Ninety-nine year old recalls bygone Manhattan Beach
Anita Koontz Stichter receives a kiss from her daughter, Patti Asbury, in front of the building at Pacific Elementary that her father built in 1934. Photo Anita Koontz Stichter vividly remembers the day in 1933 when the big earthquake hit. She was 15. Her family was living in a little house that her father had built, the first of several he’d build in fledgling Manhattan Beach. The home was on a dirt road rather hopefully named Walnut Avenue, but it didn’t feel much like an avenue. Her mother, Ruth, was constantly complaining to her father, Frank, that she was tired of living in the country, surrounded by little but sand and artichoke plants. She wanted a house in town. “And father always said, ‘We’ll see,” Anita recalled. There were no other houses nearby, but there was a railroad, another annoyance for her mother. Hobos rode the rails, and they liked to jump off at the bend by the Koontz house, so as not to attract attention when the train pulled through downtown Manhattan Beach. They’d ask Ruth for food. “Okay, I’ll give you food,” Ruth told the men. “I’ll put it on the step, but you have to eat it out there on the hill, and leave the dishes back here.” On that day in March of…
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