Charles Branch served Arroyo Grande as a constable, town marshal, traffic policeman and finally chief of police in the 1930s. While he was not related to the Branches who founded the town, he seems to have been almost as prominent.

When the City laid him off in the depths of the Depression, carloads of teenaged boys drove around town to honk their horns in protest. That’s high praise. The PTA honored him, too, for his vigilance for ticketing speeders who exceeded what was then a 15-mph speed limit in school zones. Since the State Highway—101, today’s Traffic Way—ran directly through town and past the grammar school, Charlie lighting up careless drivers (an old clipping notes that one such driver was Rose Bowl-bound) from his motorcycle may have saved many young lives.

In 1931, he was the first AGPD officer to be issued a tear-gas gun. The Arroyo Grande Herald-Recorder notes that Branch needed it to quell disturbances at local dance halls. That may well be a coded reference. The dance halls, including the IDES (“Portuguese”) Hall, were frequented by Filipino farmworkers. They patronized taxi dancers—“henna-haired girls,” one article called them—who were Caucasian and this seemed to be a state of affairs that agricultural towns in California could not tolerate. The dances were frequently raided by local police.

But the tear-gas gun also represented a kind of deja vu in Charles Branch’s life. He was a staunch member of and officer in the local Spanish-American War veterans’ organization, but that’s a slight fib. It’s more likely that most of these veterans fought instead in the Philippine Insurrection (1899-1902), one of America’s most controversial wars. His sister’s application for a military tombstone—Branch died in 1961 and is buried in Santa Ana, in Orange County—gives the game away.

The 35th Volunteers, indeed, fought in the Philippine Insurrection. This was a merciless colonial war brought on by the Filipinos themselves, led by a man, dynamic and charismatic, named Emilio Aguinaldo.

The Filipinos started the war by helping the United States defeat Spain in the Spanish-American War and then assuming that America, given our War of Independence and our democratic traditions, would grant the Islands independence so that they could begin democratic traditions of their own.

Nope. The Islands became America’s “Jewel in the Crown”—a reference to British India— the centerpiece of our own colonial empire and the beginning of a slippery slope that would lead to another terrible war with another colonial power, one that would claim two Arroyo Grande sailors killed on battleship Arizona on December 1941.

“It is our duty,” President McKinley intoned in 1899, to explain why we weren’t leaving, to “uplift and Christianize” the Filipinos (80% of them were Roman Catholic, but that’s another story. That didn’t count as ‘Christianity’ in McKinley’s thoroughly Protestant America. When Al Smith ran against Herbert Hoover in 1928, some Hoover campaign buttons read simply A Christian in the White House.)

The war that followed claimed tens of thousands of Filipino insurgents. Collateral damage (starvation and disease) accounted for somewhat between a quarter-million and a million civilians.

This was the war in which one general, later court-martialed, ordered his men to kill every male Filipino over the age of ten, in which “waterboarding” was invented, in which the Americans adopted a practice that had been invented by the Spanish in Cuba and the British in South Africa: the concentration camp.

One of the most decorated regiments—multiple Medals of Honor—was the Twentieth Kansas Volunteer Infantry, a unit that included a private who wrote his friends back home that “this shooting niggers beats shooting rabbits all to hell.”

The war divided America as deeply as the Dreyfus Affair was dividing France—or as deeply as the United States is divided today. The two sides were exemplified by two powerful men: the imperialist Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge and the writer Mark Twain, whose essay “To the Brother Sitting in Darkness” was a searing indictment of American policy.

Aguinaldo surrendered. We won.

Thirty years later, you can find some shockingly racist language in the editorial columns of the Arroyo Grande Herald-Recorder, most of it directed against “Mexicans” (many of whom were American citizens) or “Filipinos” (who occupied a nebulous status somewhere between being citizens and resident aliens.)

Filipinas were not allowed to immigrate. That factor created huge economic opportunities for the henna-haired girls, the taxi dancers.

Meanwhile, Filipino immigrants responded to the abuse heaped on them throughout the 1920s and 1930s by joining the fight against Japan in the months after Pearl Harbor. They formed two infantry regiments, the first at Camp San Luis Obispo. Their regular army trainers, from the 77th Infantry Division, were stunned by how quickly these men took to soldiering and how self-disciplined and motivated they were. These gifts became evident in combat in the Southwest Pacific and in the liberation of the Philippines. They fought with immense bravery.

“Immense Bravery” is not a term I’d apply to Charles Branch’s 35th Volunteer Infantry Regiment. They were a hard-luck unit. “Volunteer” regiments occupied a separate status from the regular Army; enlistment terms were limited, discipline was easier, and the food, allegedly, was better. Despite those inducements, the 35th, made up of large numbers of Californians, had trouble finding recruits in 1899, when the Insurrection began. They would have to borrow some Easterners, including (horrors!) New Yorkers, to fill out their ranks.

But they had a Californian, Charles Branch, as one of those rankers. He avoided dying on the troopship that left San Francisco for Manila. Ptomaine poisoning swept the 35th—turn-of-the-century soldiers were issued tinned meat that was Civil War surplus—and at least one soldier, from San Francisco, died en route to the Philippines.

That’s where malaria began claiming them, including a popular captain from Los Angeles.

They fought for two years, pursuing and not finding insurgent leaders and engaging in at least one pitched battle, on Mindanao, in June 1900. They were routed, losing twenty men killed or wounded; the Filipino attackers lost four.

Coming home to California must have been an immense relief. Over 4,000 American soldiers and Marines did not come home alive.

Arroyo Grande was still ten years away from incorporation in 1901, when newly-discharged veteran Charles Branch was twenty-three. He would eventually become a constable but he also had a mechanical bent, working for the Barcellos-Morgan Ford agency on Branch Street—today an ice cream shop— and eventually opening his own radiator shop. He also formed an all-girls drill team, sponsored by a fraternal organization, the Knights of Pythias, that performed regularly in town celebrations and parades in the 1930s.

Then something happened. Around 1939, Branch disappears from the old Herald-Recorder’s news columns except for occasional visits. His residence is listed as “Sawtelle,” which is ominous. That was the veterans home, near the UCLA campus, that was notorious for mistreating its Civil War veterans during the 1920s (“patients” were referred to as “inmates.”) It looks like a pleasant place. I don’t think it was, certainly not for Civil War veterans and perhaps not for the cohort to which Branch belonged, a generation after the Civil War.

The veterans who lived at Sawtelle—maybe Branch was assigned to the Malibu facility, which had to be a little more pleasant—were chronic sufferers. Many of the Civil War veterans were incapacitated by the crippling depression that is one manifestation of PTSD. Others were alcoholics. Still others died, years later, from diseases contracted during the war: Arroyo Grande Grammar School janitor Richard Merrill, for example, a veteran of the Antietam and Chancellorsville campaigns, was finally killed in 1909 by the dysentery that had first assaulted him in 1863.

The malaria that killed the 35th Volunteers’ captain can stalk a survivor over the course of his entire life. We have no way of knowing, but perhaps Pvt. Branch’s war finally caught up to him.

A man who was admired by both the PTA and rascally teenaged boys had to be exceptional. I can’t help but hope, though, that Charlie Branch never had to use that tear-gas gun.

For a proposed Memorial Day Speech at the Arroyo Grande Cemetery, May 29, 2023.

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In 1963, my older brother went out for the wrestling team at what was then Arroyo Grande Union High School. That’s when he met arguably the toughest kid on the team—maybe the toughest athlete in the high school’s Class of 1966.

His name was Pete.

My brother was the son of an accountant; our Dad was the comptroller for Madonna Construction. Pete was a farmer’s son.

Dad’s ancestors migrated from England to Virginia in the 17th century; Pete’s father was an immigrant from the Philippines.

My brother was a hard worker, maybe happiest behind the wheel of our Ford garden tractor. Pete was a hard worker because he had to be.

Pete was a natural athlete. Neither my brother nor I are natural athletes. But here’s what my brother said about his wrestling teammate:

“He was nice to me, and he didn’t have to be.”

Please keep those words in mind for a few minutes.

“He was nice to me, and he didn’t have to be.”

Bear with me. I have to recite a few statistics.

The Vietnam War claimed eleven young South County men. Nine of them are near us today. One is buried in Santa Maria. One remains missing in action.

Thirty-four San Luis Obispo County men died in the Vietnam War.

Most of them were soldiers. Eight were Marines.

The ratio of Californians killed in Vietnam was twenty-eight deaths for every 100,000 residents. For San Luis Obispo County, it was thirty-two deaths for every 100,000 residents.

The average age of a Vietnam serviceman was twenty-two. At the times of their deaths, most County servicemen were twenty-one.

The most common cause of combat deaths was from grenades, which claimed eight of our young men. Whether hand-thrown or fired as RPG’s, this meant that fighting was at close quarters.

Mortar or artillery fire took six more.

The greatest number of county casualties—eleven—came in 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive. Nine more died the following year.

One of those killed in 1969 was Marine Sgt. Pete Segundo. His grave in this cemetery is directly above my parents’ graves. When I come to visit my Mom and Dad, I visit the young Marine I never met.

I’ve seen one yearbook photo that was typical of him: amid all the football guys trying to look tough, there’s their all-county guard with a big smile on his face.

In fact, there’s a big smile on his face in every one of his yearbook photos.

To know Pete, his classmates have told me, was to love him.

He was a standout athlete, especially in wrestling and football.

Otis Smith, a Civil War Medal of Honor winner, is buried here, too. His grandson, Johnnie, was awarded a Silver Star as a member of a World War II tank destroyer battalion.

In 1934, Johnnie was a Leiter Award winner, presented to the high school’s outstanding football player.

The Leiter Award went to Pete Segundo, too. Twice.

And while his classmates enjoyed a root-beer float and a burger at the Chu Chu Drive-In on Grand Avenue, Pete was in the fields chopping celery to help support his family.

A lifetime of hard work did nothing to diminish Pete’s smile. What ended it was an incident of friendly fire; Pete, a Marine dog handler, was shot while on patrol.

Sgt. Segundo, like most county Vietnam casualties, was twenty-one when he was killed.

He’s a powerful example of how that war—how any war—cheats all of us. This war stole that young man from us. That young man gave his life for us.

But that was typical of his generosity of spirit.

“He was nice to me, but he didn’t have to be.”

My brother found this out the day he met his wrestling teammate, Pete Segundo.

Today was my big brother’s 75th birthday. He lives in Templeton with his wife, Evie. They’ve been married for 55 years.

Our Dad–brilliant, volcanic, alcoholic– was not easy to get along with, and he was hard on Bruce.

Once he slammed the car door on Bruce’s hand and yelled at him for bleeding. When, on Huasna Road, we had a bent pasture gate, Dad attempted to reshape it using a sledgehammer, with Bruce holding the bottom end, like John Henry’s shaker, and Dad taking big and not-always-accurate swings.

Bruce and I didn’t get along. I was a pain in the ass–I have just realized in the last few years that I am profoundly ADHD, and was given to manic episodes, repeatedly rolling a hassock across the living room floor and tackling it, as if I were an NFL defensive back, and spontaneous bouts of dancing for no particular reason.

So I sucked a lot of the air out of the family dynamic, and Bruce had to live with that. So he rode me pretty hard.

And then, suddenly, when he was about eighteen and I needed to learn how to drive a stick shift, everything changed. He was the best and most patient teacher I could ever hope for.

When he went to UCSB, I’d play hooky from AGHS just to visit him and Evie and maybe sit in on a real college class. I was entranced.

He met Evie when he was the editor and she a reporter on the Cuestonian, the Cuesta College newspaper. I inherited Bruce’s job four years later.

We are so much alike in one other way: our voices are indistinguishable over the telephone.

I have never known anyone who works as hard as my brother does. This was the way he dealt with Dad. He worked harder than any of us because, I guess, he wanted to prove himself.

I have only met one or two people who are as well-read as he is. He is a wonderful storyteller and comic–quirky and delightful– but he is serious about things like personal integrity.

This has gotten him, like me, into trouble with authority figures.

His college education was interrupted but he went back to UCSB, years later, to finish his English degree.

The man is determined.

He loves motorcycles and sometimes that worries me. But on a ride a few years ago he rode up to our grandparents’ farmhouse in Williams, Colusa County, and sent me back a photo.

My earliest memory is falling down the farmhouse steps and cutting my knee and having my Grandpa Kelly sweep me up in his arms to comfort me. I still have the scar on my knee. But I had long forgotten what the farmhouse looked like and Bruce’s photo brought Gramps back to me again.

We are not close–our lives as children were chaotic and sometimes dangerous, and so we are emotionally reserved.

But he is close to our wondrous son Thomas, the one given to spontaneously buying ice-cream cones for homeless people, for adopting and raising, including bottle-feeding, at 2 a.m., homeless kittens, for occasionally, to our surprise, putting up temporarily homeless friends on the sofa in our garage and sneaking out microwaved pizza to feed them, and like me, given to being a pain in the ass.

So on his seventy-fifth birthday, there is no adequate way to tell you how much I love my big brother.