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Coronado Property and Neighborhoods Rich In History 

The Coronado area is full of mystery and history. The Naval base that graces the nearby Marina District holds the key to the eclectic past that has made San Diego County a modern day paradise, full of beautiful Coronado homes. This is a story of a city losing her virginity and one of her sons facing mortality. It starts and ends in the austere cab of a pickup truck on the Semper Fi Highway, coursing through the veins of a downtown magazine building and 350 years of living memory in between.

It's one saga in a larger history with no beginning and no end; one rife with fault lines, long plateaus and sudden shifts. One of those occurred in San Francisco in 1906, when a teenage girl emerged from the rubble of that city's worst earthquake with her health, natural beauty and a fiery constitution.

Within two years she'd found and decided to marry a handsome and well-off lumberjack, a man 30 years her senior.

The man took her to Oregon, where he was a cruiser-one of the men paid to scout the forests for prime logging areas. The girl with the steely determination and fierce temper woke up one morning to find herself in a small town, in an isolated house, with two children and a man who was far less prosperous than she'd been given to believe.

There were arguments, and the girl-living emblem of the type who should not be scorned-made an impulsive decision. She took her kids and her great beauty and left for the sunnier climes of San Diego. In that small but thriving Navy town she caught the attention of one of the area's more soughtafter bachelors-an admiral named Brotherton. She moved into the society pages as her children began to lay down roots.

The son, a tall drink of water named William, borrowed his mother's good looks and developed a sharp mind. The tail end of the Roaring '20s found him at San Diego College on Normal Street and Park Boulevard- current administrative home of San Diego City Schools. In 1930, the college moved to its present home, east of the city, and William enjoyed a newfound popularity.

On the Road "I had a Chrysler 75 Roadster," the 94-year-old Brotherton exclaims in a raspy voice, one that carries a tone claiming the implications are obvious. "All leather upholstery, canvas top and fold-down windshield-it was a real racy car. The college was way out on El Cajon Boulevard, off a dirt road, and most people had to walk, so it got to be a lot of them waited for me every day to come by."

That was 75 years ago. On this day, in the back of the pickup, a folded wheelchair lays obediently behind a walking device. In the cab, Brotherton, dressed stylishly in a gray suit, wanders through a lifetime of memories. Outside, a stream of pre-rush hour traffic pours by.

"Now, what are we going to talk about?" he queries the driver, tilting his head for optimal hearing. "We have you, Lionel Van Deerlin, Lucy Killea and George Walker Smith," the driver responds.

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