Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO—For more than a month, workers have been laboring at county-owned Heritage Park in Old Town to restore the original Temple Beth Israel and six other historic buildings to the glory of their  19th century conditions, while preparing the overall development for a new life as a reception hall and bed-and-breakfast park. Partners Bill […]

  By Donald H. Harrison   SAN DIEGO—Today, Katherine Olivia Sessions (1857-1940) might have gotten an argument from conservationists who believe introduction of new plant species adversely impact the surrounding eco-system. However, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when San Diego was attempting to attract businesses and new residents, Sessions was highly admired

Plaintiffs’ Plight 1984 by Donald Moses, Author House, 2009, ISBN 978-1-4490-2633-2, 362 pages, By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO—A new solo practitioner has burst onto the literary legal scene: the meticulous but fictional lawyer Dan Masters, who not only has the same initials as the author but who, like him, is a San Diego-based attorney.

Ben Kamin, Nothing Like Sunshine, Michigan State University Press, 146 pages, $24.95. By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO—Rabbi Ben Kamin was in the tenth grade in Cincinnati, Ohio, on the April day in 1968 that Martin Luther King was assassinated while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. The murder of the

  By Donald H. Harrison   EL CAJON, California –Denny Whitson lives across the street from the large mushroom shaped water tank with clouds around its rim. He likes it very much, noting that he can look up from 20 miles away and know exactly where his home is. Other people aren’t quite so enamored

By Donald H. Harrison   SPRING VALLEY, California—Speculation was popular from the 17th through 19th centuries that Native Americans might have been descended from the Lost Tribes of Israel. In this community off State Route 94, there once lived a famous historian who was among those who investigated the Lost Tribe theory and then dismissed it as being

  By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO – When this city was a frontier town, punishments for transgressing the rules were meted out to pupils and, in one notable instance, to Mary Chase Walker, the first teacher. A visit to the Mason Street School, built in 1865 and now sitting within the confines of Old

By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO – Thanks to fictionalized accounts of the lives of “lawmen” in the Old West, many people have romanticized notions about what it was like to be the sheriff in a frontier town.   Probably a front parlor in a two-story Greek revival home where the children played the piano and

  By Donald H. Harrison   OCEANSIDE, California – Surf historian Jane Schmauss vividly recalls the day she waited expectantly as the telephone rang at the home of Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, a legendary figure in the development of surfing as a popular sport. “Hello?” responded the voice on the other end. “Hello,” said Schmauss. “Is this