite up to it. Now, they will deny that,
but basically it's in their psyche. And it's going to be the downfall of
Western civilization. And if you read Mortal Splendor, which is a very
excellent book by Walter Russell Mead, the American experiment may be
the shortest empire in the history of the world, two hundred years, if
we don't understand what we have to learn.
HENDERSON:
What I wanted to start this session with was asking you about designs,
in particular designs that your firm has done that you didn't think
worked out so well. Maybe even a question like, do you go back and look
at your buildings and say, "Okay, we did that well," or "We didn't do
that well"?
KENNARD:
Yes, I know what you mean. As far as the residential work that I've
done, we did a house in the Hollywood Hills, Beachwood Canyon, which was
a residence but designed to eventually have three units. One of the
units was going to be the person's mother. And the people [the
Abramsons], their son and my son [William E. Kennard] were very dear
friends, and we were neighbors. I did this house, and my concept of the
house didn't end up like the way I wanted it. It's not a bad house, but
in order to do a nice building or a house, you've got to have a
sympathetic client, you've got to have a client that has some
sensitivity to what you're trying to do, and the rapport never worked
out with us. It was not a good relationship between us, especially the
woman, because her taste was abominable. [laughter] We had serious
disagreements at the end of the job.
HENDERSON:
They didn't sue you I hope.
KENNARD:
No, they didn't sue me. And her brother, who lived down the street, he
said, "Well, I hope this relationship that you have with the Abramsons
will not affect the friendship" that their son and my son had, because
they started in kindergarten, and they're friends. But it didn't,
because they're still close and dear friends. They went all through high
school together, to Stanford [University] together. They're both on the
East Coast; they see each other very often. So it didn't hurt that. But
it was not a happy house. And the problem with the house that bothers me
the most is that I have to go by it on my way home. [laughter] So I
don't look over there very much.
HENDERSON:
Did the plan not work well with the elevation?
KENNARD:
The plan works fantastically. The plan worked really well because it was
built so that they could have one house, two apartments, or three
apartments. They're very happy with the plan, and after they got in and
everything, they're very happy with the house. But I'm not happy
architecturally. It didn't have that spark of visual delight that a
house should have that shows an architect designed the house. Most
people would say it's a nice place, but to me it doesn't look like an
architect designed the house. An architect-designed house has to have
some kind of delight about it, some flare about it, something different,
interesting. So that's one job I didn't like. As far as buildings, I'm
not overly happy with one of the schools we did [Hoover Elementary
School]. It was in a joint venture with Harold [L.] Williams. Harold
Williams was the designer and we did the production. And in all fairness
to Harold, I must say it was during the time when the school had those
stupid standards.
HENDERSON:
This is the L.A. Unified School [District)?
KENNARD:
Yeah. They had those stupid standards that you couldn't deviate from.
Right after that, after we did the school, Roberta Weintraub came on the
board, and she and some of the other board members kind of pushed to
have better design in the schools. So since then, the schools got
better. Before and after that, some of the schools were pretty nice. You
can do some pretty nice things. But there was a time when it was very
rigid, and operations maintenance had more to say about the design than
anybody else. So I don't like that job much. I've never felt good about
the job.
HENDERSON:
Now, the reason you don't like the school is purely appearance? Or do
you think that the floor plan looks--? I mean, it works okay?
KENNARD:
The floor plan is all right. It's okay. It's just a mundane school. It's
not an exciting school. I don't think it does anything for kids as far
as making them interested in architecture. The classrooms are fine and
everything works well.
HENDERSON:
It meets the codes and specs and everything like that.
KENNARD:
Yes, it meets the codes. There's just no delight to it. Architecture has
to have some delight. I mean, it's not just function. Architecture is,
as they say, the organization of space for people. It has to meet user
needs. It should be user friendly. But the thing that makes a house nice
or a building successful, I think, is the delight it gives, maybe not to
everybody, but at least to the people that use it--the vistas and the
things that you look at and" you see in a house. I talk about houses
because they're the most emotional of buildings. Churches and houses are
the most emotional as far as architecture. So they need to have that
element of what somebody called visual delight. I like that term.
HENDERSON:
Some sort of a spark.
KENNARD:
So when you're sitting in the room you get a nice feeling. One of the
things I liked about working with Richard [J.] Neutra and then for
Garrett Eckbo, the landscape architect, is both of them were involved in
the site. I think I mentioned this somewhere earlier, that the site was
important to Neutra. Most of his buildings were very straightforward,
simple, very high-tech-looking kinds of buildings. But the way that it
was sited and the landscaping that he always had a lot of and the way he
set it on the site was really good. He wrote a book called Mystery and
Realities of the Site. And then, working with Garrett Eckbo, who was one
of the top landscape architects at the time, I felt that the site is
just an extension of the architecture. I almost became a landscape
architect, actually, because I really feel that the urban design and the
siting is much more important than the building. If you go down the
Champs d'Elysees in Paris or you go in Washington, D.C., down the vistas
of Washington that L'Enfant designed, the buildings are pretty
nondescript in both cities.
HENDERSON:
That's true.
KENNARD:
But the feeling of the street is the point.
HENDERSON:
It's the landscape, the unifying effect.
KENNARD:
And the vistas. No matter where you go on any of those streets, you see
the Capitol [Building]. Those are just tremendous things. And I don't
think architects--a lot of architects are tied up in form and all the
things in a building, and many times they don't relate to the site at
all. It's kind of like a person with a lot of ego. The things that
surround them are not important. It's too self-centered architecturally.
Let's see what other building I did that I didn't like. Some houses and
buildings I like better than others, and I think some of them I
mentioned before that I liked.
HENDERSON:
Yes, yes. I don't have my notes right in front of me on which ones you
liked. Maybe I should sort of ask you questions about some buildings,
and then you tell me what you don't like about them. The Van Nuys State
Office Building?
KENNARD:
I think Van Nuys State Office building--I don't think it achieved what we
wanted to achieve. And the reason why it didn't is because the
landscaping in the center court, it's devoid, I think. Landscaping would
have made that building, but we had such a low budget on that--secondly,
the idea was to cover the atrium in glass, which they never did.
HENDERSON:
Right.
KENNARD:
So that when people move about they don't have interior hallways, they
have balcony hallways.
HENDERSON:
Oh, you get rained on. In fact, you can't move inside the building
without going outside?
KENNARD:
You can move in your suite, and some suites have restrooms, but to get
to the major restrooms and the garage, you've got to go through the
atrium. This whole area was going to be covered from the weather, you
know, so that when you walk out, you're not in the rain. And since they
never did that and they never planted the building well, it didn't come
off properly. It wasn't really our fault. It was the fact that we just
couldn't go to that next stage, and they just never did it. There's a
very good example of siting and landscape that could have changed the
face of the building. It could have changed the whole concept of the
building. So many public buildings do not spend enough money on the
site. HENDERSON; Oh, really?
KENNARD:
No, they always skimp on it. L.A. [Los Angeles] High [School] is a very
good example. We had one of the best landscape architects in this city
as landscape architect for L. A. High.
HENDERSON:
This is the Ambassador [Hotel site] project?
KENNARD:
No, the L.A. High on Olympic [Boulevard].
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
Emmett [L.] Wemple was the landscape architect. I mean, he's a fantastic
landscape architect. He did a lot of houses for me. He's doing the [new
J. Paul] Getty Museum, he's doing Richard Meier's museum. They cut the
landscaping so bad it isn't even funny.
HENDERSON:
Oh, my.
KENNARD:
It's a big building, and it needs to be softened by landscaping. There
are not many buildings that look real good without landscaping, I don't
think. One of the buildings that probably does look good is the National
Gallery [of Art] in Washington, D.C., that I.M. Pei designed.
HENDERSON:
Oh, I.M. Pei. Yes, yes.
KENNARD:
Pei is a fantastic architect. He knows how to use geometry to create
interest.
HENDERSON:
Even my mother likes that building. She went to D.C. and that was one
building she talked about. So when I went to D.C. I had to go see that.
KENNARD:
It's good outside, it's good inside. And there's not a lot of
landscaping. You know, even the [First] Interstate [World Center] tower,
it's a piece of sculpture. Pei's more of a sculptor than he is an
architect. I think his work is very sculptural, and I think he is really
a very fine architect. I really like his work, I mean, next to [Eero]
Saarinen. He's number two in my book. [laughter] Don't let Cesar Pelli
read this. [laughter]
HENDERSON:
Yeah. One building that does have a lot of land around it is the
[Charles R.] Drew [Postgraduate] Medical School [Medical Education
Building]. Do you think that that's well landscaped?
KENNARD:
Yes, that was done well. [Donald] Jung did that for us. He did a nice
job there, especially on the northern side of it. On the north of the
building, it's very nicely done. But even in the front, the lighting and
the vistas are very nice. I could have used a little more--we didn't put
a lot of landscaping in the front because there was going to be a big
plaza to be built out there, and we couldn't afford to put the fountain
in the plaza. So we didn't want to put a lot of trees in front because
we'd have to tear them down. But in the back and along the side, that's
very nicely landscaped. He did a nice job.
HENDERSON:
Who did that building next door to the [W.] Montegue [Cobb Medical
Education] Building?
KENNARD:
That's [Donald L.] Stull and [M. David] Lee and Carl Kinsey. That's the
Allied Health Building. Another little building that I think is very
nice that we did is the Scott United Methodist Church. Talking about
small buildings, it's a nice building. It's very low budget, and there's
an indication of a budget that was low but was handled very well because
we had a real good client. The church and the people were very cognizant
of what they were doing. It was a neighborhood church, and it's very
much into the residential character of the site.
HENDERSON:
Now, that's across from the Gamble House?
KENNARD:
The Gamble House, yes.
HENDERSON:
I need to go see that.
KENNARD:
I'm happy with that building. They've kept it up very well. The
landscaping's restrained but nice. And we took the stained glass from
their other building and wove it into this building. We used it in a.
nice way. It's a nice building.
HENDERSON:
Have you been by Temple Akiba lately?
KENNARD:
No, I haven't been by it lately. Temple Akiba's a really good building.
I really like that building, except the site is so small that it doesn't
do it justice. It's just too tight on the site. Sculpture-wise and
plan-wise it really works very well.
HENDERSON:
When I pass that now, I take notice of it.
KENNARD:
The plan really works well. And the thing about the Temple Akiba is it
reflects the philosophy of Judaism, because, you see, in Judaism--I found
out as I worked with the Jewish community more--the foundation of their
religion is education. That's why there's always a school, usually, with
their synagogues. So although we almost had to do it, the synagogue
actually is on top of the school. The school is down below. What we did
is we dug six feet out and we went up a little bit, and all around under
the sanctuary and also under the social hall there are classes that
revolve around a little court. And by just going six feet down and
having a garden down there, the kids, although they were in the
basement, they had a patio area, and they could see the light, they
could see the sky, because we didn't want them to be put in the
basement. So it was really a nice solution to the building. I worked on
that a lot myself. I was very much involved in that job. Art [Arthur]
Seidenbaum wrote an article about that which was published, and we got a
lot of publicity on that, mainly because it was an unusual building, but
also, as far as I know, I'm the only black architect in the West, at
least, that's ever done a Jewish synagogue.
HENDERSON:
[laughter] You might be right on that. I started to think of something
Paul [R.] Williams did. He did Hillside [Memorial Park and] Mortuary.
KENNARD:
Yes, he did Hillside Mortuary.
HENDERSON:
For Groman [Mortuaries].
KENNARD:
But it follows a philosophy of Judaism. I wish it would have been a
bigger site.
HENDERSON:
When you're thinking of these design ideas, how do you come up with your
creative statement? That is, when you're thinking of that synagogue--I
know the floor plan is an odd shape--
KENNARD:
It's a hexagon.
HENDERSON:
Hexagon.
KENNARD:
The whole thing is a play on a hexagon.
HENDERSON:
Okay. Is that your standard way of coming up with ideas?
KENNARD:
Well, you know, the more constraints you have, the more interesting the
design.
HENDERSON:
Right.
KENNARD:
That was such a tight site. We had to put a sanctuary of five hundred, a
social hall, administrative facilities, a school, all on one site.
HENDERSON:
And it is small.
KENNARD:
And if we'd have done a square, a rectangle, you'd have a wall up along
all the sides. By doing a hexagon, you cut down the boxy feeling.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
A circle is the most efficient space, but our technology makes it
difficult to build a circle.
HENDERSON:
Right.
KENNARD:
So the next best thing is a hexagon or an octagon or something, because
that's as close to a circle as you can get. Also, the sanctuary worked
out fantastically because it's a hexagon, and we sloped the walls
inward, and inside the sanctuary the ceiling dips like this.
HENDERSON:
Dips toward the center.
KENNARD:
It dips kind of toward the center.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
We called in [Paul S.] Veneklasen, who is an acoustical person, to have
him just check the plan and see if we needed acoustics. He said, "I
don't need to do anything." He said, "Acoustically it's fine." You see,
we had carpet on the floor and then a hard surface above. On the sides,
there was no bounce back. In this room, here, sound bounces back and
forth.
HENDERSON:
Yes, you've got straight walls.
KENNARD:
Yes, and they're opposite each other. But in a hexagon, all that are
opposite each other, they're canted.
HENDERSON:
Aha. Okay.
KENNARD:
So if they bounce, they bounce down to the people. I didn't know that. I
wasn't thinking about that when I was designing. It was just an
architectural thing that happened to work out well. We have five hundred
people, and he said, "Oh, you can stand there on the podium and you
don't even need a mike." And we don't, because sound really stays in
there. Of course, there's no glass. Then we have a skylight above.
Albert Wein was the sculptor, and he designed the sculpture on the
outside. He was a Prix de Rome winner.
HENDERSON:
What's his name?
KENNARD:
Albert Wein. He designed the menorah and the eternal light. The eternal
light is gorgeous. The eternal light hangs down from a sculptured
skylight that's above. There's just a beautiful--and then in back of the
bema, which is the stage--
HENDERSON:
Like the altar, okay.
KENNARD:
--he's got this metal frieze. The artwork is really beautiful inside. And
in that job, what was also nice, the artist was on board at the
beginning, so we worked with him all the time. We designed the building
so that it complemented the art. I'm very fond of that building. And it
was in a period of time when I had a lot of time. I didn't think of it
as a job; I thought of it as a wonderful exercise. And the rabbi, who
was named Herschel Lyman, was such a nice person. We got to be very
close and dear friends. So it was a fun thing. We spent a lot of time
together. I can't tell you how many lunches and dinners and stuff we
had, talking about the building and getting to know each other really
well. And it was a time when I didn't have a big practice--I had only
four or five people--so it wasn't as harrowing a time.
HENDERSON:
About what year was that? You've told me before, but I've forgotten.
KENNARD:
It was the year of the Selma march. Was that '67? 'Sixty-eight? It was
in the sixties.
HENDERSON:
Okay. I can look that up.
KENNARD:
No, it had to be in the early sixties, because Ernest [H.] Elwood and
Art [Arthur H.] Silvers were working for me, and Ernest left in '65. So
it had to be in the early sixties. That's right.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
That's when we were designing it, '62, '63. God, that's a long time ago.
It's almost thirty years.
HENDERSON:
Any other buildings you can think of that you like or don't like?
KENNARD:
I like Central City Community Mental Health [Facility]. I think it
serves its purpose really well* It's a big building. Oh, I like this
building here, Oak Center Towers.
HENDERSON:
Oh, the Oak Center Towers. We're looking at the company brochure.
KENNARD:
I like Oak Center Towers. A fellow in our office named George Barnes was
a project designer on that job. He was a very talented guy. He was an
American Indian. He articulated that building very well. It's 198 units
of just repetitious elderly housing, but the way he articulated it--
HENDERSON:
Up at the roof and all along?
KENNARD:
Well, all along, you see how he did that and other little things?
HENDERSON:
Well, explain to me, by articulation--my idea of articulation is not
decoration but it's how you handle small details, so I'm seeing that
this has sort of minimalist corners, but there's a lot of interesting--
KENNARD:
Well, I call this articulation.
HENDERSON:
Oh, right at the top?
KENNARD:
Yes, right at the top.
HENDERSON:
Okay. Yes, yes.
KENNARD:
And also the way it comes in and out.
HENDERSON:
And it makes a good shadow line.
KENNARD:
The shadow line--it's not just a box.
HENDERSON:
Right.
KENNARD:
See, the plan was really good, because instead of taking the building
like that--. [begins sketching]
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
--he took the building--
HENDERSON:
Which is a dead rectangle.
KENNARD:
He did like this.
HENDERSON:
Oh, he's offset it.
KENNARD:
Yeah, we offset it, and it kind of--another architect had done a building
just like that, a rectangle, and it was just ugly. [laughter] I will not
mention his name. And then John Williams, who was the director of
redevelopment, said Episcopal Homes Foundation, who was supporting it,
did not like the building. So they said they were going to let him go,
and I said, "Could we do it?" And we did it. It's still a very simple
building, but then you start doing stuff at the ends like we did there.
HENDERSON:
Yes, add little small volumes.
KENNARD:
And the elevators and the stairs you articulate.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
See, this was very simple.
HENDERSON:
You pull out from the main volume little smaller volumes.
KENNARD:
Yes, yes. Then, even at the top, see, at the top he just pushed those
rooms out a little bit, made them larger.
HENDERSON:
Just a few feet, yes.
KENNARD:
Yes, just to give it a nice feeling. It's really a nice building. This
is the best part of it. Now, another job we liked, I think Carson Civic
Center is a very nice building. We did that with Bob [Robert E.]
Alexander and Frank Sata. Frank Sata was the project designer. But we
had a wonderful relationship, the three of us, in working together, so
we got all involved in the thing very carefully. Bob Alexander was
involved a lot in the site planning. We were really managing partners
and kind of choreographed the whole thing, but it was a nice
relationship of the three people, three architects that had a lot of
respect for each other, still good friends, and it's a very successful
civic center.
HENDERSON:
Is there anything about that civic center that didn't quite reach
potential? Or is it really almost the ideal building, as far as you see
it?
KENNARD:
I think it's one of the best. They had a lot of money to spend on
landscaping.
HENDERSON:
And they have good landscaping. I was down there recently.
KENNARD:
Well, the guy that was our contact, Howard Holman, was head of [the Los
Angeles City Department of] Parks and Recreation, so he was really into
landscaping. Yost Kuromiya was the landscape architect, and I'll tell
you, the landscaping is just incredible. It's beautiful. The spaces in
there are very exciting spaces, and it's been a very successful
building. They make a lot of money there. They rent out the auditorium a
lot.
HENDERSON:
Yes, yes.
KENNARD:
The exam is done there.
HENDERSON:
Oh, really?
KENNARD:
Yes. The AIA [American Institute of Architects state licensing]
architecture exam is held there. And there are a lot of weddings and
receptions. They make a lot--and they have a huge catering kitchen there.
We had twenty-four, twenty-five consultants on that job. We even had an
agronomist, because the soil was so bad that we had to take out eighteen
inches of soil all over the site and bring in new soil. They had
corrosivity problems as well. We had a theater consultant. We had all
the sound people. They had money to do it. It's a nice building. It
works very well.
HENDERSON:
Okay. Maybe I should turn to the second part of what we're going to talk
about, and that is being, I guess I'll call it, a community role model.
Your time is sort of constantly being called upon, demanded of, people
asking you to do lots of things. What are the effects of all that? Like
you were saying that [Los Angeles] City Council candidates were asking
you for endorsement money.
KENNARD:
Yes, well, they ask everybody for money.
HENDERSON:
[laughter] But especially you, I guess.
KENNARD:
Well, I think that particularly in the minority community I get that,
because we do a lot of work in the minority community, and the contacts
are great. It's really bad, because I really am for public funding of
political campaigns. Because I think it's getting way out of hand. I
think it's a burden on the candidate to always be asking for money. They
really can't do a job well when they're asking for money all the time.
And I think it makes for some real ethical questions. And I don't think
the people that are in the community are represented as well as the
people with the money. I have always contributed to Common Cause. In
fact, Walter Zelman was supposed to be the ethics commission chairman,
and he turned down the job in the city. But Common Cause, which is
Archibald Cox's thing that he started--I think you really need to look at
a lot of ethical considerations about how candidates raise money. That's
the way it is, and I think as long as you do work in the public sector
you can't deny that that's going to be something that you have to
respond to.
HENDERSON:
Well, let me ask you a trickier question. How do you decide, maybe,
which cause to back and which public service activity to get involved
in? How do you make that determination for yourself?
KENNARD:
Well, I think architectural students are my main thrust. And I do that
because, when I started, very few architects really took the time to
counsel me and talk to me about architecture. I was extremely
discouraged by it. Architects, they were always too damned busy to just
give you a little bit of time. And I vowed if I ever got a practice I
would never turn a student away. It takes a lot of time. I've been
involved with so many schools, not only the L.A. school district and all
the speaking things. Now I have some of the people in our office take
those speaking engagements. Bill [William W.] Adams [III] goes out, and
Mahmoud [Gharachedaghi], they go to the elementary schools and the high
schools, when I used to do it all. But I was involved with Cal Poly
[California State Polytechnic University], Pomona, in the summer
intensive program. I've been involved in the Shadowship Program from Cal
Poly [California State Polytechnic University], San Luis Obispo. They
send the student down once a year. They pick a student
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
In fact, I have a student [Everett Johnson] coming down Sunday night.
This young fellow, he's a fourth-year student. George [J.] Hasslein has
picked him out, sent him down. I usually request black students because
I think we have a responsibility there. This kid's coming down Sunday
night. He'll come to our house. He'll drive down. We'll probably have
dinner, and my wife [Helen King Kennard] and I will take him out, he'll
stay all night, spend the night just to see how we live. Then all day
Monday he's just going to be in our office. Bill Adams is going to take
him to the [Los Angeles] Central [Public] Library with him. We have a
"lunch Monday where the project team that's doing a big post office in
Santa Clarita is going to present it to all our officers. We have that
every once in a while. We bring all the people in our office into a
little lunch to show them what we're doing in the office, because some
people are working on one thing, and when we get through design we make
that presentation so people will know what we're doing.
HENDERSON:
That's a good idea. It's a very good idea.
KENNARD:
It's fun. So Everett Johnson, the young black student, he'll go to that.
If I have a meeting with a client, he'll probably go with me. So then
I'm involved with 'SC [University of Southern California] very heavily,
with the [Architectural] Guild. I'm on the dean's council [of the
Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning] at UCLA. I was just
asked by Lou [Louis M.] Naldorf to be on the board of advisers for
Woodbury [University]. It's really getting pretty heavy. I'm going off
the guild this month. Then Virginia [W.] Tanzmann said, "Would you want
to serve another term?" I said, "No, I can't. I've just got to control
my time." A lot of people come in. I got a call by a fraternity brother
of mine [Hack Woodford] who has now moved down near San Diego, and they
have a mentor program down there. He said this young" fellow was from
Oklahoma, but he's now going to Poway High School. His name is Ron
Turner. He graduates in June and is looking for schools to go to. He's
already been admitted to Arizona State [University], but he'd kind of
like to go to 'SC. Well, Hack Woodford knew that I was involved in 'SC.
So I've been on the phone with Ron Turner, and I talked to him, and he
said he's already been interviewed by USC. He's got a 3. 4 average, so
he's in pretty good shape. So this Tuesday before the mayor of Los
Angeles's design advisory panel, Dean [Robert H. J Harris and I had
breakfast, and we were talking about a lot of other things, but I said,
"Listen, I want you to make a note of a young fellow." Because, out of
450 students, only about 10 are black at 'SC, and I think Dean Harris is
really trying to get more black students in. I want to help him. I said,
"Now, remember, it's very expensive." He said, "Don't worry. We've got a
lot of scholastic money and financial aid." So I gave him the name,
because this kid has already been interviewed by admissions, and so, by
Dean Harris knowing that name, this kid may get in.
HENDERSON:
He'll know how to look for him.
KENNARD:
I want to meet him. His mother's going to drive him up sometime. I like
architecture, and I think more kids should get into architecture, but I
think you also have a general responsibility, since I think education's
the most important thing. There's nothing more important than education.
HENDERSON:
Not these days.
KENNARD:
I've given my kids a good education, but they're not in architecture, so
you reach out to architecture students, because I know something about
that. I don't think I should be dealing with other things. Also, our
office deals with other things. Gail [Kennard Madyun] is very much
involved in more socially oriented projects, like homeless projects, and
the [Los Angeles] Marathon. But as a minority firm, I think you have a
special responsibility. White architects--it's just like Barbara [Ingram]
and Stacy [Williams] said--have more opportunities to get internships,
etc. You know, there's still a reluctance on the part of a lot of white
architects to help minority architects. I think a lot of them will not
go out of their way to find a spot for them in their office.
HENDERSON:
You're right. You're right.
KENNARD:
I see a lot fewer blacks going into architecture.
HENDERSON:
You mean it's a lower number these days?
KENNARD:
Well, I don't think it's a lower number. There's more number, but not
more per capita of the architects that are going in.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
How many in UCLA? I can't remember.
HENDERSON:
We were talking about 10 or 11 at UCLA in architecture.
KENNARD:
Out of how many? HENDERSON; Out of 300.
KENNARD:
So you're talking about, say, 3 percent?
HENDERSON:
A little more than 3 percent.
KENNARD:
A little over 3 percent.
HENDERSON:
Yes, about 3 percent.
KENNARD:
At USC it's not even 3 percent. It's 10 out of 450. I think maybe at
Woodbury and [California State Polytechnic University] Pomona and San
Luis Obispo, those schools probably have a few more. But I think our
percentage should be growing, and I don't think it's growing.
HENDERSON:
Oh, let me ask you a quick question before I forget. You mentioned a
fraternity. What fraternity are you a member of?
KENNARD:
Oh, it's the Sigma Pi Phi fraternity. It's one of the oldest black
fraternities in the country.
HENDERSON:
Okay. Do you think that NOMA [National Organization of Minority
Architects] should get more involved in this kind of activity?
KENNARD:
What "do you mean by "activity"?
HENDERSON:
Working with students.
KENNARD:
I do. I think the problem with NOMA is that the young practitioners are
so busy building a practice, it's hard for them to take the time that I
can take, because I have a staff of people, and I can delegate a lot. So
I don't want to be critical of the young people in NOMA, Bob [Robert S.]
Moore and Roland [A.] Wiley. Roland does a lot in the AIA [American
Institute of Architects], but it's harder for them. They're starting a
practice. So I think I bear a little more responsibility. Our firm is
larger, I have more of a structure. Gail helps me a lot, my daughter.
Also Bill Adams and Gail [R.] Bragg, they're interested in this, too.
And Bill is always on the lookout for black architects that we can
possibly bring in through Howard University, etc. So I have a little
better opportunity to do it. I don't expect people to do it at the same
level.
HENDERSON:
Kind of in Roland's defense, I've worked with him when he's brought,
say, junior high school students to his office. And when I brought the
Prairie View A and M University], half came here and the other half went
to RAW [Architecture].
KENNARD:
I'll tell you, Roland is unique in that, even though he has a young
practice, he's quite active. And I really think they're going to be a
very major firm in the future here in L.A. They do good work.
HENDERSON:
Yes, they do.
HENDERSON:
When I was asking the question a few minutes ago on how you decide what
activities to get involved in and whatnot, maybe I should rephrase the
question this way: You're an 'SC person and you've gotten involved at
UCLA. You don't find a contradiction in that? Or you're so interested in
architecture that that's no problem?
KENNARD:
No, I don't think so. I've been involved with every architectural
program except [University of California] Berkeley. SCI-ARC [Southern
California Institute of Architecture], I was very much involved in
SCI-ARC at one time, and my daughter Lydia [Kennard] now has just been
asked to get on the board, which she's going to take, because they want
more non-architects on it. UC [University of California] San Diego just
started a new thing, and I know Adele Santos quite well. I intend to go
down and talk to her sometime. She is a very fine architect, a very good
designer, and I think she will probably work to get more minority
students in. I don't see a contradiction there. I think architecture's
my field, and I should be dealing with kids in architecture. I don't
know anything about law or medicine. I can't talk to them about that.
But then there was a time when I was very much involved with Dr. [J.
Alfred] Cannon. In the sixties there was a Central City Federation,
which was made up of a lot of black businesses.
HENDERSON:
I don't know about that.
KENNARD:
Yes. Ivan [J.] Houston was on it and a number of other people who
represented large black businesses. It came through the leadership of
Dr. J. Alfred Cannon. What he was trying to do was to form a structure
to address the educational, social, and cultural problems in the black
community. It was a fabulous experience for me. And I gave a lot of
time. I wasn't involved with architecture students at all at that time.
But out of it came the Frederick Douglass Child Development Center,
through the Head Start Program, that had places all over the city;
Central City Community Mental Health Facility that was built in Wrigley
Field; and the Inner-City Cultural Center, which is still going. They
just bought the Ivar Theater in Hollywood. They were all to serve the
minority community, primarily the black community, although Inner-City
has even expanded more. It's extremely multiracial now. C. Bernard
Jackson runs it. And we had some fantastic people on the board. Mario
Thomas was on the board of Inner-City.
HENDERSON:
Really?
KENNARD:
Gregory Peck, Robert Wise. Out of the Inner-City Cultural Center--to show
you what it did--it gave opportunities to black artists, particularly in
the media, that are now household names. The first person that we had
was Lou [Louis] Gossett [Jr.] in Tartuffe.
HENDERSON:
Oh!
KENNARD:
Andre Gregory was the director. Paul Winfield got to be known through
there. He played in The Glass Menagerie. Glynn Turman played in plays
there. We had the Harlem Dance Theater come here. Cicely Tyson was in
some plays. They were relatively unknown then.
HENDERSON:
Yeah, they're well known now.
KENNARD:
They're very well known. And Gregory Peck was very sensitive. I went
around with Gregory Peck raising money. We'd go to Lew Wasserman and the
National Theater to try to raise money. And they put on a big affair.
We'd raise $50, 000 in one night at the Factory. He knew everybody. Peck
is a very nice man. He's a very warm, socially conscious human being. He
just got the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] award this last year.
Mario Thomas, nice person, was very active on the board, and a lot of
other people who were from business and the arts. I gave a lot of time
to that. And the story of how I got into it was, one day Dr. Cannon--he
was a black doctor, graduate of Columbia [University], teaching at
UCLA--said, "I saw your article in the paper about Temple Akiba." He knew
I was a black architect. He came into my office--I was on Washington
Boulevard--and he said, "I need your help." He said, "I need somebody to
help me put these programs together, help write the program and do these
things." He was such a committed social activist. And, you know, I had
five people in my firm, I'm struggling, and I said, "Al, I don't know
how I can do it." So that night, I said, "Just let me think about it." I
went home, I talked to my wife, we got to talking about it, and I said,
"You know, you really can't afford in good conscience not do this for
the community." It was right after the Watts riots, and everybody felt a
real social consciousness. "Well, someday what are you going to say that
you did?" So that began a relationship with Al Cannon that spanned until
he died. Unfortunately, he died too young. He died a couple of years ago
in a very freak kind of surgery accident. You know, he moved to Africa.
HENDERSON:
Oh, I didn't know that.
KENNARD:
Yes. But that's a whole other story. We probably don't have time, but
that's a thing that I'm really proud of in the extracurricular things
that I have done. Actually, it was the basis of why I was awarded the
Whitney [M.] Young Citation, plus my help to the students. But I think,
when you have a practice that allows you to do those kinds of things, I
think that it would be derelict if you don't give something back.
Because, let's face it, a lot of these people helped me get there. Al
Cannon was a dear friend of mine who just tried to get me a major job in
Zimbabwe when he moved there. That's why I went to Africa two or three
times. We didn't get the job, but it was sure fun trying. I think there
are a lot of rewards when you do that. Well, like you're doing now. I
mean, the things that you're doing--you can make money and you can still
do good. They're not mutually exclusive.
HENDERSON:
Okay, thank you. [laughter]
KENNARD:
I mean, you could do something that would just have no social
significance and probably make as much money or more than you're making
right now.
HENDERSON:
Well, doing these interviews, to me, is something that I feel like I
need to do.
KENNARD:
Yes, yes.
HENDERSON:
See, I'm interviewing five black architects, and I feel like I need to
get your stories before they're gone.
KENNARD:
Yes. And, also, I think there's a learning curve. When you deal with
people like I dealt with Dr. Cannon and the people at Inner-City, I
learned a lot. I learned a lot that makes me a better person and a
better architect. So it's not time you're giving up. When you brought
the students over here today, I learned a lot. I learned a lot about
what their concerns are, which is going to help me when I deal with
other kids, and it will probably light a fire under me to try to put a
space in this office for interns sometime. You can't say that you're for
it and then you don't do it. We've had a lot of interns in here, but I
think sometimes you've got to just get a kick in the butt once in a
while. You're so involved in your business, and you're looking at the
bottom line and trying to make the payroll.
HENDERSON:
One of the things I wanted to at least touch on in this last interview
was the article that was in the Los Angeles Times last Sunday. It was a
very nice article. There were many things in there that I'd seen before.
But I've got a few questions that I kind of want to clear up just for
our records. One little nit-picky thing is that she, Ruth Ryon, the
writer, said you went to Monroe High School.
KENNARD:
It should be Monrovia [High School].
HENDERSON:
Monrovia, okay.
KENNARD:
There was another error there, too.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
She talked about how it was difficult to get a job. It was not after I
graduated from 'SC [University of Southern California] that I had the
problem getting a job; it was after I graduated from Pasadena City
College that I had problems with a job.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
There's a little difference there. Not that it was that easy after 'SC,
either, but it was almost impossible after junior college.
HENDERSON:
Okay. Oh, one other thing from the article: You said you did a project
with Paul [R.] Williams, and I think in another session you told me what
that was, but I want to make sure I've got that for my records.
KENNARD:
It was the Jessie Terry Manor right there at Jefferson [Boulevard] and
Vermont [Avenue].
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay. That's a home for the elderly?
KENNARD:
Yes. It was a joint venture of Tuskegee [University] alumni, Prince Hall
Masons, and the Stovall Foundation.
HENDERSON:
And that was just a joint venture on--?
KENNARD:
Well, what happened is that Stovall and the Masons went together. I had
done a job of affordable housing up in the [San Francisco] Bay Area for
the Masons, and Paul Williams had done some work for Stovall Foundation
here. Some people leaned toward hiring Paul Williams and others leaned
toward hiring me, so we said, "Well, let's not battle it. Let's just go
together and do it."
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay. About what year was that?
KENNARD:
Oh, I'd have to look it up, but it was probably in the early seventies.
Probably the seventies sometime.
HENDERSON:
And you both collaborated on the design? It was a joint design? Or who
did most of the working drawings?
KENNARD:
We did most of the design. We did a lot of the work. Paul was pretty old
at the time. He was involved in the design a lot, but Jim [James C.]
Moore [III], who was the director of design in our office, really was in
charge of most of the design. But Paul was in a lot of the meetings on
design. It was a partnership. It was a very tight budget--$21 a [square]
foot or something.
HENDERSON:
Ouch. Oh.
KENNARD:
I mean, it was just ridiculous. We could barely get it up.
HENDERSON:
It looks nice. I saw it this past weekend.
KENNARD:
It's not too bad. It's worked out fairly well considering the budget was
so low.
HENDERSON:
Oh, a project I saw yesterday, because I went specifically to Pasadena
to look at it, was the Scott United Methodist Church. That was a
wonderful building.
KENNARD:
It is a nice building.
HENDERSON:
Across the street from the Gamble House there are these condominiums. I
had thought Scott was one of those condominiums, the community building
for the condominiums. Because what I like about the building is that it
looks very residential. It's low scale.
KENNARD:
That was the idea, because a lot of people didn't want a huge church
there, because there's a lot of housing around there. You know, it's
right across from the Gamble House. It was a very critical job for us.
We spent a lot of time on the design, and we had very good clients. They
were very nice people.
HENDERSON:
I think it was a very successful design.
KENNARD:
We took the stained glass from the old building that they demolished or
sold and we integrated it into the sanctuary there.
HENDERSON:
I could see that from the outside. I did not go in, but it looked very
well integrated.
KENNARD:
Yes, and they take good care of it.
HENDERSON:
I looked at the dedication stones, and they had one from 1929, which I
guess was their old building--
KENNARD:
Yes.
HENDERSON:
--and one from 1975, which, I guess, was the new building.
KENNARD:
That was the one we did, yes. It was in the seventies.
HENDERSON:
Okay. One project I do want to talk about--and we haven't talked about it
a lot, and it's not mentioned in the article--you did two office towers
in downtown Inglewood?
KENNARD:
I did one.
HENDERSON:
Oh, one.
KENNARD:
And I did another one on Sixth Street [in Los Angeles]
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
That was a redevelopment project.
HENDERSON:
That's what I wanted to get into. Was that design/build?
KENNARD:
My daughter Lydia [Kennard], who's in the development area--she has a
company [KDG Development] that is handling development, construction
administration, construction management, and real estate--public-private
partnership. We did the first building on Sixth Street right across from
MacArthur Park.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
We built that building ourselves. We designed it and built it and got
the financing. We hired Tishman Construction Company to bid it for
us--Abe Bolsky, who just recently passed away--and they were very helpful
on that. Then we hired a superintendent, and we built it. Then the next
building we did was in Inglewood, which we did in a joint venture with
Broadway Federal Savings and Loan.
HENDERSON:
Oh, which one is your tower? Where Broadway is in the bottom floor?
KENNARD:
Yes, that's the one.
HENDERSON:
Okay. I thought you had done the one across the street, but the one
where Broadway is, it's a gray building.
KENNARD:
Yes, gray-blue.
HENDERSON:
Gray-blue?
KENNARD:
Right. That's where Broadway Federal Savings has their branch office.
Yes, that's the building. But we're not in the development business now.
HENDERSON:
[laughter] Has the real estate market kind of bottomed out?
KENNARD:
It's so bad it isn't funny. I mean, it's worse than I have ever seen it.
I mean, nobody is lending any money, especially on an office building.
HENDERSON:
Lord have mercy.
KENNARD:
So that was our escapade into the development thing. Right now it's
better to buy a building, and residential is a lot safer.
HENDERSON:
So the company with your daughter Lydia, is she still just exclusively
involved in development?
KENNARD:
What Lydia did--I don't know whether I mentioned this before, but Lydia
joined the firm when we had a big planning staff. Jeff [Jeffrey M.]
Gault was head of the planning, so she worked with Jeff on the project.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
When Jeff left the firm, Lydia had been in a real estate law firm down
the street here, where they did a lot of real estate work. In fact, one
of their clients was the Phillip Morris Company, who developed Mission
Viejo, and McKenna, Conner, and Cuneo. But she tired of the practice of
law, so she said, "Why don't I come in, and I'll do the planning, and
we'll do some development, and I'll do some economics and public-private
partnership?" So for a while she worked for me. Then we shifted and she
shared the office, but she had a separate company. And now, because of
her growth and our expansion, she moved to the third floor, so it's a
completely separate company. The reason why we separated the companies
is mainly because of the development, because with architects doing
development and doing the architecture, too, the liability is terrible.
So we didn't want to have the liability of being in the construction
business. So, although we had an equity position in the building, we
were not part of the whole entity that did the building. Lydia's company
did the building.
HENDERSON:
Even though design/build was sort of a trend in the eighties.
KENNARD:
Yes, design/build connotes that you have a client. This was just a
speculative office building. Both of them were. And the idea was that we
would build them and rent them. Then the market was so bad, both of them
were mild disasters. I mean, we didn't get killed on it, but we were
hurt badly. So it was not a good thing. We hit the market at the wrong
time. And now that's where you see so many architects that are doing
work for developers are in deep trouble. We're very careful about
working for developers. The only one we really work for is Maguire
Thomas [Partners]. We did the [First] Interstate [World Center] parking
structure for them. But they're number one in the United States, so
they're pretty solid.
HENDERSON:
They're a pretty big outfit, yes.
KENNARD:
Oh, they're big, and they've got a great organization.
HENDERSON:
Okay. In the Times article there was mention about the Cal Poly
[California Polytechnic State University], San Luis Obispo, Shadowship
Program.
KENNARD:
Right.
HENDERSON:
And" I wanted to ask you about that on tape.
KENNARD:
Well, George [J.] Hasslein was the architect that started the
architecture department at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.
HENDERSON:
Oh, I didn't know that.
KENNARD:
He's still there. He is not the dean anymore--there was a kind of a
shake-up--but George is an old friend of mine. I've served on various
committees with him. You know, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, is probably
one of the largest architectural schools in the United States.
HENDERSON:
It is?
KENNARD:
Well, I know in California it is.
HENDERSON:
I thought [University of California] Berkeley was the biggest.
KENNARD:
Oh, no. Berkeley's nowhere near it. See, most of the schools like 'SC,
they're four hundred or five hundred people. Cal Poly at one time had, I
think, fourteen hundred students in their environmental
department--that's architecture. They have a lot of minority students, so
he tries to match a minority student--say, a black student with a black
architect, probably a Latino architect I'm sure would go to a Latino
firm--and what he does is what they call a Shadowship Program. They will
come down, say, one evening, they'll spend the night at my house, and
then they will follow us around. They just stay with you all day. Not
only myself, but they stayed with some of the people in our office. So
the last person that came just a few weeks ago was a young fellow named
Everett Johnson. He's a black kid who had a very difficult family life.
I mean, his father is practically unknown to him, and his mother, who is
very religious, raised him. He has some brothers and sisters, but
they're from other fathers, so it was a very dysfunctional family. But
he did quite well in high school I understand, and his mother really
pushed him and stood by him and was very close to him. And he went to
work for Ford Aerospace.
HENDERSON:
Oh, I should mention here, you said he grew up in the Bay Area.
KENNARD:
He grew up in the Bay Area, I think around--well, they live in Sunnyvale
now, but I think around East Palo Alto or Oakland or somewhere around
there. I can't remember where right now. I can't remember whether he
lived in Oakland and then moved down there or not. But for ten years he
worked at Ford Aerospace, and he learned AUTOCAD computer [programs].
But he always wanted to be an architect. And the fellow he worked for at
Ford Aerospace was an architect. He always wanted to be an architect, so
he decided he would just go back to school. So he went back to Cal Poly.
He's in his fourth year now, he's extremely bright, very personable,
with an incredible sense of humor. George Hasslein wrote me a note about
him and told me how much we would like him because he's a good student.
This next year they have overseas study, so he's going to Denmark for
his last year.
HENDERSON:
Oh. Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
So he met us at our house at around four thirty. Helen [King Kennard]
and I took him out to dinner, and we talked, and he spent the night. He
came here, and he sat in my office for a while and listened to some of
the things that happened. Then Bill [William W.] Adams [III] took him to
the [Los Angeles] Central [Public] Library, because they had a visit out
on the construction site. He met all the people, and he stayed here all
day long. Then, that evening we kind of wrapped it up. We spent a couple
of hours just talking about what his future would be, what he should do
when he got out. He actually was making pretty good money when he left
Ford Aerospace. He was making about $35,000 a year.
HENDERSON:
That's pretty good.
KENNARD:
You see? So what he wanted to know from me was whether, when he got out
of school--let's face it, the entry level is maybe $10 or $12 an hour,
whereas if he went back to Ford Aerospace, he could probably go in at
$19 or $20 an hour, because the job is open for him. I think Ford
Aerospace was bought out, but the job was there for him. So we discussed
his career objectives. Because he takes care of his mother, he's got to
make a pretty good wage. And it's not a bad idea for him to stay in that
corporate situation. There are a lot of advantages. He goes in at a very
good salary, evidently people like him a lot, he's got the kind of
personality that can move with that, and it's probably a pretty good
idea for blacks to move in that corporate level in the architectural
world. He's worked for an architect, so he could get his license pretty
fast. He could take the exam real quick. And he can open up other
opportunities for other minorities, too. So I said, "Don't make a
decision now. Why don't you just wait till you get out and see what
happens?" But let's face it, if he was getting out now, I'd definitely
tell him to go back, because the market is so recessionary. But by that
time, you don't know what's going to happen. But he's got an advantage
because he's done a lot of architectural work with Ford Aerospace. He
did all their facility stuff. Plus, he knows computers. It's not only
interesting for the kids, it's interesting for us.
HENDERSON:
It sounds like a good exchange.
KENNARD:
Yes. He wrote a wonderful letter to me before he came down. It was
really funny. It was a very, very crazy letter. He had a picture of
himself, and it said, "Beware of a strange vacuum cleaner salesman who
will be knocking on your door on some--" [laughter] It was very funny.
He's really a neat kid. I was really impressed with him, I'll tell you,
because he had such a tough time. For him to stop, go back to school,
was something. And he's the first kid in his whole family that's ever
gone to college. George Hasslein said, "Bob, I want him to come down
because," he said, "he's never met or talked to a black architect." You
know, if you're around Sunnyvale, and then you go to San Luis Obispo,
you won't run into one. I told him, "Well, you just missed my
ex-partner, because by the time you got to San Luis Obispo, Art [Arthur
H.] Silvers had just left." So he missed him. But there was no other
black architect. So George Hasslein said, "He's got to come down and
talk to you." If he comes down again, it would be very interesting You
really should meet him.
HENDERSON:
I think I should. He sounds very interesting.
KENNARD:
I was very impressed with him. You've got to admire a kid like that.
That's tough. Most of us couldn't have done it.
HENDERSON:
It's tough for me to remain in school right now.
KENNARD:
I'll bet it is.
HENDERSON:
Financially.
KENNARD:
Well, you have a lot of guts. Sure, it is tough. But, see, a lot of
kids--we had a young woman come down, and she was very nice, and she's a
very bright student.
HENDERSON:
You mean this was another Shadowship student?
KENNARD:
Yes. She came down a year ago. Every year they send them down. But her
father is a very well-to-do doctor, and she's driving down in her BMW.
[laughter] I mean, she didn't have a hell of a tough time. There's
nothing against that. She has a job, and I put her in touch with a lot
of architects that I know. I don't know if you know Allison Williams.
She's an associate partner of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, a very
bright black woman architect. So I put her in touch with her, because
the networking is important for them, especially the women to meet other
black women.
HENDERSON:
In fact, I've never heard of Allison Williams. I need to see if I should
get her into NOMA [National Organization of Minority Architects]. But
that's another concern.
KENNARD:
She's up in the Bay Area, San Francisco.
HENDERSON:
Oh, she's in the Bay Area?
KENNARD:
She's in San Francisco.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
Her father was director of redevelopment in Oakland for years, John
Williams.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay. John Williams.
KENNARD:
John Williams, a good friend of mine, and smart! And Allison's smart,
too. She's an associate partner in design now at Skidmore. She's real
good. I understand she's really sharp.
HENDERSON:
Oh, that's a heavy position.
KENNARD:
You're going to hear a lot about her. She's going to be one of the lead
people.
HENDERSON:
There was another mentor-like program you were telling me about. This
was a student in San Diego, a high school. How did that go?
KENNARD:
Oh, yeah. Oh, that's going pretty good. This kid came from Oklahoma
through a fraternity brother of mine. They have a mentor program. Not
just architecture. I belong to a fraternity, Sigma Pi Phi, and they have
a mentor program. One of my brothers [Hack Woodford] who moved to San
Diego, lives in Rancho Bernardo, he called me because he met this young
kid, Ron Turner, who is interested in architecture. He goes to Poway
High [School]. And I called him up. He is a 3.4 grade [point] average.
HENDERSON:
That's good.
KENNARD:
He has been accepted to Arizona State [University], and he applied to
USC. So I was having breakfast with Dean [Robert H.] Harris. Bob Harris
said out of the 450 students at 'SC, graduate and undergraduate, there's
only about 10 black students, which is too low. So Bob Harris was very
interested in meeting Ron. And Ron said he had already talked to one of
their counselors. So Bob took his name, and he called me back just about
four or five days ago, and he said that they had not received Ron
Turner's application, and he wanted Ron to call him. So I called him
just a couple of days ago. I didn't get him, but I talked to his mother,
and I said, "Get the application in. Bob Harris said to tell him to call
him."
HENDERSON:
It's in the works.
KENNARD:
They were a little nervous because 'SC is very expensive, but Bob Harris
said, "Don't worry about it. We've got a lot of financial aid."
HENDERSON:
Arizona State would be expensive, too, if you're out of state.
KENNARD:
Is it?
HENDERSON:
I don't know. I mean, it's a state school, but--
KENNARD:
This kid was from Oklahoma, but he moved to Poway, I guess, with his
family, his mother. So I haven't met him, but his mother's going to
bring him into the office someday, because I'd like to meet him,
particularly if--because I think we can get him into 'SC. With that 3. 4
grade average, I think I can get him in.
HENDERSON:
That sounds good. Okay. One other project I wanted to ask you about
that's not mentioned here in the article, I don't think, but we've
talked about it a couple of times, and that's the central library. That
has had some controversies design- wise and maybe even political-wise.
What's your perspective on that? Or what would you like to say about
that? Maybe I should point the question a little better. How is working
with Hardy, Holzman, and Pfeiffer [Associates]? How has that worked out?
KENNARD:
That's an unusual job, because we did not get that job like we normally
get a job in which we join with an architectural firm in a joint venture
and go get the job. The job came to us primarily because of pressure
from [Los Angeles City] Councilman [Gilbert] Lindsay's office. See, the
library commission interviewed a bunch of architects. Now, I knew Hardy,
Holzman, and Pfeiffer because they were on the Bunker Hill competition
[for downtown L.A. office buildings] with us.
HENDERSON:
Oh, I'd forgotten that, okay.
KENNARD:
I'd met Hugh [L.] Hardy. I'd never met Norm [Norman H.] Pfeiffer. I was
not involved in the selection at all. They were looking for people heavy
with museum experience, and, of course, they're a very good firm--very
heavy museum and library experience. So they were selected in the job by
the library commission and, I guess, other people. Well, naturally, Gil
Lindsay was very upset when he was not involved in the selection of
architects, [laughter] And I will not comment on that. [laughter]
Because the man is now dead, and I don't want to seem ungrateful.
[laughter] But he insisted that there be a black architect involved in
that job, to his credit. So Norm Pfeiffer, who was running the job, said
they didn't know any black architects. [laughter]
HENDERSON:
Oh, my. You know, I keep hearing that comment again and again. "We don't
know any black architects."
KENNARD:
I mean, I don't know whether that's true. He probably didn't because he
had just moved. He didn't know any out here. So, anyway, a list was
given him of all the black architects in Los Angeles practicing: Harold
[L.] Williams, John [D.] Williams, myself, and everybody. Lindsay's
position was that he didn't want to tell Pfeiffer who to bring in, but
it was up to him to go around and pick. They came around to this office,
they visited this office, and they went to the other offices. I never
will forget--and I think I'll put this in there--they asked me--see, we
were going to be involved in the contract documents of the Goodhue
building, which is the old [central library] building. The idea was that
we would put a job captain on the job, and we'd have our own people work
on that. They were the design architects and we were going to do the
documents. They were going to do the east wing, and that's where there
was a lot of controversy. We really weren't involved in that. That was
the design part of it. But I was telling some people the other day, when
they came in--we had about forty people in our office. We were a little
larger than right now. So he said, "Well, there's going to be a lot of
need for a lot of people." I said, "How many people?" He said, "Well,
you're probably going to have to put fifteen people on the job." He
said, "Do you have fifteen people?" And I said, "Well, I don't have
fifteen people just sitting here doing nothing waiting for somebody to
call me if they can put them on a job." But that's a typical question to
architects, which is really one of the most ridiculous things I've ever
heard. I mean, people always ask that. I said, "But we have the key
people to build the staff up to that." I think the most we've ever had
on the central library was nine people at one time. Now we have three
people in doing the construction administration. But anyway, Pfeiffer, I
guess, said if he has to work with anybody, he'd just as soon work with
us. [laughter] Naturally, an architect doesn't want to give part of his
job away. But the funny thing about it is the way I found out I got the
job. I didn't hear from anybody, but my son [William E. Kennard] is a
partner in a law firm in Washington, D.C. [Verner, Lipfert, Bernhardt,
Mcpherson, and Hand], and one of the partners was Lloyd Hand. Lloyd Hand
was very heavy in the Democratic [Party] administration. He was Lyndon
[B.] Johnson's chief of protocol, and he's a good friend of Lindsay's.
Because I think he came from California somewhere, he knew Councilman
Lindsay very well. So they were back there during the black caucus, and
every time Lindsay goes back there, Lloyd Hand takes him out to lunch or
dinner. And since my son was a partner from California, had heard of
Lindsay, he asked Bill [Kennard] to go along to lunch. And Gil Lindsay,
at the lunch, when he met my son, he said, "I know your dad, Kennard."
You know how he is. He said, "I know him." He said, "We're going to give
him the library. He's going to work on the library." So my son called me
that night. He said, "I just found out you got the library." [laughter]
I said, "My God, I mean, you're way back east and you're telling me what
I got." [laughter] That's how I found out. That was so funny.
HENDERSON:
Oh, my goodness.
KENNARD:
And Bill had met Gil Lindsay--I think he had met him when Gil got an
honorary degree from Howard University.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
Dr. Leroy Weeks, who's a fraternity brother, wanted some of the people
from L.A. to go back and be there when this honorary degree was
conferred on Lindsay. Fortunately, I had to be back in Washington, so I
made the trip on the same week that Lindsay was going to get it. So we
went to the big reception for Lindsay, and my son met Lindsay, so there
was a connection. Lindsay was a real power broker.
HENDERSON:
Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
KENNARD:
Hardy, Holzman, and Pfeiffer is a very good firm. They're a very good
design firm.
HENDERSON:
There's been no friction with them since you've been--?
KENNARD:
No, we've gotten along fairly well. It's been very professional. I deal
mostly with Steve [Stephen] Johnson, who runs their office, sort of an
associate partner. But it's not the best situation that we like, because
we like to go in where we go together for the job. It's always a little
uncomfortable when you're pushed into it after.
HENDERSON:
It's like a shotgun marriage.
KENNARD:
We don't like to do that. But business is business, as the guy says.
HENDERSON:
Take your projects as you get them. One other question. Somehow I wasn't
sure. Did you do Saint Mark's Lutheran Church on Vermont [Avenue] next
to DSC?
KENNARD:
Yes, we did that.
HENDERSON:
You didn't have that one listed in your projects, in your brochure, but
I just wanted to check and make sure that that's one that you did.
KENNARD:
It's on the list of clients, I think.
HENDERSON:
Let me check and make sure. [tape recorder off]
KENNARD:
Missouri Synod [of Lutheran Church] is another group. We did Palisades
Church under that. No, we don't have it in here.
HENDERSON:
Well, it's not that crucial.
KENNARD:
Oh, wait a minute. It's under another name. It's a different group. We
did two. We did remodeling on the Missouri Synod of Pacific Palisades
that never went ahead. Then we did two other churches. We did Saint
Mark's Lutheran--is that Saint Mark's?
HENDERSON:
Across from USC is Saint Mark's. Yes, I think it is.
KENNARD:
Saint Mark's Lutheran on Vermont, and then we did a Lutheran church,
Saint John's [Lutheran Church], in Cerritos. We did that, too. We did
two churches that we actually built. That was in our religious era. We
did a Methodist church, a Lutheran church, a Unitarian, we did a
synagogue.
HENDERSON:
What was the Unitarian church?
KENNARD:
We did the Unitarian church school. Unitarian Universalist Association.
HENDERSON:
Yes, that's listed.
KENNARD:
It's the Hugh Harding Center, but it's under Unitarian Universalist.
HENDERSON:
Where is that located?
KENNARD:
That's over right in back of Eighth [Street] and Vermont, the Unitarian
church.
HENDERSON:
Oh. Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
It's in terrible disrepair. I just passed it the other day. It looks
terrible* They've got a great big old chain-link fence around it. It's
just awful. But the community is really depressing. That's one thing
about Scott United [Methodist Church], they keep it up really well.
HENDERSON:
The landscaping was marvelous.
KENNARD:
Yes, they really keep it up well.
HENDERSON:
It had just rained, and the grounds were nice and wet, and you could see
clouds and the mountains in the back.
KENNARD:
Yes. The sanctuary's very nice. Did you get in it?
HENDERSON:
No, I did not go in.
KENNARD:
The sanctuary's really nice. It's kind of a double shed thing, and it's
all wood inside.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay. I will have to go in.
KENNARD:
It's nice inside.
HENDERSON:
Just out of curiosity--I don't know if the Methodists do that--is that a
black church? Or is it mixed? Do you know?
KENNARD:
I know the minister was black. It was primarily a black church. I don't
know whether they have a mixed congregation, but when we did it, the
minister was black. I don't know who the minister is now. It was part of
the big Pepper redevelopment [project in Pasadena], and they moved over
there, and they got that site* That's a great site for it.
HENDERSON:
Very good site.
KENNARD:
A neat site.
HENDERSON:
Let me shift the questioning just a little bit--and this sort of touches
on Gilbert Lindsay. You're a native of L.A. and you know many prominent
people. Have you seen any new trends emerging about political leaders in
the black community? Are the same people sort of still in control? Are
they being pushed aside? Are new people coming up? Or do you see things
just evolving gradually?
KENNARD:
I think there is a change. As a matter of fact, I was thinking of even
addressing it Tuesday night [at the USC Architectural Guild dinner,
April 2, 1991]. But the trend I see is not only in the black community;
I think it's just generally in the political arena. For one thing, in
the black community there's a whole changing of the guard now. Lindsay's
gone, [Los Angeles City Councilman Robert] Farrell is leaving. And it's
really time, too, to have younger people move into that political arena.
They're more aggressive. But also, I think Maxine Waters was the
beginning of really kind of a grassroots kind of a support. When Maxine
Waters ran, even for [United States] Congress, she hit the streets. I
mean, she went door to door. Because Gail [Kennard Madyun] lives in her
area. She said one day she's coming in, and all a sudden here comes
Maxine Waters walking up. A very good case in point is [former Los
Angeles City Councilwoman] Gloria Molina's election.
HENDERSON:
Oh, okay.
KENNARD:
I mean, where a lot of establishment people, other than [United States]
Congressman [Edward] Roybal, were for [California State Senator Art]
Torres. He didn't make it. And I think the reason why they didn't make
it was--I stayed out of that race completely, because I really felt that
Molina would be the person to get that position. When" they were trying
to put the prison out in East L.A., she fought the thing, and she took
on everybody, including [Speaker of California State Assembly] Willie
Brown, everybody. And I think that's the new thing, where you have
community activists beginning to exert political power. Even though she
was outspent two to one, she still won. And I believe that's happening
more and more. It will probably happen more and more in the black
community. Now, the problem is with the black community, there's not a
cohesive black community. I mean, the number of blacks in Los Angeles is
dropping. According to the census, all the other groups are growing, but
the black population's about the same. The good news is that a lot of
blacks have really taken advantage of the upward mobility. They're
moving out more. We work in Pomona. There's a big black population in
Pomona and Diamond Bar and Walnut and Cypress and Santa Clarita. I mean,
they're moving all over the place.
HENDERSON:
Yes.
KENNARD:
It was white flight; now it's kind of black flight. [laughter] And it's
okay, because--and I think you'll see blacks running for political office
where they will not be depending on the large--well, like [Los Angeles
Mayor Thomas] Bradley. Bradley didn't get elected with a major black
constituency. And in Pomona and in San Diego, blacks are now on the city
council.
HENDERSON:
I didn't know that.
KENNARD:
They're not the big bulk of the vote, which is kind of good, that people
are going to be voting for the candidate, not necessarily what race they
are. That's an encouraging sign. I think it is an encouraging sign that
we're not polarized. After all, blacks have all kinds of different
political beliefs.
HENDERSON:
They sure do. And they came out during this war [Gulf War], this past
war. The tape is beginning to wind down, and I've got one more question
I want to make sure I get. For the oral history books, a lot of them
have titles that are sort of descriptive of the author or what they're
trying to say, and I wanted to ask you what you think you might want as
a title for your book. I've got just a couple of things that I'll bounce
off of you.
KENNARD:
God, I don't know. I'll have to think about it.
HENDERSON:
You think about that. Okay. [laughter]
KENNARD:
[laughter] I don't know. It's hard to say. I don't know whether it is a
good title, but I believe that architects have to be more aware of the
social aspects of architecture.
HENDERSON:
Okay.
KENNARD:
Maybe" it's just "Social Aspects of Architecture." I mean, our
architects are so involved with how people live. I mean, we touch people
more than many professions, other than writers. We have a very kind of
quiet but important influence on people. Sometimes they don't even
realize that they're being influenced, because buildings are so much a
part of everybody's life.
HENDERSON:
Yes, they are. You live in one, you eat in one.
KENNARD:
You live in one, you do everything in one. I mean, it really has a
tremendous effect on people, not so much style and whatnot, but, I mean,
just the subtle things about--you know, you walk into this room, and the
extension of this room to the outside has an effect on you.
HENDERSON:
Yes. There's a lovely view to the Hollywood Hills and mountains beyond.
It's a very clear day today, and we're on the eighteenth floor of a
skyscraper looking north.
KENNARD:
It changes. I mean, my mood changes depending upon the weather out
there.
HENDERSON:
Oh, it does?
KENNARD:
That I can see. Yeah. A day like this, it's just gorgeous here. You want
to be out there. Sometimes it's dreary and it's smoggy. All of us are
affected by the weather. Aren't you affected by the weather when you're
at home?
HENDERSON:
I am. I am.
KENNARD:
When you get up in the morning and you see the sun shining, don't you
want to just get out of there?
HENDERSON:
I want to get out and exercise. I walk around my neighborhood.
KENNARD:
Yes, that's right. You want to walk. See, I walk up near the Hollywood
sign. In fact, we plan to walk up there tomorrow morning.
HENDERSON:
Oh, this tape is about to end, so we'd better call a halt to the formal
session.
KENNARD:
Well, Wes Henderson, it was a pleasure working with you.
HENDERSON:
Thank you. It's been a pleasure interviewing you, also.