Thursday, September 16, 2021

Carl Herman Hittenberger - Surgical Store Boss Has Come Long Way - By ANITA DAY HUBBARD - The San Francisco Examiner, 04 Mar 1962

I follow East Bay Yesterday, and you should, too. A few days he posted this:

Since I like to research old-timey Oakland stuff, and I know how to dig through old newspapers and old maps, I figured I'd try to go from an image of a newspaper clipping to something readable, with context. Here it is. Thanks, Liam.

Carl Herman HittenbergerCarl Herman Hittenberger 04 Mar 1962, Sun The San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, California) Newspapers.com

Mature Living 

Surgical Store Boss Has Come Long Way

By ANITA DAY HUBBARD

Carl Herman Hittenberger keeps up his championship flycasting skill by consistent practice, grows magnificent camelias, fuchsias and tuberous begonias in his garden at 3630 Webster Street.

He puts in full time as active manager, always on the job, at his main surgical appliance store on Market St, and the five statewide branches that have grown from the first shop he and his bride set up at McAllister and Jones in 1912.

They'll be celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary this fall, along with their son Herman, now manager of the production departments and their daughter Martha, treasurer, and co-ordinator of the ladies departments, and three grandchildren.

Carl Hittenberger's 75 years rest as lightly on his erect, athlete's body as a dry fly on a trout stream.

He was born in Reno on Nov. 22, 1886. He was an infant when the family moved to a five acre farm in then remote East Oakland, to rear their six children. His father, skilled in his native Germany in making surgical appliances and braces, found a job in San Francisco.

H. H. Hittenberger 711 E. 36th st. near 13th ave.H. H. Hittenberger 711 E. 36th st. near 13th ave. 20 May 1901, Mon The San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, California) Newspapers.com

Bungalow - H. H. Hittenberger, OwnerBungalow - H. H. Hittenberger, Owner 26 Sep 1908, Sat Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) Newspapers.com

The farm was two miles across open fields to the commuter train at the foot of 13th Avenue [now Park Boulevard, north of East 38th street - MF] that connected the ferry boat to the city. The family collected all the broken crockery they could find to mark the father's walk in the pitch dark mornings and nights across the pastures and ditches. [This is what it looks like today. It appears the street was renumbered, perhaps when the highway was put in, because the house is now 1367 E. 36th Street. - MF]

The rough location of the farm, in an 1888 Map of the City of Oakland and Surroundings.

The same location in an 1899 Map of Oakland and vicinity, Showing Real Estate & Electric Railways

Carl and his siblings worked hard on the farm, where chickens, pigs and a few cows, together with orchard and vegetable garden, supplied food for the growing flock and enough extra to barter for things they needed from the general store.

The store wagon came every Saturday, and they traded eggs and butter for sugar and coffee and such, "even Steven."

About young Carl's only sport as a small boy was fishing for shiners in the Oakland estuary.

He remembers once he had a noble string of fish, hung in the water to keep them fresh, after a long day's angling.

A shark came along and gulped down the lot.

In later years when he read Hemingway's "Old Man and the Sea" he had a fellow feeling with the poor old fisherman, and his lost trophy.

He never lost his taste for fishing though. He maintains a rustic lodge on the Klamath River, is past president and the only sur

CARL HERMAN HITTENBERGER
... an active manager

viving charter member of the Golden Gate Angling and Casting Club, and two years champion distance plug caster.


H. H. HITTENBERGERH. H. HITTENBERGER 29 Apr 1902, Tue Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) Newspapers.com

Carl's father opened a business of surgical appliances and braces in Oakland in 1902. The children all helped in the store.

When Carl was 13, and was graduated from the Swett grammar school, he enrolled at night school, and began working full time for his dad. After four years, at 17, he went to in New York to work in a Brooklyn surgical appliance factory. In 1907 he went to Germany to study and work in various orthopedic clinics, then back to Oakland for three years, thence to New York where he served an apprenticeship in the manufacture and fitting of prosthesis for the George R. Fuller Co., managed their branch in Philadelphia until he returned to Oakland, and married Marie Drewes, the an German girl he had met on his first trip back from Germany in 1907. That was Nov. 5, 1912

MRS. C. H. HITTENBERGER, WHOSE MARRIAGE TOOK PLACE ON TUESDAY NIGHT IN THIS CITY.MRS. C. H. HITTENBERGER, WHOSE MARRIAGE TOOK PLACE ON TUESDAY NIGHT IN THIS CITY. 07 Nov 1912, Thu Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) Newspapers.com

A month later young Mr. and Mrs. Carl Hittenberger, established the "C. H. Hittenberger Company" in San Francisco.

They worked together for five years. Mrs. Hittenberger often carried on alone while her husband went by hired horse and buggy to "call on the trade" in neighboring counties.

Carl Hittenberger has a dedicated approach to his work. A large proportion of the employes in all the branches are amputees, or wear appliances of one sort or another.


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