The Weekly Newspaper of Inglewood
Herald Publications - El Segundo, Hawthorne, Lawndale & Inglewood Community Newspapers Since 1911 - (310) 322-1830 - Vol. 70, No. 21 - May 27, 2021
Specialty Cookies, Made with Love, for
the Inglewood Police Department
Dick Upton from front page
was counseled to relocate to California and
landed in Culver City more than 70 years ago.
He was, at the time, favoring playing
baseball and plying his musical chops on the
tuba while also sharpening the verbal skills
that he deemed necessary to develop in his
new environment. He attended Venice High
School, continued refining his tuba talents,
met people by playing baseball, and became
a standout pitcher. Upton related that he was
not overpowering on the mound, but gave
credit to a childhood Michigan friend, who
saw that Upton had potential on the hill, and
as soon as Upton grew a bit, he started to
have success on the mound.
Upton flashed back some seventy years
ago, remembering that he pitched against El
Segundo High School at a long-ago raised field
on Arena St., a prep baseball game contested
more than seven decades ago; Upton said that
he struck out the first four batters.
Following the baseball trajectory, Upton
played service baseball while he was serving
the United States in the Korean War. He
also won pitching accolades in American
Legion baseball.
He received a scholarship to Loyola Marymount
University, but that did not work out too
well. “I was successful there, but I wasn’t mature
enough and just could not keep my grades up.
Lost my scholarship, so I went into the U.S.
Army.” He later sojourned to Alaska to play
summer ball in the Alaska Baseball League,
a league that still endures. It was around that
time in his sporting life, Upton said, that his
aspirations to climb the ladder of professional
baseball were doused. “I found out that you
had to be,” Upton said, “more than just good.”
As a tuba player, he was considered by
those who knew music as “more than just
good.” Like baseball had, his tuba playing
opened “a lot of doors” for him. He said that
he played “symphonic, operatic stuff,” but to
pay the bills, Upton realized he “had to get
a job.” He landed employment with the Bank
of America in Culver City, ascending to the
post of lending officer. He got hitched to his
wife Frankie, a schoolteacher, and decided to
leave his B of A job and return to school, “even
though I was a terrible student.” As an older
returning student, Upton said he got “serious,”
to not be derailed by extracurricular activities,
including baseball.
Upton later landed a job in the Wiseburn
Unified School District, teaching instrumental
music and leading the student band. He was
also playing the tuba professionally, working
with what he termed “wonderful, wonderful,
conductors and musicians.” In the late ’50s
and the early ’60s, a time frame Upton called
“the golden age of the Wiseburn District,” he
said school districts were always looking for
“winning football coaches, and successful band
directors,” who could help entice parents and
their children to enroll in the district.
Upton said that the prior band director in
the district was “a better musician than me,”
but that his musical leanings, Upton noted,
mentioning Mozart, were not the type of tunes
that were necessarily helpful in motivating a
teenage musician of that era.
Upton said budget cuts threatened his music
program, which was eventually axed. He went
to the superintendent and tried to devise a solution
and broached a unique option. Upton was
slated to teach daily in the classroom, which
he was not too keen about. He offered to pay
someone else to teach the class ($100 bucks
a day at the time). “So, I paid $18,000 dollars
to “continue the privilege of teaching band and
orchestra.” That game-plan fizzled-out, however,
only lasting for a year, but Upton said that it
was “Quite an experience, glad that I did it.”
So how did a Michigan lad, by way of
Southern California, become immersed in post-
Civil War history and the demise of General
Custer? Upton got married to a woman from
Billings, Montana, (Frankie) whose grandfather
was stationed at Fort Custer all those years
ago. Frankie’s grandfather was involved in
the Cavalry.
Said Upton: “I wanted to find out more about
grandpa,” but in the pre-Google days, that was
not an easy task. He said that Fort Custer was
built one year after the Custer battle, but that
the Custer battlefield had been “completely
wiped off of the map.”
Book publisher Doug Westfall of The Paragon
Agency has been working with Upton for 25-orso
years. They met about a quarter-century ago
when both were attending book-related events
in Los Angeles and formed a partnership that
exists to this day.
“He has published more books on Indian
Wars and Custer’s Last Stand than any other
publisher,” Westfall said. “He is the champion
of Western history, and we applaud that,” while
noting that Paragon is planning to publish
another Upton book this summer. “You have
to hand it to the guy for what he has done,”
Westfall said.
As for his support of the continuing sometimes
somnambulant Detroit Tigers (although
they did garner a recent winning streak), Upton
offered that “They win just enough to break
your heart.” Alas, when this story was filed,
the Tigers sported a not-so robust 17-26 record,
good enough to be ensconced in fourth place
in the American League Central Division.
Adding a little more local flavor to the story:
When local baseball icon George Brett was
signed by the Kansas City Royals more than
50 years ago, he was jettisoned by Royal management
to play his first professional season in
Billings, Montana. Obviously awfully familiar
with the Montana environs, Upton traveled to
the unofficially christened “Big Sky Country”
to watch Brett play. The future hall-of-famer
ascended from the dugout to speak with the
Upton’s. “I am not hitting now,” Brett said, “but
I am going to start hitting.” It seems to have
worked out OK for Mr. Brett, right?
The Uptons have called El Segundo home
for more than 50 years, and Dick said that
that is a timeframe that he has cherished. He
has met “A group of really decent people,” he
said, calling the friends and business associates
that he had made “keepers, people that I
am proud to cross paths with, and I hope that
never ends,” noting how El Segundo locals’
band together to help out their neighbors. “I
hope that the city stays that way.”
The people who have “crossed paths” with
Upton probably feel the same way. •
Last week, one of our local youth made custom K9 cookies. A big thank you to Anthony and his family. Photo courtesy Inglewood Police Department.