Los Angeles County
Biographies
MONTIVEL
A. BURKE
A
former mayor of Alhambra, Montivel A. Burke, member of the Assembly, 53rd
District, California Legislature, is presently the Republican dean of the State
Assembly in point of seniority and service, having been elected to the
California Legislature nine successive times from 1944 to the present. A resident of Alhambra from 1919 to 1957, Mr.
Burke became a member of the Alhambra City Commission in 1942; the next year
became vice-mayor, and in 1944 was elected mayor by his fellow
commissioners. While serving as mayor in
1944 Mr. Burke was elected a member of the Assembly, the only Republican on the
ballot in this district to achieve election in that year of President
Roosevelt’s fourth term Democratic sweep.
At the time of his election to the State Legislature Mr. Burke announced
his intention to resign as mayor of Alhambra, but on the circulation of a
petition by businessmen of the city that he continue as mayor, Mr. Burke did so
for a short period of time, resulting in his having the unique distinction in
1945 of simultaneously serving as Assemblyman in the California Legislature,
Mayor of the City of Alhambra, and president of the Alhambra Community Chest.
The
son of a Presbyterian minister, Julius B. Burke, and Chloe Catherine (Pfost) Burke, and one of a family of seventeen children,
nine boys and eight girls, Montivel A. Burke was born near Charleston, West
Virginia. The Burke family later settled
in Nebraska and Wyoming; a brother-in-law, Earl Hasselbalch,
served as a member of the Nebraska Legislature, and a brother, George Burke,
became president of the Wyoming Senate and later Acting Governor of Wyoming.
Montivel
A. Burke came further west to California while still a boy and worked his way
through Tulare High School where he managed the football and baseball teams,
edited the yearbook, and maintained a straight “A” grade average. After his graduation from high school he
attended and graduated from Stockton Business College.
Prior
to coming to Alhambra in 1919, Mr. Burke was active in the oil business for
twelve years in Coalinga, California, and in various developments in
Wyoming. In Alhambra Mr. Burke was
active over the years in real estate, building contracting, and industrial
banking. He designed, built, and co-owns
with his son and daughter, the Burke Apartments, comprising seventy-two
furnished units located on North First Street in Alhambra, as well as owning
other holdings in that city, Pasadena, and Long Beach. In 1924 Mr. Burke was one of the founders of the People’s
Finance and Thrift Company of Alhambra, serving as president of that
corporation at the time of the sale of his interest therein in 1961.
Among
Mr. Burke’s numerous civic accomplishments in Alhambra were his appointment to
the Board of Education in 1933 and his appointment in 1941 to the Board of
Civil Service Trustees. As a member of
the Alhambra City Commission he variously served as liaison member of the City
Planning Commission, as a member of the Alhambra Emergency Hospital Board, the
Los Angeles County Sanitation District Board, and director of the League of
California Cities.
As
Assemblyman, Mr. Burke has variously served as chairman of the California
Commission on Interstate Cooperation and of the Assembly Committees on Crime
and Correction, Legislative Procedure and Engrossment and Enrollment. He has served as vice-chairman of the Assembly
Committees on Municipal and County Government and Public Utilities and
Corporations, and is a member of the Los Angeles County and State Republican
Central Committees.
Mr.
Burke’s civic and fraternal organization identities include being a successive
director, vice-president and two-term president of the Community Chest, an
honorary life membership in the Alhambra Chamber of Commerce, the receipt of
the Honor Roll Award from the Junior Chamber of Commerce in 1949, and a life
membership in the Alhambra Community Hospital.
He was the recipient, in 1945, of the Civitan Club’s Citizen of the
Month award. Past Grand of Alhambra
Lodge Number 217, I. O. O. F. in 1925, Mr. Burke is also a member of Granada
Masonic Lodge Number 608; Royal Arch Chapter, Council, Commandery, Knights
Templar; Al Malaikah Shrine and the San Gabriel Valley Shrine Club; and
Alhambra Rotary Club. He was also a
member, charter director, and treasurer, in 1920, of the Alhambra District
Realty Board.
Mr. Burke was married to the former Nellie
Mae Christian who passed away in 1957.
She was the daughter of Andrew Christian and sister of James Christian,
both members of the Wyoming Legislature.
In 1945 Mrs. Burke christened the S.S.
Alhambra Victory at the yards of the California Shipbuilding Corporation in
Wilmington. The citizens of the City of
Alhambra by popular subscription raised
over $1,000.00 for the purchase of books for the ship’s library and Mrs.
Burke’s portrait adorns the wall of that library. Mrs. Burke bore her husband a son and a
daughter: Talmage Vincent, a practicing
attorney and former Alhambra City Prosecutor, is presently serving his third
term as Mayor of Alhambra, is married and the father of a daughter, Karen Mae,
and a son, Montivel A., II; Norma Jean (Burke) Evans is the wife of Captain
Paul J. Evans of the United States Army Medical Corps and the mother of two
children, Paula Jean and Brent Burke Evans.
Montivel A. Burke, who since 1957
has been a San Marino resident, is an avid baseball fan and a stockholder and
supporter of the Sacramento Solons baseball team.
Transcribed
by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Historical Volume & Reference
Works Including Alhambra, Monterey Park, Rosemead, San Gabriel & Temple
City, by Robert P. Studer, Pages 361-363,
Historical Publ., Los Angeles, California.
1962.
© 2013 V.
Gerald Iaquinta.
GOLDEN NUGGET'S LOS ANGELES
BIOGRAPHIES