Gloria knew he’d be mayor one day — at the age of 10
Todd Gloria evidently has been preparing to become mayor of our country’s eighth largest city since he was a kid attending Hawthorne Elementary School in Clairemont.
Before being sworn in as San Diego’s 37th mayor on Thursday, he confided in a tweet that 32 years ago he was a finalist in a “Mayor for a Day” essay contest for local school kids.
Gloria, 42, later explained to me the competition was sponsored by thenMayor Maureen O’Connor. “I don’t recall the specific details of my essay, but I’m pretty sure it was aligned with my current big city vision,” he recalls. He referred me to Sal Giametta, an O’Connor staffer at the time.
While Giametta doesn’t have a copy of the speech, he remembers meeting the 10-year-old boy and reading his essay. “My recollection is that it was on downtown redevelopment and CCDC,” he told me. He clarified that Gloria wasn’t merely a finalist but a runner-up in the city’s “Mayor for a Day” writing challenge.
Giametta clearly recalled one thing about Gloria, though, posting on social media: “He vowed then he’d be back some day ... as mayor! And the rest is history.”
So dreams do come true. Gloria has broken many barriers to assume the city’s highest office. He praised San Diego as a unique place, with incredible people, where anything is possible. “It is a place where the son of a hotel maid and a gardener, a Native American, Filipino, Puerto Rican, Dutch gay guy has just become your mayor,” he said in his swearing-in speech.
The new mayor also revealed his vision for an updated city motto. Rather than call San Diego by its longtime nickname, “America’s Finest City,” he proposes it be known as a “truly great city.”
Loss of visionaries: On the heels of the passing of longtime San Diego housing developer Tawfiq Khoury in late October, another San Diegan who made an imprint on the growth of our community has passed away.
Architect Ed Malone,who was a pioneer of Southern California planned residential developments, died at age 90 on Nov. 30.
He was instrumental in planning many San Diego communities, including residential developments in La Jolla, Park Place homes in Cardiff and Valencia View in San Diego. Other projects include the El Cortez Convention Center in 1957, UC San Diego Hillcrest Hospital, UCSD Muir College housing and Navy enlisted men’s housing in Tierrasanta.
It was his partnership with developer Donald
Bren in 1968 that led to an award-winning 840-home and fully planned community in Valencia where he made his mark as an innovator.
In 2003, Malone won approval for a 41-unit subdivision on his 450-acre family avocado ranch on Hidden Valley Road in Poway. He was in no hurry to build and hasn’t to this day.
Malone served on many San Diego boards and commissions and even ran to unseat City Councilman Bill Mitchell, a slow-growth advocate, in 1981.
He was known for his congeniality and humor, which served him well when a home he was building for his family on Hidden Valley Court in La Jolla burned down due to an unknown cause in 1974.
“My father had designed the entire house, inside and out,” recalls his daughter, Erin Walsh. “The house was nearing completion when our family received a phone call in the middle of the night. The house was on fire in a blaze that could be seen throughout the valley.”
After ashes had been cleared from its charred foundation, Malone returned to the concrete slab and sketched out the entire f loor plan in chalk.
He went back to the house where the family was then living and loaded up the living room and dining room furniture. He then arranged it, room-by-room, on the concrete slab and summoned a catering service.
“Dad called all his family and friends to come over to his ‘house cooling ’ party,” Walsh remembers. “He figured the ‘housewarming ’ had already taken place.”
She noted that her father found humor in setbacks and always moved on. He also loved a good deal.
After authorities seized the assets of the perpetrator of the infamous PinnFund
Ponzi scheme, Malone purchased the high-living company founder’s luxury motor yacht. Before he used it, though, he invited law enforcement officers on board to conduct a training exercise with drug-sniffing dogs — just to make sure there were no stashed illegal drugs.
Before his health failed, family members took their patriarch on a nostalgic tour of his development projects. The rebuilt house that had burned more than 45 years ago on Hidden Valley Court was still there — with only a few minor changes.
Unifying force: Longtime local YMCA powerhouse Michael Brunker, who was named “Mr. San Diego” in 2019, is taking on a new role.
After 23 years with the “Y,” 22 of them as director of the Jackie Robinson Family YMCA in Southeast San Diego, he is stepping in as the first CEO of a newly formed local nonprofit training enterprise: A Race for Unity.
Its diversity training is based on principles laid out by Rock Church senior Pastor Miles McPherson in his new book, “Third Option: Hope for a Racially Divided Nation.”
The six-week training program will target various segments of society: law enforcement, government, schools, businesses, media, etc.
“This ( job offer) came out of nowhere and was totally unsolicited,” says Brunker, who will step into his new CEO shoes on Jan. 4.
Brunker emphasizes that he loved his work with the YMCA, “but having lived through the 1967 riot in Detroit, I have always been drawn to the need to bring people together to find a better solution.” Working to overcome racial divides in today’s uncivil climate offers that solution.