Los Angeles County
Biographies
JEROME
(JERRY) TORRES
El
Poche means native Californian of Mexican descent, a title proudly claimed by
Jerry Torres, but more remarkably, his earliest known ancestor, Manuel Antonio
Perez, who lived in San Gabriel from 1794 to 1853, was a mission neophyte whose
people before him had welcomed the Spaniards in 1769 to the valley which was to
be named San Gabriel. The story of
Manuel Antonio Perez and his descendants is to be found in the mission records
which make it clear that his parents Quaga and Tapis of the Tuatibit Rancheria
brought him to Mission San Gabriel Archangel to be baptized on August 19, 1798,
when he was a boy of four or five.
Manuel Antonio grew to manhood at the mission, won the respect of the
Franciscans, took the name of Perez, and in 1825 married Dona Florentina Alvitre y Hernandez of
the pioneer Alvitre family and in 1845 after the
secularization of the missions, was granted the Potrero
Grande Rancho, almost a square league of land by Pio
Pico, then Governor of California. One
of the daughters of Don Manuel Antonio Perez and Dona Florentina
Alvitre de Perez, was Jerry
Torres’ maternal great-grandmother, Maria Antonio Fidela
Perez, born in 1837 and married in 1853 to Don Jose Montoya of Las Cruces, New
Mexico. Mr. Torres’ paternal grandfather
was Don Antonio Torres who was born in the Mexican state of Zacatecas in 1844,
of a distinguished
family, and
settled in San Gabriel in the early 1880’s.
From this rich background was to come, in 1937, the famous El Poche
Café, at the suggestion twenty years earlier, of John Steven McGroarty, poet
laureate of California and author of the “Mission Play,” who insisted on food
as prepared by Rosa Torres at home.
A
native of San Gabriel born in 1913, Jerry Torres is the only son of Victor Paul
Torres, born in San Gabriel in 1890, who was a barber there for thirty-five
years and whose barbershop provided the original site of El Poche Café; he
retired in 1959. It was the cooking of
Jerry Torres’ mother, Rose (Jacomini) Torres, also a
“Gabrielina”, born in 1892, which provided the
inspiration for El Poche; she is still very active in the business. A graduate of Alhambra High School in 1931,
Mr. Torres started working as a photographer and reporter on the Alhambra Post
Advocate when he was a sophomore in high school, waiting on tables at night
after El Poche was opened in 1937.
After
twelve years with the Post Advocate, Mr. Torres entered the United States Army
Air Corps during World War II, serving for five years, both on air missions to
Central and South America and as public relations officer with the 6th
Air Force, stationed in Panama and attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel.
He
is a life member of Reyner Aguirre American Legion
Post Number 740 in San Gabriel and is on the board of directors of the San
Gabriel Chamber of Commerce. He attends
Holy Angels Catholic Church in Arcadia.
In
San Jose, Costa Rica, Central America, in 1945 Jerome Torres met his
wife-to-be, Senorita Teresita Castro, who has borne
her husband four children: Sandra Rose,
Carmen Maria, Anna Victoria, and Daniel Jose.
The three elder children attend Holy Angels School.
Now
in its twenty-fifth year, El Poche Café at 233 West Mission Drive, with its
roof of mission tile, some hand-made by the San Gabriel Indians, has progressed
over the years from its original seating capacity of thirty-five in the old
barbershop and vacant grocery store to its present
capacity of four hundred twenty-five.
The expanded facilities cover more than one half acre of added ground
and include a galleria tower moved in 1956 from a famous San Marino home, a
cantilevered circular stair with a hand-wrought iron railing from Spain, and a
new stainless steel kitchen covering almost three thousand square feet, all
completed at the cost of a quarter of a million dollars, making El Poche one of
California’s largest and most complete Mexican cafes.
Transcribed
by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Historical Volume & Reference
Works Including Alhambra, Monterey Park, Rosemead, San Gabriel & Temple
City, by Robert P. Studer, Pages 435-436,
Historical Publ., Los Angeles, California.
1962.
© 2012 V.
Gerald Iaquinta.
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