ON THE WATERFRONT : Episcopal Priest Lauded for Service at Seaman’s Institute

As a boy in the 1920s, he used to work along the fog-shrouded San Pedro docks, delivering newspapers at 4 in the morning. He rode his bicycle among the rowdy sailors on Beacon Street, “the toughest street in the world” at the time, according to Ripley’s “Believe It Or Not.”

Now 68, the Rev. Arthur R. Bartlett has spent his entire life near those docks, serving stints as both a longshoreman and an Episcopal priest.

On Friday night, the Seamen’s Church Institute is honoring him with a dinner for more than 30 years of service. He retired last month as executive director of the institute, which provides a variety of services for sailors.

“He’s always there when you need him,” said Ted Kedzierski, president of the Maritime Trades Department, a confederation of labor unions.

Maritime Appearance

With a tanned, weathered face, partly covered by a full salt-and-pepper beard, Bartlett looks like someone who has spent a life at sea. In an interview, though, he said he never really had an urge to carry on his family’s seafaring tradition.

Still, the sea was never far away. He grew up near the San Pedro docks, where ships constantly sailed in and out. He worked as an inspector at a fish cannery, as an engineer in the former Bethlehem shipyard and as an inspector for the Southern Counties Gas Co. During these years he met and married Frances Anderson; they had three sons.

Bartlett was drawn to the Seamen’s Church Institute in 1955 by his aunt and uncle, who helped out there. The institute, founded in 1881, primarily assisted sailors who needed housing while in port. But as technology improved, ships docked for less time and the institute’s emphasis turned to counseling, guidance and religious services. Bartlett served as a volunteer, and his concern for the sailors grew.

“I began to have a compassion for people and their needs,” he said. In 1958, the Episcopal bishop of Los Angeles asked him to become program director of the institute, and Bartlett and his wife pondered whether they could live on half of what he was making with the gas company. They decided that they could.

From Helper to Priest

Then Bartlett decided to take another step. He entered a seminary and, at the age of 45 in March, 1965, became a priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.

One of Bartlett’s proudest accomplishments, he said, is founding Beacon House in 1972, the only recovery facility for male alcoholics in San Pedro. It originally served only sailors, but has since expanded to help the entire community.

To make that happen, Bartlett recalled, he managed to persuade some friends to let him use a run-down, nine-bedroom house they owned that had become “a drinking hangout for transient people on the waterfront.” The first thing he had to do was clean up the place.

“(We took) eighteen 32-gallon barrels of bottles out of there. I couldn’t believe how many there were. . . . Nobody ever threw them out, they just stacked them up in corners in closets and the bedrooms.”

In 1967, Bartlett began a seafarers memorial service, an annual event that is still held.

“I began that with a very simple service at the beach with a couple of old seaman who wanted to remember their buddies that they’d sailed with (and) who had died. We called it a ‘hat’s off.’ Two old seaman took their hats off and threw them into the water.”

Own Holiday

The ceremony now coincides with National Maritime Day on May 22, and this year it will be held in John S. Gibson Jr. Park. The park is the future site of the American Merchant Marine Veterans Memorial, a 17 1/2-foot bronze statue that Bartlett helped to attract to San Pedro.

Among those at the dinner will be Los Angeles Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, who said she got to know him when he was appointed to the Harbor Commission in 1981. “What I appreciate about him,” she said, “is how capable he is (and) his sense of humor.”

Retirement doesn’t mean inactivity for Bartlett. He is still involved with the Maritime Trades Department and as chaplain for the Cabrillo Beach Yacht Club and the China Coasters, a group of retired veterans.

But he is also trying something new. He has leased a 20-by-40-foot plot from the city so he can do a little gardening.

“I’m going to dig the earth and plant seeds in a different way,” the cleric said. “I’ve been a seed planter as a priest and now I’m going to be a seed planter of seeds and watch them grow.”