Ken's Second Act

NewsHour puts spotlight on my birthplace in Southern California

I was watching The NewsHour on PBS this past week when a segment caught my attention. America at a Crossroads with Judy Woodruff profiled a city 60 miles east of Los Angeles originally settled by Mormons. That city is San Bernardino, where I spent the first 14 years of my life. The segment reported on a visit to San Bernardino by James and Deborah Fallows, authors of Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America.

The Fallowses spent five years traveling across America in a single-engine prop airplane, visited dozens of towns and met hundreds of civic leaders, workers, immigrants, educators, environmentalists, artists, public servants, librarians, business people, city planners, students and entrepreneurs, according to synopsis of the book. They sought to understand the prospects of places that usually draw notice only after a disaster or during a political campaign.

The PBS segment shows shuttered storefronts, but its message is San Bernardino is making a comeback. Among other things, it features interviews with a 20-year-old boxer and a mural artist, and warehouse distribution centers built on land where orange trees formerly grew. James Fallows, who had a distinguished career in journalism, grew up nearby in Redlands.

San Bernardino, population 224,274, has had its share of hardships. Smog was so thick during the 1960s that I couldn’t see the nearby San Bernardino Mountains. While the air quality has improved over the decades, the community has faced a slew of other problems and challenges. The closure of the Kaiser steel mill in nearby Fontana in 1983 and Norton Air Force Base in 1994 devastated the local economy.

San Bernardino also has a high crime rate. RoadSnacks, a website that focuses on providing information and insights related to various aspects of American cities and states, reported San Bernardino had the third most homicides of any California city in 2024 at 72, behind Los Angeles at 387 and Oakland at 121. The most sensational murder spree in recent memory in San Bernardino occurred Dec. 2, 2015, when a married couple burst into the Inland Regional Center, killed 14 people and injured 22 others. The suspects, who later died in a shootout with police, lived in Redlands. I was living in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, when the news broke.

I left San Bernardino for health reasons in 1970 and have lived elsewhere in California stretching from El Centro in the south to Yuba City in the north and in five other states since then. I take an interest when a small city where I have lived – or at least visited – has a national spotlight shone on it. A small town or little-known bigger city becomes a source of local pride when its sons or daughters make the big time: for instance, by winning an Oscar or a Grammy, or getting elected president. Former President Richard Nixon put the Los Angeles suburb of Whittier on the map. I worked at the community newspapers there from 1979 to 1982. I lived on Pickering Street, a short walk from Nixon’s alma mater, Whittier High School.

I moved to Longview, Texas, to start a new job in May 2016. After starting at the newspaper, I opened a bank account across the street. Oscar, a bank employee who handled new accounts, informed me that actor Matthew McConaughey grew up in the East Texas industrial city. McConaughey delivered the commencement address in 2019 at his alma mater, Longview High School. He posed for photos with an acquaintance at the Pizza King. I was out of town, so I missed a photo op with him. Singer Miranda Lambert and actor Forrest Whitaker were born in Longview. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott spent his youth there. It’s also a sign of pride for small towns when moviemakers pick them for film locations.

McConaughey, a professor of practice at the University of Texas, was born in Uvalde, Texas. A tragedy put the small South Texas town in the national spotlight: A former student at Robb Elementary School fatally shot 19 students and two teachers, and injured 18 others on May 24, 2022. McConaughey afterward visited Uvalde to pay his respects to the community and delivered a plea at the White House for reforming gun laws.

That’s my point: Tragedies, both man-made and natural disasters, can shine the national – and even global – spotlight on small American towns. Paradise in Northern California is an example. The Camp Fire became the deadliest and most destructive fire in California history Nov. 8, 2018, taking 85 lives. My friend Randy lives in nearby Magalia and needed to evacuate during the fire. Randy grew up in Whitter. I’ve been to Paradise. I applied for a job at the Paradise Post decades ago, visited the office years later and wrote a freelance article for the paper.

I had severe asthma when I was living in San Bernardino and that illness colored my perception. I recall shooting arrows into the air from my family’s large backyard, once almost hitting a junior high school classmate who was walking in a drainage where I used to catch lizards. I sped my Schwinn bicycle down the hilly streets and played Little League baseball at Wildwood Park. I lost touch with most of my childhood friends after I moved to Desert Hot Springs.

The late musical iconoclast Frank Zappa wrote and sang an irreverent song about my hometown with these lines:

The rest of their lives in San Ber'dino
Gonna spend the rest of their lives in San Ber'dino
Gonna spend the rest of their lives down in San Ber'dino

With all due respect to the chamber of commerce, I’m glad I didn’t.