I’ve just received the heartbreaking news that Robin Fort-Lincke passed away on April 4th. If you’ve enjoyed any of the programming on SBTV3, including the televised feeds of the Seal Beach Christmas Parade or city council meetings, you’ve seen examples of Robin’s work. She touched many lives and earned the respect and affection of anyone she worked with. She was the heart and soul of SBTV3.
The Celebration of Life for Robin Fort-Lincke will be on Thursday, April 27 at noon in the Grace Church of Seal Beach at 138 8th Street Seal Beach on the corner of Eighth Street and Central Avenue in Old Town.
It seems fitting that Robin’s life celebration services be held across the street from the old Seal Beach City Hall building where the SBTV3 facilities are housed. Robin loved working in that building and shared many of the images and facts that she had collected about the place for the blog, including the architectural renderings featured in this post for February 14, 1929 and some of the research and images in this October 28, 1929 post on the dedication of the then-new city hall.
I first got to know Robin when we both served on the Seal Beach Centennial history committee. Robin was a behind-the-scenes sort of person, a refreshing quality when so many egos and personalities insist on being the center of attention.
Robin typically standing in the back of a group photograph
This was not shyness. Robin was deservedly proud of her accomplishments and not afraid to share her point of view. She was about the work, not the glory. She had to deal and interact with a variety of personalities in her work, and Robin will always be a role model to me for the patience and equanimity she brought to those interactions.
She was a great supporter of this blog and preserving Seal Beach history in general. I remember with great fondness all the hours I spent with Robin in the SBTV3 offices and studio discussing Seal Beach history during the centennial celebration and on our many phone calls after I left Seal Beach in 2016. And I could always rely on Robin for the latest Seal Beach news and gossip.
I announced this on the disastrous online slideshow earlier this month, but I haven’t share the news widely. Barring unforeseen circumstances, This Date in Seal Beach History will return to daily posts on New Year’s Day, 2026.
It’s been great fun uncovering new information about Seal Beach’s history without rushing to write a daily post these past few years, and my research will continue throughout the next two years while I begin to write and stockpile brand new posts to run throughout 2025. It will be a blast to share some of the stuff I’ve found. The amazing but forgotten life of one of Seal Beach’s early city clerk. A tandem bicycle ride to Miami. Seal Beach’s own move studio. Photographs from the Los Angeles Motorcycle Club’s visit to early Seal Beach. And more.
I’ve been slacking off the past three years on acknowledging the generous donors that have helped fund some of my research during the hiatus. I apologize for my rude neglect to the following people:
As long as I’m expressing gratitude, I need to mention the people listed below for helping fund the research that went creating the posts currently available here on the blog.
– Michael Dobkins
Have you enjoyed this and other This Date in Seal Beach History posts?
If so, please consider making a small donation of a dollar or more to help defray the online subscriptions and other research costs that make this blog possible.
Donations can be made securely with most major credit cards directly through PayPal. Just click on paypal.me/MichaelDobkins to go to PayPal. Thank you.
I’ll be hosting a Zoom meeting at 7 pm Thursday, December 15th. This event is free.
The meeting will run approximately 40 minutes to an hour. This slide show won’t be a chronological survey of Seal Beach history through photographs as I’ve done in the past, but will focus on answering some of the questions I’ve been getting about specific Seal Beach history topics with perhaps an update on some of the research I’ve been doing lately.
If this is successful and there’s enough interest, I might make online Zoom presentations a bi-monthly or quarterly event leading up to my resuming daily This Date in Seal Beach History posts in 2024 or 2025.
If you want to attend this meeting, please e-mail me at mike@SealBeachHistory.com, and I’ll send you instruction on how to log in to the meeting.
Around 2:30 pm on the Fourth of July, this blog received its 200,000 view since its January 1, 2010 launch. I’ve been busy on non-Seal Beach projects for the past couple weeks, but I did want to celebrate and offer something in return for all the kind words, interest, and attention the THIS DATE IN SEAL BEACH HISTORY blog has received in all its various formats and purposes over the years.
On social media, I floated the idea of scheduling a Seal Beach History AMA (Ask Me Anything) session, and there seemed to be a little enthusiasm for such an event. So I’m going to do it!
(“It’ll be fun!” he said to himself, nervously wondering if he was making a big mistake.”)
I haven’t decided just yet whether this AMA session will take a form of a Facebook chatroom, a Zoom videoconference, or (as I’m favoring right now) just my writing answers to submitted questions and posting them here on the blog. I’ll have a better idea of what’s doable after I received your questions. Whatever form it takes, I’ll present it at some point in the next two weekends.
So between now and Sunday, August 7th at Midnight Pacific Standard Time, please feel free to ask me any question related to Seal Beach history or this blog, and I’ll do my best to research it. Please post your questions either below in the comments or send them to mike@sealbeachhistory.com.
I will compile a presentation answering as many questions I reasonably can.
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Also, I will be resuming my research into 19th Century Anaheim Landing and pre-Seal Beach Bay City next month in preparation of a 2024 relaunch of the blog with new daily posts. A six-month subscription to the online newspaper archive I use costs $75. If you want to contribute towards that amount, donations can be made securely with most major credit cards directly through PayPal. Just click on paypal.me/MichaelDobkins to go to PayPal.
Next month, I’ll have some Seal Beach history fun to share that I think few people have had a chance to see. With luck, this will be followed by similar monthly posts until I’m ready to restart the daily date-by-date posts in a couple years. More details later.
Also, I’d like to thank Jillian Gallery for making a donation last week. While I’m not officially writing any new “This Date in Seal Beach History” posts right now, I’m still researching and subscribed to online archives, and every bit helps. Thanks, Jillian!
– Michael Dobkins
Have you enjoyed this and other This Date in Seal Beach History posts?
If so, please consider making a small donation of a dollar or more to help defray the online subscriptions and other research costs that made this blog possible.
Donations can be made securely with most major credit cards directly through PayPal. Just click on paypal.me/MichaelDobkins to go to PayPal. Thank you
On this date in 1915, an all-night “big” masquerade ball was held in Seal Beach — a mere two months and a week after it had been incorporated as an Orange County city.
New Year celebrants were invited to the “Come Down and Dance the Old Year out and the New Year in” at the Seal Beach Dancing Pavilion where good music, good floor, good time, and free merry-making novelties waited for them. To sweeten the deal, a free lunch was promised at 2:00 am.
No one today knows what songs were played, who was in the band, or what musical instruments were used that night. The playlist would probably seem a little staid to modern ears, but I’d like to think that the excitement of the crowd and the energy of live musicians would have made the music thrilling even to our twenty-first century tastes.
No photographs or any of those “merry-making novelties” from that night survive. If they do, they’re hidden deep in boxes and albums stacked in the attics, basements, and storage rooms of grandchildren and great grandchildren, shorn of context and connection to any living memory.
We don’t know who attended that New Year’s Eve masquerade ball or what sort of masquerade costumes, if any, they wore. No one bothered to make a list of the attendees, so we don’t know if any city founders or other local notables were there. There was probably a good mix of people: residents and out-of-towners, young and old, friends and families, couples and single folk.
But we do know they danced. Or at least most of them did. If 1915 was anything like today, some were there to listen to the music and watch the dancers while others held back from the “good floor,” yearning to dance but either too self-conscious or waiting in vain for the right dance partner.
Imagine what it must have been like in that pavilion that night.
It’s the final few minutes of 1915. Every new year brings new hopes and aspirations, but the impending 1916 feels especially optimistic for the people of Seal Beach.
The racing roller coaster, the scintillators at the end of the pier, and all of the Joy Zone amusements along the beach have been announced, and construction starts in a few weeks to be completed in time for the summer season launch. These exciting attractions are sure to bring crowds to Seal Beach, and once people experience all that Seal Beach offers, they won’t be able to resist buying existing homes and lots to build houses. Entrepreneurs will open shops and businesses. This new city on the beach between two bays will grow and bustle. The future is grand and shiny with promise. The place is on the cusp of greatness.
So they dance, and their hopes and dreams dance with them.
Maybe there’s a countdown before the clock struck midnight. Then the new year erupts with cheers and hugs and smiles and kisses. Champagne bottles are popped, toasts are made, and congratulations given. Everyone made it through another year.
The advertisements for the event didn’t announce any official firework displays, but I’m sure at least a few firecrackers are set off by amateurs — maybe even some Roman candles and skyrockets. There must have been.
Then the music starts again, and the dancers return to the floor. As the hour passes, the dance floor becomes less crowded as people start to leave, either tired or setting off for private celebrations elsewhere. Others sit down and talk and laugh and wait for that 2:00 a.m. lunch (not a breakfast! Not a dinner! A lunch!).
At some point, the band stops playing and begins to pack up. The few remaining dancers reluctantly leave the floor. A final round of drinks is served and emptied. The crowd thins to a few stragglers, and then even they depart, lingering for awhile outside before bidding each other goodbye and happy new year. Inside the pavilion, the remaining staff probably does some cursory clean up and prep work, but it’s been a long day and an even longer night, so they rush through it and then turn out the lights and lock up.
Finally, the night is quiet, the city is dark, and the streets are empty. There are only a few hundred people living in Seal Beach, and most of them are asleep, except maybe for one or two weirdo night owls like me. Let’s leave them there in those first few hours of 1916 when their future existed only as possibilities, before it became our past.
– Michael Dobkins
Have you enjoyed this and other This Date in Seal Beach History posts?
If so, please consider making a small donation of a dollar or more to help defray the online subscriptions and other research costs that made this blog possible.
Donations can be made securely with most major credit cards directly through PayPal. Just click on paypal.me/MichaelDobkins to go to PayPal. Thank you.
On this date in 1965, the Long Beach Independent reported that the Marina Democrats had elected new officers for 1966 and that club met the fourth Monday of each month in the Seal Beach city hall. New members were welcome.
Seal Beach City Hall – 1965
Robert L. Webb was the new president; Lois Briggs, corresponding secretary; Julie Dorr, recording secretary, Phyllis Lichenstein, treasurer, and Ann Caplicki, sergeant-at-arms.
The second vice-president was Bill Jones, and the first vice-president was a gent named Dean Dobkins.
Fancy that.
– Michael Dobkins
Have you enjoyed this and other This Date in Seal Beach History posts?
If so, please consider making a small donation of a dollar or more to help defray the online subscriptions and other research costs that make this blog possible.
Donations can be made securely with most major credit cards directly through PayPal. Just click on paypal.me/MichaelDobkins to go to PayPal. Thank you.
I’m calling it early because the votes have been overwhelming for one entry, and I won’t be available tomorrow to post the winner. So, with any further ado — drum roll please — The winner is:
REX STROTHER
Rex wrote a bio for the contest which reads:
“Raised” in Seal Beach (maybe “reared” would be more accurate); less talented nephew of Cynthia and Kay Strother (the Bell Sisters)
Ninety-five years ago, The Los Angeles Times ran a limerick contest that challenged readers to finish a limerick that started “There was a young man from Seal Beach…”
For kicks and giggles, I decided to reenact the Los Angeles Times limerick contest in 2019 and solicited new endings to the limerick. Rex’s winning finish to the limerick won an overwhelming 41.38% of the votes.
There was a young man from Seal Beach, Who held on to his dough like a leech, He once spent a dime, All at the same time, …
… To get the hell out of Long Beach!
This Date in Seal Beach History does not endorse such anti-Long Beach sentiments, but the public has spoken.
