Stan and Nan Logsdon

After high school I went to Cal Poly with Bob Elliott and Terry Flanagan. We all played Freshman football together. Elliott and I got pretty good at ping-pong. The Chinese would have been jealous.

I had no interest in school and knowing that if I dropped out I would be drafted, I elected to drop out. I moved back to Santa Monica and rented an apartment with Bobby Lennon. We had a great six months before the inevitable happened. I was drafted in December, 1965 and sent to Fort Bliss, Texas. It was freezing. The army offered to send me to officer candidate school but the only to areas offered were infantry or artillery. I knew that was certain death so I did not sign up. Whew!! The put me in the Chemical Corp and sent me to Alabama. The only thing I really learned was how blatant racism is in that part of the country.

Next was a brief visit to an army arsenal base in Maryland where I garnered a soldier of the month award for being a really good kiss-ass and my pinochle partner was the sergeant major in command. Alas, I was sent to Vietnam in December, 1966. I was stationed in the Central Highlands in a remote place called An Khe with the 1st Cavalry. Our job was to set up perimeter defenses around all the small positions outside the main base. I got to work with fun stuff like claymore mines, foo gas, constatina wire and other nasty gadgets. I was there a year.

Maybe I grew up a little as I returned to school after that, first Valley College and then SMCC. I rented a house on the beach in Venice with Paul Molloy and Bob Elliott. We had a really crazy time (you can imagine), but one by one we got scooped up by the opposite sex and we were all whisked away to wedded bliss.

After marriage, I went to work for the Southland Corporation (7-11 stores). I was called a field rep but it wasn’t all that glamorous and I did learn a few things about convenience stores. After dealing with 27 different franchise owners and 26 of them making more money than I was, I decided that maybe I needed to have one of those stores myself. By this time I had bought a house in Woodland Hills ($26,000) and had two sons, (Stan jr and Clinton Michael). Jan, my wife was home maker.

The first 7-11 I owned was in Las Vegas. Jan and the boys stayed in Woodland Hills for the first year as she had second thoughts about living in Vegas. It turned out fine though as the store was a success and they moved to Vegas to be we with me. I got a good offer on the store the next year and moved back to the valley and got a store in Canoga Park. It also did well but the greedy side of me did not want to share half the gross with Mr. 7-11 so I took out a lease in a new shopping center in Arleta, and, building from scratch, created the Dilly-Deli and Grocery Company. After a year I put together another unit in Van Nuys and added liquor to permit. They were 7-11’s with full service delis. Some day, over a glass of bourbon (or a bottle) I will tell you what happened to the Dilly Deli and Grocery Company. By the way the logo was designed by Patrick O’Toole (class of ’63). It was a cowboy frog.

INTERMISSION

After selling the DD & GC, Jan’s sister and husband had started a chain of gift stores in the San Francisco Bay area and they wanted us to come help them expand. We got up to seven stores in the Bay Area in such malls as Stanford, Oakridge, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, San Mateo and we were cooking. It was at this time that Genevieve and Kyle were born.

I was pretty much Mr. Mom. We tried expanding into the Stockton and Sacramento areas but made the mistake of overextending and this was at the time of a 23% prime rate. It was the saddest time of my life and I only had myself to blame, but life goes on. I lived with a friend for a year who helped me pick up the pieces after the divorce. He was a general contractor and he taught me the trade. My self esteem was pretty shot. I moved back to L.A. where I had a support system and got a job rehabbing HUD houses for the government. It was just me. After a while I got an employee, then ten, and then fifty. I got up to 125 men. We boarded up houses, removed debris and corrected defective paint. We did all of the graffiti for HUD in L.A. We had a paint store in Compton and did work in Watts, Willowbrook, North Long Beach and South Central L.A. (all the good areas). I started in ’86 and lasted until ’99.

Then HUD changed the way they did business and I had not business. I tried everything t keep my guys busy, and that I did, but lost my shirt in the process.

I forgot to mention that after I returned to L.A., I met and married the love of my life, Nancy. We had a daughter, Julie in February, 1991.

We got married in our front yard, and had 100 people, and only 1 bathroom. Great time! We have lived in Redondo Beach, three houses in San Pedro, and one in Rancho Palos Verdes. We just bought a great house in Crestline and we have another in Bajamar, Mexico on a golf course (27 holes) only three hours drive from L.A. Maybe you’ll want to come visit us some day. Are you the mountain type?

Since 2000, I have been just doing kitchen and bath remodels and nickel and dime work for Fannie and Freddy.

Retiring and resting a little sounds real good now. By the way, I have 7 grand kids, with four out of five having graduated from college and the fifth working on it!

We are really looking forward to seeing you all at the reunion, or if you can’t make it, Nan and I will always have our doors open to you. Also, we plan on traveling and driving a lot, so if you are up for company, let us know!

(This epic is only about 1/100 of Stan Logsdon’s life story and way
too big for Hollywood )