A century ago, on Dec. 4,1924, Berkeley was talking about a major train accident that killed at least eight people and injured scores of others on the Key System route. The Oakland pier accommodated interurban trains that connected to ferry boats bound for San Francisco.
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The Berkeley Daily Gazette reported that a San Francisco-Sacramento Short Line train crashed into the rear of a stopped Key System train, “telescoping” the rear car. Six people died immediately, another on the way to the hospital and another a day or two later. Injuries included major broken bones, bad cuts and skull fractures.
Preliminary inquiries indicated warning signals were working, but the Short Line conductor may not have stopped his train in time.
Priest passes: Father Clarence Eugene Woodman, described by the Gazette as the “Grand Old Man” of Newman Hall, UC Berkeley’s Catholic student center, died Dec. 6, 1924. He was 72, which was described as “extreme age” by the Gazette, and had served as Newman’s chaplain since 1910.
A Silver Jubilee dinner celebrating the anniversary of Newman Hall was canceled, and a mass presided over by San Francisco’s Archbishop Hanna was held for Woodman instead.
Big storm: Most of California got a through “drenching” by a large storm on the afternoon and night of Dec. 5-6, 1924. At least 0.7 of an inch of rain fell in 24 hours across the Bay Area.
“Berkeley and the entire Bay District was swept … by a terrible gale which brought on a heavy downpour of rain,” the Gazette reported Dec. 6 that year. “Considerable property damage was caused here. … The police telephone system was thrown out of operation.
“Wires were broken, and store awnings ripped away. Several Berkeleyans were passengers on ferry boats which encountered giant combers, causing panic.”
Sports revenues: Back in the 1920s (and up through about 1960, in fact), intercollegiate athletic programs at the university were run by the Associated Students of the University of California. The ASUC also built and owned some of the facilities where the sports were played and received ticket revenues from the sports.
On Dec. 5, 1924, Luther Nichols, the ASUC’s general manager, reported that the year’s activities had included $45,000 spent on training quarters in the new California Memorial Stadium, and $9,000 spent on a new crew boathouse on the Oakland Estuary.
From June to Dec. 1, 1924, the ASUC had received $180,390 in ticket revenue, presumably coming mostly from tickets sold for home games in Memorial Stadium that fall. Some $53,000 had been paid out in athletic expenses, presumably for training and team travel. To that would be added as-yet-unpaid revenue sharing payments to other universities, including Stanford.
All of these grand dollar amounts were for men’s sports. Women’s athletic teams earned no revenue and spent just $647 during the same six-month period.
Bay Area native and Berkeley community historian Steven Finacom holds this column’s copyright.