ROSEMEAD - At 88 years young, it is not what Helen Gunther forgets. It is with the amazing accuracy at which she remembers. Born in Salt Lake City in 1921, Gunther and her family moved to Rosemead when she was 5 years old and she has not forgotten a fact about the area since.

"In these years during the Great Depression, it was real tough," Gunther said. "My dad ran a garage and from that he went to a wrecking yard on Muscatel and Garvey that his friend owned. We didn't see daddy very much. He was working at the wrecking yard as a night watchman. That was typical back then."

Gunther said she was raised in a house on Del Mar, between Emerson and Dorothy, a house that is no longer there.
"In 1929, (my dad) was working at that wrecking home and he would come home for lunch," she said. "He would come up Garvey Avenue."

She said her house was right next to a "chicken hatchery."

"It was in back of our house," she said. "The person who owned the hatchery, he would bring us kids a sucker. It was shaped like your hand."

She and her family then moved to a part of Rosemead that has since been popularly redeveloped.

"That's Garvey Park where they renovated the place," Gunther said. "I lived there. My house was a ranch house and was right there. We had a barn there ... It was a big, old house. It has a full cellar, big pantry and a big kitchen and all the bedrooms were big. It also had a great big and long front porch. We played on the porch a lot. We were playing on it as kids."

Gunther said everyone was just trying to make a living because of the terrible economic situation.

"There were people who were trying to get along because of the Great Depression," she said. "There was very little crime."

But after the Great Depression followed World War II and after that is when everything started to change, she said.

"After the war, the servicemen came back to California because they loved the area so much," Gunther said. "The place grew in South El Monte and South San Gabriel."

She said she remembers growing up with cows, goats, chickens, rabbits and even had a victory garden during the war. But afterward, agriculture started to fade away and houses were built for the sprawling area.

"There were two dairies," Gunther said. "I know of one was on Hellman. It was called Young's Dairy. The other was where Walmart is today at Walnut Grove and Rush. The name of that dairy was Pagee's. I know that because the man who became my stepfather milked cows there in the 1920s and 1930s."

Gunther said she also remembers all the trees which eventually disappeared - everything from oak trees to eucalyptus trees and everything in between.

"They tore them all down," she said.

Gunther added she also remembers the men who started Rosemead before its incorporation as a city in 1959.

"The men who started Rosemead were businessmen in the city of Rosemead," she said. "They changed it for the worse. Where city hall is there used to be a house. They did too much knocking things down."

She has been involved in local government over the years, she said, and has "known every mayor from incorporation until today."

"I just got into it by going to the meetings a couple of years ago," Gunther said. "I sit there and listen to them. I take complaints to them. I represented the city at one time, too. I represented the seniors at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion."

(Shel Segal can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .)