Remembering When
by
Jerry Person
Huntington Beach City Historian
Dedicated to the people of Huntington Beach
Remembering Michael Vidal and his Market
Many old time Huntington Beach High Oilers remember Mike Vidal while others remember him as the owner of Mike’s Market at 207 Main Street in the early 1950s.
Mike’s linage dates back to when his parents were still living in San Jose, California. Frank Vidal and his wife left San Jose with their children to settle in Huntington Beach in 1908, at a time when it was a small beach town located far from any big city.
It was right here on May 8, 1912 that Michael Anthony Vidal was born and it was here that Mike attended Central Elementary when it was still a wood-frame school located on Orange Avenue between Fifth and Sixth Streets. When Mike was eleven years old, he and his classmates had the honor of occupying the new grammar school at 14th Street and Palm Avenue.
While Mike was busy learning his ABCs and doing his homework in our elementary school, his father Frank was busy working for the Huntington Beach Company to help feed his family of five children. Mike was the youngest of the Vidal children; others in the family included his sister Pauline and his three brothers Bob, Dan and Ray.
After leaving grammar school behind, Mike attended classes at Huntington Beach High School at a time when the school had been recently completed with new classrooms and buildings erected in 1926. When in high school Mike was active in sports and was a member of several school teams and also while in high school Mike won 15 letters in track, baseball, basketball and in football. A year before he graduated from Huntington High, Mike and his three classmates; Carl Conrad, Willard Green and Al Koenig, set a school half-mile relay record in 1930 that lasted for years. After graduating from high school in 1931, Mike went on to attend a year at Santa Ana Junior College.
In 1933 Mike married Kathleen Hawes, the daughter of Dr. Ralph Hawes and from this union came two children, a daughter Marnie and a son Torry Michael were born. Now with more mouths to feed Mike went to work at the Standard Market at the corner of Main Street and Walnut Avenue.
He worked with Bob DeBritton for 12 years and in 1944 became the owner of the grocery department with Homer Robertson at the Standard Market. When the Howard and Smith market location became available at 207 Main, Mike moved his grocery department into it.
On December 31, 1951 Mike’s Market opened its doors to the public with Mike running the grocery department and Harry M. Gelvin of 702 11th Street running the meat department. At this time Mike and family was living just out off Beach Boulevard at 1742 Speer Avenue in Huntington Beach.
Mike joined our Huntington Beach Chamber of Commerce, becoming a member of its retail merchants division and latter he served on the annexation and suburban relations committee.
On Sundays Mike taught a Sunday school class of teens at the Methodist Church and served on the church’s finance board and he was also became a church trustee. He also worked with many of our local boys through the scout program. Mike was district commissioner of the Boy Scouts and chairman of the Rotary Club’s Boy Scout Troop 2.
After Mike moved to Newport Beach, he worked at Richard’s Market until he retired in 1974 and later he moved to Sedona, Arizona to live in the sun and it was there that he liked to putter about in his garden, watch sports on television and was an active member in a church there. In November 2003 Mike returned to Huntington Beach to live with his granddaughter Lisa Mock and her husband Michael.
Mike continued to be proud of being a Huntington Beach Oiler and he attended one of their annual picnics in Lake Park.
But as Christmas day arrived Michael left not only his loved ones, but also the town he had been born in some 94 years earlier.