Career
One day he found some of his Sunday-school pupils visiting the race track and rabbit course, and that impelled him to help organize a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and he "fostered measures which outlawed gambling in the community and ended coursing and racing" in the park. In the 1910s, he was active in keeping the land on which Exposition Park is now built from being developed by private interests, arguing successfully in state courts for public ownership. A bronze tablet was dedicated in his honor in the State Building within the park, and an oak tree was given his name.
In 1914 he was chairman of the Los Angeles Republican Central Committee.
In December 1918, as park commissioner, he made a proposal on behalf of Mayor Frederick T. Woodman that a "gigantic monument," 250 feet high, be erected in Exposition Park in honor of military and naval troops who had fought in the World War just ended and that it be surmounted by a "victory" figure, nine feet high, to rest on a bronze ball four feet in diameter. Access would be provided by a passenger elevator.
