Submitted by Karl Breckenridge
When sending early columns for the This is Reno website, I included a couple standing head photos. One such was a 1946 shot of a little waif standing by a tree in Whitaker Park. The tree and the house in the background are still there, on University Terrace just west of Ralston; (the house in the background is the Eickbush Mansion – the best-kept secret in Reno).
Image: Bud Loomis
There’s kind of a story behind that photo. Just after WWII my family moved back to Reno and bought a little home at 740 Ralston Street across from the park, so I played there a lot as a five- or six-year old.
One day a car drove up and a guy got out with a camera – not a box camera like Dad’s but a pretty nice one at that. He started taking pictures around the park, and asked me if I’d like to be in a picture. Now, in later life we told our children to run the other way should this ever happen to them, but this was 1946 in the halcyon days of America after the war and that sort of child abuse hadn’t come into being in Reno, Nevada – yet.
So I stood by the tree and he took the picture. Then he asked where I lived. I pointed to our house across the street – the first one down the hill from the Nutty Professor on the corner – and he got into his car and left. I forgot about it and went back to my playing in the park.
A week later our doorbell rang and the nice man with the camera who took my picture was at the door. Dad came to the door and soon I’d never heard such laughing and hollering in my short life – from both Dad and this stranger at the door.
The men knew each other from childhood, but had not seen each other since before Pearl Harbor! They had grown up together; didn’t live that far apart and had played together as children, gone to Reno schools together and then, like so many other friends, been separated by the war. Taking my picture was a total serendipity coincidence.
The man’s name was E. Frandsen Loomis, but everyone called him “Bud.” He was a young attorney in Reno, who had been a Naval attaché during the war and prior to that an envoy to China, where he acquired a lot of artifacts. Dad and Bud had about a dozen beers while yakking about the old days, and then he left.
And they remained friends for life. Bud and his wife Cebe had a son Drew (Andrew) and a daughter (Del) my age and we were all friends – I think I’m the last one alive now.
But his family has provided fodder for about a dozen columns over the years. Bud’s grandfather was Andrew Frandsen, who emigrated here from Denmark and built up a sheep business over the years – starting with bummer lambs from the sheep ranches around northern Nevada – and into a million-dollar business in the 1920s, surely the biggest sheep man in the state. He endowed Dania Hall on north Sierra Street which many readers of this piece have visited – they knew it better as the former and original Reno Little Theater, which Frandsen made possible through an extremely favorable purchase circumstance.
Andrew’s daughter Anna Frandsen married Mr. Loomis, a man with no first name, a photographer for Time, Life and other magazines, and they lived for many years in the Caribbean, having three children in the process. Bud was the son between two sisters, Maryalice (husband Bill) and Inez (Scoop). The late Maryalice and Bill Blakely’s older son Jim remains one of my lifelong and closest friends. Divorcing, Mrs. Loomis (Dosh!) returned to Reno and taught foreign language at Reno High School for many years.
A staunch Christian Scientist, she hired the renowned architect Paul Revere Williams to design her Loomis Manor Apartments on Riverside Drive. Then she endowed – basically built – the Christian Science Church on the Truckee River, for the past score of years lying fallow as the Lear Theater. Bud and Cebe lived across the Truckee from that church on the familys’ land, in what was built as a carriage house for the Reid mansion on the bluff above the river – the stairways from that site down to the one-time carriage house are still visible.
Her other vital contribution to Reno society was taking me to get my driver’s license on my 16th birthday – my parents were out of town and thus she told me to drive her to motor vehicle and I took my driver’s test in her 1952 Cadillac. Successfully.
Back briefly to Bud and Cebe – Bud, in his tenure as an envoy to China – until being excluded when China closed its borders to Westerners in the mid-1930s, managed to, ahem: acquire, huge quantities of stuff and displayed it in their carriage house-turned residence on the Truckee. But he and Cebe wanted more people to be able to enjoy it, so to display it he built a high-end lounge called the Bundox and a fine motel called the River House, on a triangle of land bounded by Lake and East Second Streets that had been given to the local Chinese as reparation for their exploitation by the American government and which Loomis, as their envoy, ahem: counseled them to sell to him.
Now, you came here to read of the photo of the little kid accompanying this piece, and wound up reading, if you made it this far, of some of the Loomis/Frandsen family, the early Reno Little Theater, the Christian Science Church, the Bundox and the River House and to make it totally ridiculous, my driver’s license – but when you coop a writer up for this long God knows what you’ll read.
But I‘ve enjoyed the isolation with This is Reno’s readers, and hope you have as well. See you back here tomorrow, and, stay safe, huh?
Karl Breckenridge
Karl Breckenridge was slowly going nuts. So he decided to help out This is Reno by writing a daily out-of-his-mind column for the duration of the coronavirus shutdown. Now that it’s over he’s back to his usual antics, drinking coffee with the boys at the Bear and, well, we’re not sure what else. But he loved sharing his daily musings with you, so he’s back, albeit a little less often, to keep on sharing. Karl grew up in the valley and has stories from the area going back to 1945. He’s been writing for 32 years locally.
Read more from Karl Breckenridge
Cheers 4 – the Lear steam bus
The latest news on the Lear Theater has Karl remembering some of the Lear’s other projects, including a steam-powered bus.
Cheers 3 – the groceries II
Karl did not limit his column to ten items or less, so get out of the express line to read this history of Reno grocery markets.
Cheers 2 – the groceries I
Karl got a little distracted this week, starting off with a list of Reno’s great groceries of yesterday then slipping on some ice.
Cheers 1 – Of wine and Little Italy
Karl is back, making us all wonder why we didn’t spend more time during stay-at-home orders pressing grapes into homemade wine.
Day 75 – Karl’s retired to the Bear
From the get-go our pal Karl said he’d write “a short squib on a daily basis – nothing political, nothing controversial,” well, except for that one column.
Day 74 – the Truckee’s picturesque islands (updated)
Karl’s pal Jody shares the rich history of bootlegging, decorating, and engineering within the confines of the Truckee River’s banks and its picturesque islands.
Day 72 – Hobos, tigers and leprechauns
Karl recollects the series of eateries that drew diners to the corner of Virginia Street and Gentry Way for several decades.
Day 70 & 71 – in Flanders Fields
Karl shares a poem by John McCrae to mark Memorial Day.
Day 69 – The Nugget shark: John meets Jaws
Karl was talking about baby shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, long before the kids these days had ever been born.
Day 67 – What I like about Reno High
Karl, er, Carmine Ghia, writes an end-of-school-year essay to turn in to Mrs. Lehners about everything he likes about Reno High School.
Day 67 – 25 Bret Harte
Karl saddles up and heads to Newlands Manor where Western movies star Reno Browne grew up, and Lash Larue paid a visit or two.
Day 66 – Out for dinner we go
Karl goes out to eat at the El Tavern Motel, a truck stop outside the Reno city limits on the Lincoln Highway.
Day 65 – Dawn Bunker
Karl is back in action with a fresh story of which students of Mrs. Bunker’s class at Jessie Beck Elementary School still won’t spill the beans.
Day 64 – abducted
Karl Breckenridge called in to This Is Reno editors this morning with a hands-in-the-air, what-can-I-do sense of resignation.
Day 63 – Wedding chapels
Karl’s enjoying coffee with pals at the Bear, so today Jody stands at the altar to share the history of Reno’s wedding chapel industry.
Day 62 – the mansion at 2301 Lakeside Drive
Karl’s 7-year-old alter ego rides his bike down to Virginia Lake to explore the Hancock Mansion, a nifty home complete with a bomb shelter, sunroof and doll collection.
Day 61 – Basque hotels
Karl wanders back in time to 1960, a time when multiple Basque hotels served up minestrone soup, English lessons, banking, and accommodations.
Day 60 – the bygone Greyhound terminal
Karl’s synapses are firing today after hearing mention of Reno’s Greyhound bus terminal on Stevenson Street, now razed.
Day 59 – Don’t tell Mom
Karl rewinds to Mother’s Day to share a story from the archive about Grandpas without a Clue and another ragtop adventure, by reader demand.
Day 58 – School stuff
Karl considers the value of a school name as the WCSD moves to rename one of the area’s older remaining schools and open a new one.
Day 57 – Pedalin’ around Vine Street
Karl rides his bike through history, remembering some of the places and people that helped to build Reno into the city it is today.
Submitted opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of This Is Reno. Have something to say? Submit an opinion article or letter to the editor here.
