Kern County lost several local history makers in 2007.

Some left their mark on the county’s face and culture.

Some forged the way for underrepresented populations.

And some were just plain interesting.


Larry Kleier

Larry Kleier, the former Kern County Sheriff responsible for building Lerdo Jail, died
Jan. 5. He was 72.

Kleier, sheriff from 1983 to 1987, joined the sheriff’s department as a deputy in 1958.

He was sheriff during the probe into a satanic molestation ring during the 1980s.

The original allegations spoke of perhaps 22 dead infants, 85 adult suspects and many children forced to drink and eat human blood and flesh, stab babies and perform sex acts.

Most convictions in the cases fell apart after a flood of victims recanted. The reasons included flawed interview techniques, legal technicalities and prosecutorial misconduct.

Kleier strongly defended children who made the allegations. In a 2005 interview with The Californian, Kleier said he still believed the ritual murders occurred in Kern County.

Former Sheriff Carl Sparks, a lieutenant during the Kleier years, said in law enforcement circles, strong-willed Kleier is considered the best sheriff Kern has ever seen.

“It was his way or no way,” Sparks said. “As long as you understood that, he was an awesome sheriff.”

While sheriff, Kleier was most proud of building a new 600-bed jail at Lerdo for $22 million, a savings from the $90 million a downtown jail would have cost.


Tzu Chun Wang

Tzu Chun Wang, or “Papa Sun” as he was known to his customers, built up the Great Castle restaurant from a fledgling Chinese restaurant on Union Avenue.

Wang, the restaurant’s founder, died Jan. 14 of heart failure. He was 84.

He was born in 1922 in Tsingtao, China, home to the famous beer of the same name, and served in the Chinese army during the nation’s civil war in the late 1940s.

He owned a restaurant in Taiwan before coming to California in 1972, seeking a better life.

Wang opened Great Castle in 1979 and expanded the restaurant in 1984.

He visited the restaurant daily even after retiring in July 2005.

The restaurant’s potstickers and seafood dishes, such as walnut shrimp, were his favorites.


Jeanne Foth

Sun. Fun. Stay. Play.

Jeanne Foth, famous for creating the old Bakersfield slogan that once appeared on the
now-defunct billboard on Highway 99, died Jan. 22 of natural causes at the age of 81.

Once known as “Mrs. Bakersfield” for her community involvement, Foth was the central committee chairwoman for the California Republican party in the 1960s. She worked on
Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign and was invited to his 1969 inaugural ball, said
her daughter, Trish Greaser.

Foth also served as president of the Downtown Business Association.


Anita Bogan

Anita Bogan, a dedicated community member who started a business in her 70s and challenged county supervisors to golf in her 90s, died March 10 at the age of 106.

She pushed for the creation of a senior housing complex called Desert Jade Villas in California City, which lacked such housing in the early 1990s, and moved in after it was built.

Penelope Walters Swenson, an associate professor at Cal State Bakersfield’s School of Education, called Bogan “an original” in an e-mail to The Californian.

“Anita Bogan was the heart and soul of so much that was good in California City,” said
Walters Swenson.

Supervisor Don Maben met Bogan through the California City Economic Development Corporation, of which they were both members.

“People say you’re too old to do this or too old to do that, and I think of Anita and I say, you’re not too old,’” he said.

Before moving to California City, Bogan was a florist in Los Angeles, counting Nat King Cole, Josephine Baker, Lena Horne and Johnny Mathis as customers.



Bob Ernst

For more than three decades Bob Ernst was Bakersfield’s Shark Tooth Hill guy — a self-taught paleontologist who owned 410 acres of California’s best prehistoric real estate.

Ernst died April 11 at the age of 70.

Much of his collection, including the full skeleton of a sea lion ancestor, is housed in the
Buena Vista Museum of Natural History in downtown Bakersfield.

“What can I say, Bob was bigger than life,” said museum executive director Koral Hancharick. “To the paleontological world he has an unmatched legacy he’s leaving behind.”


Lora Sue Miller

Lora Sue Miller, wife of the late city agitator Milton “Spartacus” Miller, died May 18 at the age of 66.

Surrounded by family at the home of her sister, Kaye Coletti, “Sue” as she was known to her family, said before her death, “All right, I’m tired now. I’m going to close my eyes and take a nap with Milt.”

Her husband lost his battle to cancer about eight years before her death, but his more famous battle was with City Hall and its insistence that he bring the 200-room Padre
Hotel to safety codes.

That contentious war of words in the 1960s led to him placing the sign, “Alamo
Tombstone” atop the eight-story downtown structure alongside a black and white missile he said was aimed at the entrenched bureaucrats.

After his death, his wife settled a probate dispute over the hotel’s ownership. She won the right to sell it for $1 million in 2002, about $400,000 more than her husband paid for
it in 1954.

To some degree, the building was tied to her courtship with “Spartacus” Miller.

“Their first date was to Costco to buy things for the hotel,” said sister Paula Bartlett.
“Their second date was to Smart and Final for the same reason.”


Mary Sue Ming

Mary Sue Ming was proud of her Chinese heritage, her American heritage and, most of all, her Bakersfield heritage.

Her father came from China in the mid-1800s and worked for the city’s namesake, Col. Thomas Baker. And Ming Avenue was named after her husband’s family, also early Chinese pioneers in Bakersfield.

She was a wife, mother and amateur historian, and for most of her life, she worked to build bridges between the local Chinese and white communities.
Ming died May 31 at the age of 93.

“She was probably the most active person in preserving the Chinese history here in Bakersfield,” said Dan Kimm, a longtime family friend. “She was just a good Chinese ambassador.”


Johnny Barnett Sr.

A man who gave many of the Bakersfield Sound’s greatest musicians their starts, Johnny Barnett Sr. died June 4 at the age of 89.

Barnett fronted the house band at the legendary Lucky Spot Nightclub on Edison Highway from 1950 to 1963.

The Lucky Spot, with other clubs, was where the Bakersfield Sound was born and took its first steps.

Barnett hired a then unknown singer named Merle Haggard in 1963.

Son Jerry Barnett said his father recognized Haggard’s talent early on. His father snuck Haggard onstage to sing before the teenager was legally allowed to set foot in nightclubs.

Among Jerry Barnett’s earliest memories were those of when he was about 9 years old. Every Sunday, nearly every country musician in town, including a young Buck Owens, would come to the Barnett house and play jam sessions on the porch.


John Zaninovich

Family and former competitors remember John Zaninovich as a robust, forward-thinking man whose strong work ethic and ideas about growing grapes made him an influential figure in Central Valley vineyards.

After working more than a half century in the agricultural industry in which he gained respect for the techniques he pioneered to improve quality and size of table grapes, “Big John” Zaninovich died Aug. 4 at the age of 84.

Big John was a member of the Delano Elks Lodge for 55 years. He also served on two Kern County grand juries.

“He did things that two men could not do,” said his son, Nick Zaninovich, 55, a grape-growing consultant.


Livio Palla

Livio Palla started with 40 cows in 1946 and grew his business into the large-scale dairy operation south of Bakersfield called Palla Rosa Farms.

For that, he became one of the most respected members of the local agriculture community, those who knew him said.

The longtime Bakersfield dairyman died Aug. 5 at the age of 86.

In 1966, he was named the Kiwanis Farmer of the Year, and in 2000, he earned the honor of Kern County Agriculturist of the Year. He also helped start the Kern County Fair’s springer heifer show and auction in 1960.

“Livio was kind of considered the godfather here in Bakersfield in the ag industry,” said Maynard Troost, who now owns the dairy next door to Palla’s.


Ruby Johnson Jenkins

Her church was formed of forest glens and mountaintops, and she spent the past quarter century writing about its beauty, mapping its mysteries, and sharing its saving grace with the communion of her followers.

Ruby Johnson Jenkins, the author of nationally acclaimed hiking books and a dedicated evangelist to nature’s cathedral, died Oct. 28 at her home in Kernville at the age of 82.

After her son, J.C. “Jim” Jenkins, an avid hiker and author, died in 1979 after being struck by a car, the mother was devastated.

But then the publisher and owner of Wilderness Press came calling, asking her to continue her son’s legacy by finishing and updating his books.

She hiked all the trails in the southern Sierra, the same her son once traversed.

In researching the books, “Exploring the Southern Sierra: West Side,” and its companion volume, which covers the “East Side,” the heroine of hikers walked nearly 6,000 miles in her effort to map the footpaths of this vast landscape.

She founded the Kern River Valley Hiking Club, an organization that has provided upwards of 1,000 people the opportunity to hike an extraordinary variety of mountain paths in Kern County’s backyard.

Compiled from Californian stories by staff writer Emily Hagedorn.