Page 15 - CEEM Shopping Mag August 2020

Remembering Don Griggs

Hardy Brown, Sr., Contributor

When Don Griggs was installed as president of Westside Action Group and re-elected president in 1980,

over 400 people came out to witness his installation, he began his speech with this comment,
“During these times of economic stress, political uncertainty, high unemployment and mounting
world tension, we nd ourselves in the midst of the biggest ght of our lives, the ght for survival.
As we Blacks struggle to survive, we need to take a cold hard look at our political and economic
condition.”

This statement is why he continued to ght the good ght up until his death forty years later on Friday
night July 17, 2020.

We became friends back in 1965 while working at Edison. I did not know that we were neighbors living
in California Gardens on the Westside of San Bernardino. Oliver Roemer, Eastern Division Manager of
Edison had asked me to be a scoutmaster of a defunct Boy Scout Troop at Muscott Elementary School.

I soon learned I needed help, so I recruited a few of my new-found friends at Edison to be Neighborhood
Commissioners. They included Don Griggs, Al Yzaguirre, Pete Baeza, Frank Palomino, Ruben Amador and
Morris Antwine, a California Highway Patrol O cer—all of us were from the Westside.

I did not know it at the time, but these guys gave me credit for opening the door for them being hired
at Edison. Don shared this with me later in our friendship.

With Don’s support we advocated and were successful at getting the Arrowhead Council of Boy Scouts
to hire Blacks and Latinos on sta . We used the leverage of Edison being a major contributor to the
United Way who funded the scouting program. As a result, Richard Mosley was hired as the rst African
American Boy Scout Executive on sta , followed by William Parker. Remembering Don Griggs | Page 1 of 3