Charles King Van Riper

Charles King Van Riper (September 8, 1891 – April 16, 1964),[1] also known as C. K. Van Riper and Charlie to his friends,[2] was an American newspaperman, writer, and playwright, and one of the founders of the nation's first amateur softball League in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. He went on to build a successful scale-model ship on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts.[3]

Charles K. Van Riper
Charles Van Riper in 1924
Born
Charles King Van Riper

September 8, 1891
Paterson, New Jersey, US
DiedApril 16, 1964(1964-04-16) (aged 72)
Tisbury, Massachusetts, US
OccupationWriter
Spouses
Helen Dorothy Ordway
​
​
(m. 1917; div. 1944)​
    Celeste Corcoran
    ​
    (m. 1945)​

    Early life

    Van Riper's father was Anthony B. Van Riper (1862-1917) of Paterson, New Jersey. He founded the silk manufacturer firm of Frost & Van Riper with his partner Harry B. Frost, for twenty-five years before his death.[4]

    Van Riper was a graduate of Rutgers College, class of 1913. Van Riper did newspaper work for New York and New Jersey newspapers until World War I, when he entered the United States Army Air Service.[5] On June 4, 1917, Van Riper married Helen Dorothy Ordway (1893-1971) in New York City, New York.[6] They had one child during their marriage, Anthony King Van Riper.[7][1]

    Professional background
    Photograph of Carmel Point including the houses of Fletcher Dutton, Robinson Jeffers, Charles Van Riper, George W. Reamer, and Florence E. Wells, c. 1925.

    After the World War I Van Riper came to Carmel-by-the-Se a to work freelance for newspapers, magazines, television and writing plays.[5]

    Van Riper Property
    Charles King Van Riper House

    In 1920, Van Riper built one of the earliest houses on Carmel Point. It is located at 26262 Isabella Avenue between San Antonio and Inspiration Avenues.[8] They were neighbors of Robinson Jeffers and his wife Una. The house is built with native stone and was a gathering place for their friends and neighbors.[9]

    The Van Riper house was purchased for $2.9 million. It was renamed "Grey Havens" for The Lord of the Rings. At the entrance to the property there is a metal gate flanked by two gargoyles sitting atop stone pillars.[10][11]

    In 1925, the only homes on Carmel Point were the homes of Col. Fletcher Dutton (1919), poet Robinson Jeffers and his wife Una (1919), Playwright Charles Van Ripers (1920, musician and attorney Edward G. Kuster (1920), George W. Reamer's house (1908), and Florence E. Wells's Driftwood Cottage (1908).[12][13]

    Abalone League
    Abalone League Team Captains in 1925 were (left to right) Lee Gottfried, Fred Godwin, Charlie Van Riper, Eddie Burns, Harrison Godwin, and Byington Ford.

    The Abalone League had its beginning on Carmel Point after World War I in 1921. Adjoining the Van Riper's stone house was a baseball field that was used by the Abalone League, which Van Riper helped organize. He and his wife played on the teams.[14]

    Tycoon of the Abalone League of baseball. Organizer of the Abalone Theatre occupying the Carmel Playhouse, once Carmel Arts and Crafts. As Capt. of his famous team he swung a number of mean balls himself, wields a pen at short stories and has tried the same hand at original tunes for the popular Carmel Follies yearly.

    — Carmel Pine Cone[15]

    Games were held in a rough diamond field next to the Charles Van Riper house. Charles and Helen Van Riper and his friends, aviator Thorne Taylor and writer Talbert Josselyn (brother of photographer Lewis Josselyn) founded the first softball league in the Western United States, dubbed the Abalone League. The league got its name from the Abalone Cove, which was adjacent to the playing field. They played every evening in the summer months and on Sundays all year round. Six teams made up the league. Josselyn, Lee Gottfried, and Thorn Taylor were some of the first players. Charles Van Riper was the first "commissioner" and was responsible to begin each season. Journalist Robert Welles Ritchie served as the league's first umpire. They played two games on Sunday and had three playing fields, at Carmel Point, Carmel Woods, and the Hatton Fields.[16][17]

    Theater
    Van Riper in play Mr. Bunt '

    On May 26, 1919, Van Riper published The Distant Shore, a drama in 4 acts, a 97-page typewritten manuscript.[18]

    Van Riper was active in theatrical as well as civic activities. In 1924, Van Riper was played the part of Jim, the circus man, in Mr. Bunt, an original play by Ira Mallory Remsen, which won the $100.00 prize annually offered by the Forest Theater.[8][5]

    The first act is purely fantastical. In it Remsen introduces his idea of fairyland-a new and strange place with a delightful element of the amazing and the grotesque. Gyem, the woodsprite, who darted into the hearts of the audience at Remsen's production on Inchling two years ago, will again be seen in this play. Mr. Bunt, the title role, one of the tiny folk, will be played by Scott Douglas, a young actor. The fairies are now being trained by Miss Blanche Tolmie, of Carmel, assistant producer of the play. Miss Tolmie produced Remen's Inchling at the Forest Theater in the summer of 1920. The second act opens with a blare of trumpets, the noise and rush of the circus riders, the shrieks of the animals. This scene the producers will strive to make one of the big features of Mr. Blunt. There will be a regular circus band, bareback riders, clowns, not to mention all the freaks and sideshow artists. Here is the realistic element which runs throughout the play. In this strain Lu, the circus girl, is the leading part which will be played by Phyllis Blake, a young actress of San Francisco. The other two important grown-up roles are Jim the clown, which will be taken by Charles Van Riper; and Danny, by John Northern Hilliard.

    — Oakland Tribune[19]

    Civic life

    Van Riper was among the first to influence the thinking of the Carmel village. and was involved in village matters and was referred to as "solid as a rock."[16]

    In 1938, Van Riper was head of the committee to obtain signatures for a petition for the Sunset School District to secede from the Monterey Union High School District. The Sunset School District voted 724 in favor of, and 252 against, the passing of a $165,000 (equivalent to $3,430,284 in 2022) bond issue for a new Carmel high school.[16]

    Later life

    In 1933, after a polo injury in California, Van Riper and traveled to Massachusetts to spend time with relatives and to visit his brother, Donald Van Riper. Charles and his wife Helen fell in love with Martha's Vineyard.[3][8]

    That same year, Van Riper ended up opening a ship-model shop and showroom in Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, where he used the traditional Dutch spelling “Van Ryper” for the shop's name, Van Ryper of Vineyard Haven. He worked in a two-story wooden building on Beach Road. A small group of craftsmen were hired to build the model boats. The shop listed more than 250 different model ships in stock. In 1938, the shop received requests for ship-models from Moore-McCormack and the United States Maritime Commission, to help teach sailors and naval aviators how to recognize enemy warships by their silhouettes.[2][3]

    In 1960, Van Riper stopped production at the shop after having a stroke. He kept the showroom open for another two years. In 1982, the South Street Seaport Museum acquired a collection of 285 Van Ryper ship models and archival materials from Van Riper's son, Anthony K. Van Riper.[3]

    In October 1944, Van Riper divorced Ordway and married Celeste "Cece" Corcoran on October 5, 1945, in the Unitarian Church of All Souls in New York.[11][1]

    Death

    Van Riper died on April 16, 1964, in Tisbury, Massachusetts, at the age of 72.[1] His wife died on May 2, 1965, in a Boston, Massachusetts hospital, at the age of 71.[8]

    Legacy
    Abalone League Historic Plaque

    At the Van-Riper House in Carmel-by-the-Sea, there is a historic plaque about the Abalone League. The text of the plaque provides a history of the league. It says:

    This was the site of the Charles and Helen Van Riper house. In 1921, Charles and friends Thorne Taylor and Tal Josselyn founded the first softball league in the and Western United States, dubbed the Abalone League. Games were played on Carmel Point, directly below the Van-Riper house. In 1926. The Carmel Cymbal described the community obsession: There is, in this seaside town of Carmel, a baseball league the like of which does not exist in the rest of America. Six teams make it up, the indoor bat and ball are used, the players are a cross-section of present-day society – bankers, carpenters, artists, delivery boys, truck drivers, school teachers, housewives (for the women and girls play along with the men) running in ages from twelve to seventy years and with this so-called baseball played on a diminutive side-hill diamond among the pine trees overlooking the sea, with broomstick-like bat and grape-fruit like ball. There is seriousness, and at times a cave-man savagery, that causes the hair of those in control of the league to curl violently from the roots outward. One would think that the fate of the nation depended on the way in which the abalone league games are run and that the business of life consisted not in running grocery stores or selling real estate, but in winning one’s game on Sunday afternoon.

    — Charles and Helen Van Riper Plaque[20]

    See also

    References
    1. "Van Riper". The Boston Globe. Boston, Massachusetts. April 18, 1964. p. 2. Retrieved February 11, 2023.
    2. A. Bowdoin Van Riper (September 2017). "Toy Boat, Toy Boat, Toy Boat". Martha’s Vineyard. Dukes County, Massachusetts. Retrieved February 16, 2023.
    3. "Van Ryper Ship Models". South Street Seaport Museum. Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts. December 15, 2022. Retrieved February 16, 2023.
    4. "Anthony B. Van Riper". The Sun. New York City. October 31, 1917. p. 9. Retrieved October 3, 2022.
    5. "Author to Take Part In Play at Carmel". The San Francisco Examiner. San Francisco, California. June 29, 1924. p. 28. Retrieved October 2, 2022.
    6. New York, New York City Marriage Records, 1829-1938, York City, New York, June 4, 1917{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
    7. California Birth Index, 1905-1995, San Francisco, California, August 11, 1926{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
    8. "Helen van Riper". Carmel Pine Cone. Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. May 6, 1965. p. 15. Retrieved October 2, 2022.
    9. Hale, Sharron Lee (October 12, 2011). The Collected Letters of Robinson Jeffers, with Selected Letters of Una Jeffers. Stanford University Press. ISBN 9780804781725. Retrieved September 30, 2022.
    10. "Carmel-by-the-Sea: Carmel Point Walking Tour". Adventures of a Home Town Tourist. Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. May 1, 2020. p. 2. Retrieved February 11, 2023.
    11. Nancy Randolph (October 5, 1945). "Society War Worker Weds Boss". Daily News. New York, New York. p. 18. Retrieved February 11, 2023.
    12. Hudson, Monica (2006). Carmel-By-The-Sea. Carmel-by-the-Sea, California: Arcadia Publishing. pp. 73–74. ISBN 9780738531229. Retrieved July 18, 2022.
    13. Dramov, Alissandra; Momboisse, Lynn A. (2016). Historic Homes and Inns of Carmel-by-the-Sea. Carmel-by-the-Sea, California: Arcadia Publishing. p. 32. ISBN 9781467115971. Retrieved June 25, 2022.
    14. Frost, John W. (1987). Monterey Peninsula's Sporting Heritage. Arcadia Publishing. p. 15. ISBN 9780738555898. Retrieved July 16, 2022.
    15. "Who's Who-and Here". Carmel Pine Cone. Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. December 14, 1928. pp. 9–15. Retrieved October 17, 2022.
    16. Hale, Sharron Lee (1980). A tribute to yesterday: The history of Carmel, Carmel Valley, Big Sur, Point Lobos, Carmelite Monastery, and Los Burros. Santa Cruz, California: Valley Publishers. pp. 27, 57–58. ISBN 9780913548738. Retrieved September 9, 2022.
    17. Irene Gaasch (April 15, 1976). "Abalone League, a glorious league in Carmel's golden age". Carmel Pine Cone. Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. pp. 1, 18. Retrieved July 16, 2022.
    18. "Catalog of Copyright Entries. Part 1. [B] Group 2. Pamphlets, Etc. New Series". Library of Congress. Copyright Office. 1919. p. 593. Retrieved September 3, 2022.
    19. "Forest Theater To Show Mr. Bunt". Oakland Tribune. Oakland, California. June 17, 1924. p. 22. Retrieved September 9, 2022.
    20. "Van Riper Property / Abalone League Historic Plaque". voicemap.me. Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. Retrieved October 3, 2022.
    Wikimedia Commons has media related to Charles King Van Riper.
    This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.