San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
DiMaggio is sued for divorce
Items have been culled from The Chronicle’s archives of 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago.
1993
Oct. 13: Mayor Frank Jordan’s bartending son James, who was arrested before dawn yesterday on drunken driving charges, may have more troubles than just that incident. DMV records show his license was suspended in June after he failed to show up in court for two earlier traffic violations. Mayor Jordan issued a brief statement about yesterday’s arrest saying: “I am saddened by the news about my son Jim, as any parent would be. I stand by him and support him. Together we will deal with the facts as they emerge.”
James Jordan ... was stopped about a block from Johnny Love’s at Polk Street and Broadway, where he works as a bartender. The arrest occurred about 3:45 a.m. Young Jordan was held for four hours in jail and then released. He didn’t call his father or anyone else to get him out, although jail higher-ups were called in the wee hours with the news that the mayor’s son was in the slammer. Police officers familiar with drunken driving cases in that part of town likened the younger Jordan to a “sitting duck.” They say cops are known to hang out or patrol the Yuppie-infested area looking for drivers to tag after the bars close.
— Phil Matier, Andy Ross, Thaai Walker
1968
Oct. 7: An 11-year-old girl on a picnic made the most bizarre discovery of her life yesterday behind Laguna Honda Home when she spotted what she thought was a giant mushroom. “When I flipped it over, I saw it was a skull.” “I just screamed and yelled, ‘I found a head,’ ” said Barbara Vohryzek of 255 Pacheco Street. Twin sisters, Eleanor and Cornelia, 15, and three other neighborhood girls on the picnic were “pretty scared.” They didn’t want the police not to believe them, Barbara said, so they picked up a plastic bag they found on the steep hill and “sort of shoved its head in with a stick.”
They took their macabre bundle to the firehouse at Olympia Drive and Clarendon Avenue and casually put it on a table. Astonished firemen notified police and then formed a posse that roped itself down the hill to the spot where the rest of the skeleton lay in the underbrush. Coroner Dr. Henry Turkel examined the skeleton and said it was that of “a very old and very small man.” Dr. Turkel said the skeleton had probably been lying behind the home for “months or a few years.” The man, he said, was probably a patient who went for a lonely walk and never returned.
1943
Oct. 12: Joe DiMaggio, the Yankee Clipper, who traded a $50,000-ayear baseball berth to become just another Joe in Uncle Sam’s Army, struck out yesterday. His shapely blonde wife sued the Air Corps sergeant for divorce, charging him with cruelty so great as to cause injury to her health. According to United Press dispatches from Los Angeles, Mrs. Di Maggio asked for custody of their 2-year-old son, Joe DiMaggio III, $500 a month alimony for herself and $150 a month support for the child, asserting the heavy slugging outfielder was well able to pay the sum. She estimated he earned far more than $50,000 in 1942. Mrs. DiMaggio listed as community property $20,000 in war bonds, $25,000 interest in Joe’s Fisherman’s Wharf restaurant; $25,000 in cash and other securities. The DiMaggios were married here in November of 1939 at a wedding that virtually overwhelmed the Italian colony. The celebrations went on for days. Last December Mrs. DiMaggio, a screen actress known professionally as Dorothy Arnold, established residence in Reno preparatory to divorcing her husband. She implied that the man voted the American League’s most valuable player was not particularly valuable to her. Oct. 12: San Francisco yesterday acquired the first Negro policeman. Appointed to the force was William Glenn, 45, 1853 Divisadero Street, originally from Houston, Tex. Glenn, married, formerly was a civil guard for the Navy at Oakland, and from 1926 to 1927 was a special officer in Los Angeles. The appointment, deemed desirable because of the increased Negro population, is of limited tenure — for the war’s duration and six months thereafter.
1918
Oct. 10: DUNSMUIR — With all but two of Dunsmuir’s physicians and all of her trained nurses called to help Uncle Sam win the war, this city of a 1,000 or more souls is making a desperate fight against the dreaded Spanish influenza, which up to tonight had claimed five victims in twenty-four hours and left 300 afflicted. The absence of sufficient physicians has brought to the point of collapse the two now valiantly working to save more from death. The absence of nurses has made it necessary to violate all the common rules of quarantine. Friends and relatives have refused to stand by and see whole families suffering without going to their aid. There have been many acts of heroism and five have died who went into afflicted homes to aid the sick.