Remarkable Women of Long Beach — Part 3

By Gerrie Schipske

This is my final column on my find of remarkable women in Long Beach.

Community Service

Carrie Drake: You probably have never heard of her, but in the early 1900s it was her idea to collect coins to raise money to erect the statue of Abraham Lincoln that is in the park near City Hall. Drake was president of the Auxiliary to the Sons of Veterans and wanted to honor those who had served in the Civil War.

Josephine Gumbiner: She moved with her husband to Long Beach in 1949 and worked as a social worker. After raising her four children, she established a charitable foundation        (Josephine Gumbiner Foundation) for the benefit of women and children in the Long Beach area.

Political, Government Service

Charlotte Carlin and Mabel Taylor: Carlin was a clerk in the county probate office and the first woman to register to vote in Los Angeles County in 1911. She declared her candidacy for local office but her father forbid her run and she dropped out. Her friend, Mabel Taylor, a local high school basketball star, ran in place of Carlin, becoming the first woman in the state to pursue local office.

Ruth Bach: She was the first woman elected to the Long Beach City Council in 1954. She ran on a platform of reform because of her prior community service, including the Long Beach Day Nursery. She and her husband were enamel artists and sold their crafts. Her son, Richard, is the author of “Jonathan Livingston Seagull.” A library in the 5th District is named in her honor.

 Myrtelle Gunsel: No other woman has served in Long Beach politics as long as this former city auditor. She was the very first woman elected to public office in Long Beach in 1919 and for 52 years, she kept the city in line.

Cora Morgan: With Fanny Bixby Spencer, she co-led the local suffragist organization, the Political Equality League. She was the second woman to register to vote in Los Angeles County. Because she was a campaign manager for several elected officials, she was considered the most powerful woman in Long Beach in 1916 and was referred to as the “sixth” Commissioner on the City Council. A stenographer by training, she often had to sue the city to be paid for her work.

Lt. Dorothy Still Danner: In 1937, she enlisted in the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps and was stationed in the Philippines. When the Japanese took the island in 1942, they imprisoned her and ten other Navy Nurses along with 66 Army Nurses and one Nurse anesthetist. Dorothy survived three years as a prisoner of war, almost starving to death on less than 500 calories a day. She and others were rescued by U.S. soldiers in 1945 on the very day the women prisoners were slated for execution. She was awarded two Bronze Stars for her valor. In 1995, she wrote about her struggles to return to state-side life titled “What a Way to Spend a War.” She was buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors in 2001.

Community Activism:

Blanche Collins: She was a Long Beach head librarian who successfully battled local censorship in the 1960s. The annual Blanche Collins Forum was established in 1977 to celebrate the opening of the new Main Library and to honor her work on behalf of free speech.

 Lillian Robles: A revered elder with the Juaneno Band of Mission Indians, she fought to protect the sacred burial grounds of the Tongva Gabrielenos (the first to settle the area) and other tribes in Southern California. In 1993, she camped out in a tent on the grounds of Cal State Long Beach to protest the university’s plan to build a strip mall over the sacred grounds. The mall was not built.

Bea Antenore: Living the “We Can Do It” spirit that she showed during WWII working as a “Rosie” calibrating gun sites on bombers, she moved to Long Beach and became a tireless volunteer. She worked as head of the PTA, advocating for the first crossing guards, leading the League of Women Voters and serving on a variety of city commissions and boards supporting the needs of senior citizens, youths and neighborhoods for over 50 years.

 Since the earliest days of the city, women have been involved in making their community a quality place in which to live and to work. They have organized, raised families, money and consciences. They have taught, worked, served, cared for and led. They have created music, art, theater and story. They have fought for the right to vote and placed their names on ballots. They stepped up to serve their country and to risk their lives, they have competed in sports and in business. They are famous and unsung. Most importantly, they are the remarkable women of Long Beach.

gerrie@beachcomber.news