THE PARKS

Knowing the address where the Rettenbachers lived and worked, 252 West Santa Inez in Hillsborough, ultimately proved to be of little help in this quest. The couple's employers, Helen and Howard G. Park, had owned a large house there for at least six years prior to the accident. I imagine that domestic helpers would have lived in an adjacent smaller building, not in the main house, and the Rettenbachers probably had a small cottage on the property for themselves.

Howard Park was a Yale graduate (class of 1919), and his early records in San Francisco Social Register indicate an honorable discharge from service in World War I. He married Helen in March 1918, when she was only 16 years old. When they moved to the Burlingame area, Howard became a member of the prestigious Burlingame Country Club. In 1930, according to that year's Burlingame-Hillsborough City Directory, Mr. Park was working at Roberts, Carpenter & Co in San Francisco. In 1934, the year of the Rettenbacher accident, he was a senior partner in the brokerage firm Dwyer & Park in San Francisco. At about that time, he also became the chairman of the Public Relations Committee of the San Francisco Stock Exchange. Helen Park was a daughter of Edward H. Clark, wealthy president of the Homestake Mining Company. Helen's father Edward was not only a cousin, but also the main assistant of Phoebe Hearst, the mother of William Randolph Hearst. Helen's mother, Eva Turner Clark, was a Shakespearean scholar with several books to her credit. In the 1920s, Helen became a prominent socialite in Hillsborough and San Francisco. Among other duties, she was the 15th president of the Junior League of San Francisco, in the period from 1926 to 1929. Helen's brother, Edward H. Clark, Jr, also lived in Hillsborough in the 1920s and 1930s, and possibly beyond.

Helen Park and her children in the early 1930s, several years before the Rettenbachers accepted the job at the Parks residence. From left to right: Howard Jr, Charles, James, Margaretta, Helen, Frances, and Anne. From the collection of Park Trefts.

The Parks had six children at the time when Anna Rettenbacher was governess: Anne, Howard Jr, Charles, James, Frances and Margaretta. The youngest child, Margaretta, was about 5, and the eldest, Anne, about 15 at the time of the Rettenbachers' violent death. One would expect that this tragedy had a strong impact on the children, who had been seeing and interacting with Conrad and Anna in the house daily. Only two years later, another traumatic event happened in the Parks family. In the summer of 1936, Helen and Howard's marriage dissolved. Helen kept the house in Hillsborough for several more years. She remarried briefly to a rancher and moved to Gardnerville, Nevada, where her eldest son got enlisted after the Pearl Harbor attack. Helen returned to San Francisco Bay Area in the mid 1940s. and died at the age of 51 in Carmel, in 1953. Soon after the collapse of Helen and Howard's marriage, Howard's brokerage partnership with Dwyer ended. He moved to Santa Barbara, remarried, and was occasionally mentioned in newspaper articles covering his children's weddings and other family events. He died in August 1965, in Ventura County.

City directories from the 1940s, show that none of the Parks' sons or daughters stayed in the house in Hillsborough. Three of them, Howard Jr, Charles, and Frances, attended classes at Stanford at one time or another. I was hoping that at least some of them would still be alive, but unfortunately that proved to be incorrect. I found Howard Park Jr's name in World War II Honor List of Dead and Missing Army and Army Air Forces Personnel for Douglas County in Nevada. He was described as an aviation cadet who died in the line of duty outside of combat areas. Margaretta, the youngest daughter, probably died in 1972. Charles, who at the peak of his career was a major in the U.S. Marine Corps, also died that same year, 1972. The middle daughter, Frances, lived for many years in Woodside, and passed away in 1993. James died in 2000, while on an extended trip through the Southwest, and Anne passed away two years later, in 2002.

One of Helen and Howard's grandchildren provided very useful information about the Parks, but he didn't remeber any mention of the Rettenbacher accident at family gatherings. Similarly, my hope of "finding something in the attic" didn't materialize. Today, the Parks' former residence at 252 West Santa Inez no longer exists. The house changed several owners, and then in 1955, the lot was vacated, and all structures probably leveled. In spite of protests by surrounding property owners, the large estate was subdivided, and several simple houses built around a small cul de sac now named Santa Maria Lane. Gone forever is the large building in which the Parks once lived and entertained the Bay Area elite, and no trace is left of the smaller dwelling where the Rettenbachers spent their final days in Hillsborough.

R. H. BLOOD

R(oy) H. Blood was an officer with the U.S. Forest Service. In the 1930s, he was the Assistant Supervisor in Sierra National Forest, the second highest administrative position in a national forest. At the time of the Rettenbacher accident, he was 44 years old. It is not clear from the newspaper reports if he was present at the site of the accident (less likely), or had only participated in organizing the recovery mission from his seat at North Fork. It is not known if he has left any written account on the accident. The North Fork ranger station was burned to the ground in a fire in the 1990s, and all local records were destroyed. Copies of the more important materials may be available in the National Forest Service archives, in San Bruno, but I haven't had an opportunity to check this. Roy Blood was transferred to Lassen National Forest in 1939, worked briefly with the Los Padres National Forest, and then served in the San Diego headquarters of Cleveland National Forest until his retirement. He died in 1964. In an obituary, sent to me by Connie Popelish, a historian with the Sierra National Forest, the following sentences describe Blood's early days with the Forest Service, cca 1912: "Being a ranger in those days meant $75 a month and he had to buy his own horse. He also acted as a peace officer, cowboy, sheepherder and lumberjack, helping to regulate grazing and tree cutting and keeping the peace among the settlers."

NORMAN CLYDE

Next section is devoted to Norman Clyde.

MRS. J. H. FOX

I couldn't find anything about Mrs. Fox. City directories in San Mateo county did not list anybody with such initials during the 1930s. It is not even clear if "J. H." were Mrs. Fox's or of her husband's initials. Her age at the time of the accident is not known. She is described as "the only relative of the Rettenbachers in the United States", but we don't know if she was related to Anna or to Conrad. The newspapers reported that Mrs. Fox, once she had learned the fate of her relatives, was on her way to the Sierra to attend the funeral service. However, unless she was a highly experienced hiker, there is no way she could have made it to the burial site in just one day from San Mateo. Perhaps she has waited for the rescue party in Tuolumne Meadows, or in Agnew Meadows. It is likely that the couple's tent, equipment (a camera?), and other belongings were eventually handed over to Mrs. Fox. Did she inform Anna's and Conrad's families about the accident? One would hope so, but considering the chaotic political situation in Austria and Germany at that time, it could have happened that the information never reached them. Was Mrs. Fox a member of Die Naturfreunde? I don't know. Perhaps the registration books in the organization's Clubhouse could tell us more about her. (Note added in August 2005: The US Census of 1930 shows no person with the initials "J. H. Fox" in the San Mateo county, and one person with those initials, John H. Fox, age 30, in nearby San Francisco county).

BENJAMIN MACE

From left to right: Jules Eichorn, Benjamin Mace, Norman Clyde, Lilburn Norris, and Douglas Robinson, Jr, in the morning of Walter Starr's burial, August 1933. From William Alsup's Missing in the Minarets, reproduced here with permission. Mace, Clyde, and probably Robinson, were also present for the Rettenbachers' last rites in August 1934.

The Sierra National Forest (SNF) District Ranger Benjamin (Hale) Mace was present when Walter Starr's remains were entombed on Michael Minaret in August 1933. He can be seen with other members of the burial party on a picture in Alsup's book. In the Rettenbacher accident, he was probably the highest ranking Forest Service officer at the site. He was sixty at that time. According to newspaper accounts, among other things, he was in charge of the burial service. Connie Popelish confirms that in the mid 1930s he lived in North Fork. He began his Forest Service career with the Sierra National Forest in 1908, then served in many other places in California, and finally spent the last several years before retirement (1936) in SNF again. I don't know if he kept a diary or notes about his days with the Forest Service. There is an item in the Norman Clyde collection at Bancroft Library, cataloged as "Letter, Feb. 2, 1934, From B. H. Mace". It is dated after the Starr accident but before the Rettenbacher accident. Perhaps Clyde and Mace got acquinted during Starr's burial, and then stayed in touch. I haven't had a chance to check this letter yet. Ranger Mace died at the age of 85, in Jackson, Amador County, in May 1960.

GILBERT DAVIS

According to newspaper reports, Gilbert Davis, who found the Rettenbachers' abandoned tent and stayed in the area until the burial, was a Sierra National Forest "guard" in the "Minarets country" (or in the "Banner Mountain district"). Connie Popelish couldn't find any information about Gilbert Davis in the North Fork documentation, nor did my search yield any result.

M. A. BENEDICT

M(aurice) A(bbott) "Ben" Benedict, supervisor of the Sierra National Forest from 1916 to 1944, was involved in the Rettenbacher story mainly by his official function. He gave a few statements about the search to newspaper reporters, and his approval was probably needed for the burial to take place within national forest boundaries. He was 51 years old at the time of the accident.

In an article by Morgan Voorhis in Sierra Star, Supervisor Benedict is described in the following way:

"Mr. Benedict was fair, well liked and community minded, involved in schools and all aspects of community life. He worked unceasingly to develop a strong access road system to serve all uses, including recreation which blossomed during his tenure. Failure to complete a trans-Sierra road from North Fork to Mammoth was [his] major disappointment (...) For years, officials in the Forest Service's regional office had wanted to move the forest headquarters to Fresno. Supervisor Benedict believed the forest office should be in the forest and fought to keep it in North Fork. So strong was his conviction and the feelings in North Fork that it wasn't until eight years after his retirement that the office was moved..."

Supervisor Benedict died in 1959. If he had left any notes or official log entries about the Rettenbacher accident, they could perhaps be found in the National Archives for the Pacific Sierra Region, in San Bruno, California. I didn't have time to visit the Archives yet.

DOUGLAS ROBINSON

One of the "eight persons [who] labored to the verge of exhaustion to move the bodies" to the grave site, is identified in San Francisco Chronicle as ranger Douglas Robinson of the Inyo National Forest. I would argue that it is more likely that this was his son, Douglas Robinson, Jr. The father was a high ranking official with the Forest Service, and it would be quite improbable that he would have left his office for several days at the top of a summer season, to get to a remote area behind Banner Peak and participate in that labor intensive and dangerous task. Douglas Jr, on the other hand, played an important role in both the search for Walter Starr, and in his burial, a year earlier. William Alsup found his note in the Ritter register, dated August 16, 1933 ("… We came on a hunt for Walter A. Starr, Jr., who has been missing since the first… D. Robinson, Jr.", see. p. 74 of Alsup's book), and he also appears on the picture of Starr's burial party, dated August 31, 1933. With such credentials, it would be no surprise if Douglas Jr had been invited to help in the Rettenbacher search. Douglas Jr was a 1932 graduate of Bishop High School. He was 18 at the time of the Starr search, and attending Pasadena City College, but clearly spending summers in and around Bishop. Young Douglas is mentioned in another Sierra search several years later,. In 1941, he began working at Hoover Dam, but this was soon interrupted by the outbreak of the war. He served in the U.S. Navy, then returned to Boulder City. At the time of his retirement he was superintendent of hydro-electric power for Hoover Dam. He died in March of 1991.

However, if Douglas Robinson mentioned in the San Francisco Chronicle was the District Ranger Robinson, not his son, then perhaps there is a chance that he cited the Rettenbacher accident in some of the 'official' Inyo National Forest documents from that era. My half-hearted attempt to find a symphatetic ear in the Inyo National Forest headquarters didn't yield a result so far. Douglas Sr began working for the Forest Service in April 1911, and became a district manager in 1933, a year before the Rettenbacher accident. He stayed with the Forest Service for more than 30 years. In his later years he became interested in paleontology, and apparently even wrote several booklets about ancient elephants that once roamed Owens Valley and Death Valley. He was also one of the founders of the Eastern California Museum in Independence, and later a curator for the Museum. He died in 1957. A Sierra peak, Mt. Robinson (12,967 feet) in the Palisades Range, was named after him (source: Place Names of the Sierra Nevada; From Abbot to Zumwalt, by Peter Browning, second edition, Wilderness Press, Berkeley, 1991).

SEARCH PARTY FROM DIE NATURFREUNDE

Wire service reported that six members of Die Naturfreunde had participated in the first phase of the search. Those members probably left for the mountains as soon as it became apparent that the Rettenbachers had failed to return on time, and joined the National Park Service search party at Tuolumne Meadows, in Yosemite. We don't know who these people were, nor do we know if they were from the San Francisco area, or, perhaps, from the Los Angeles branch of Die Naturfreunde. At least four of them stayed until the search was over, helped in identifying the bodies, and attended the burial service. A few of them probably returned to the grave site at a later time, and placed the plaque. I couldn't find their names or any mention of the plaque in the Naturfreunde records at Muir Woods Clubhouse.

OTHER CLIMBERS IN THE SEARCH PARTY

Newspaper reports mentioned "huge corps of experienced mountain climbers" participating in the search, but only Norman Clyde was identified by name. Who were those experienced mountaineers? Could it be that after the Starr accident in 1933, Sierra Club had established an on call group of climbers ready to step in on a short notice whenever the situation required it? It is perhaps significant that Jules Eichorn, a well-known rock climber, and Ted Waller, both members of the Sierra Club, were in the area at the time of the search. According to Alsup's book Missing in the Minarets, p. 140, the pair climbed Clyde Minaret on August 13, 1934, just a day before Norman Clyde joined the Rettenbacher search. Was Eichorn's presence a coincidence? His parents were German immigrants, and possibly members of Die Naturfreunde. Did they ask their son to help in the search for fellow members and countrymen? Eichorn didn't mention the Rettenbacher accident in his taped interview with George Sinclair in 1995, or in any other record available to me. He died in 2000. Ted Waller gave the eulogy at Eichorn's memorial service. He perhaps could shed some light on the purpose of that Ritter Range visit, but I have no idea how to find Ted or get in touch with him.

NEXT: Norman Clyde

If you have any reliable knowledge about the accident or the Rettenbachers, please drop me a line at

indicates that more information is available in the footnotes section.