After Some Confusion, Wilson Aides Discover That Governor Told Truth : Politics: Officials had said that he used ‘composites’ of people in anecdotes during State of the State speech. But then they found that he was referring to real individuals.

After first appearing to confirm it, the Wilson Administration denied Friday that the governor fabricated the stories of three individuals he cited in his State of the State speech last week to illustrate suffering caused by the recession.

Spokesmen for Gov. Pete Wilson produced the names of two people whom the governor accurately described in his address and a third whose story Wilson appeared to have exaggerated for dramatic effect.

But the governor’s aides seemed to be at fault for the confusion when they told the San Jose Mercury News in a report published Friday that the characters--a businessman, a farm worker and a carpenter--were “composites” of people Wilson had met in his travels around the state.

In the Jan. 8 speech, Wilson said he had “watched the eyes of a gruff, gray-haired businessman grow wet as he spoke of having to lay off people who’d kept his small shop running for years.”

Wilson added: “I’ve seen worry in the face of a farm worker idled by a killer arctic freeze. . . . And I’ve seen the kindly face of a carpenter who, because he could find no work framing houses, now makes children’s toys for free.”

But when the Mercury News inquired about the identity of the carpenter, Wilson’s staff could not find him. Finally, nearly a week after the quest began, Franz Wisner, deputy press secretary, said no such person existed and also cast doubt on the other people Wilson described in the introduction to his address, which the governor wrote himself.

“There is no carpenter,” Wisner told the Mercury News. “That first part of the speech is a composite of the thousands of Californians who the governor has come in contact with.”

Press Secretary Bill Livingstone also acknowledged the composites and told The Times on Friday that the anecdotes Wilson used were “allegories” meant to be “symbolical representations” of Californians suffering from the downturn in the economy.

“You’re trying to symbolize through experiences he’s had the pain and suffering that Californians are experiencing,” Livingstone said.

The admission that the governor had used composites prompted criticism from some quarters and jokes at Wilson’s expense.

Senate Leader David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) said the incident would harm Wilson’s credibility and was an “indication of how far removed the governor is from the reality of the economic crisis in California.” Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) described Wilson’s speech as “lies and fabrications” and said the governor’s other “utterances and proposals will have to be checked out very carefully.”

A Sacramento radio disc jockey quipped that next would come the disclosure that a high school girl, whom Wilson introduced during his speech as a role model, had firebombed her school.

But by Friday afternoon, it became clear that part of the hubbub was caused by the staff’s inability to find the carpenter by the time the Mercury News went to press. There also was a misunderstanding over the word composite, by which Livingstone said he meant that the characters were accurate depictions of individuals who represented the experiences of hundreds or thousands of other people.

Livingstone on Friday produced all three people Wilson used in his speech. The only discrepancy concerned the carpenter.

Livingstone said Wilson was referring to Shad Murphy, a California Conservation Corps worker. Murphy does carpentry on a CCC construction crew and helped make toys for needy children in his spare time. Wilson presented the toys to some children at a ceremony in the governor’s office Dec. 20, which Murphy attended.

But in an interview Friday, Murphy said it was not accurate to portray him as a carpenter who makes children’s toys, as the governor phrased it, “because he could find no work framing houses.”

Murphy, 20, grew up in Yucca Valley and attended community college while working in his parents’ bar. He was briefly unemployed before joining the CCC a year ago. He is just now learning carpentry and never worked in private construction or sought employment “framing houses.”

But if the governor embellished Murphy’s story, the other two characters he mentioned were true to life.

The businessman is Wes Seastrom, chairman of Glendale-based Seastrom Manufacturing, which makes fasteners and other hardware used mainly by other manufacturers. Wilson visited Seastrom’s company Dec. 9 and the two were pictured the next day on the front page of The Times.

Seastrom said he told Wilson he had laid off 10 of 86 employees over the past year.

“I am in a plant where people have been laid off,” Seastrom said in an interview. “My eyes do get moist when I talk about it. I don’t like to lay people off. I have been in this business all my life and I don’t like to lay off people.”

The farm worker cited by the governor is Concepcion Meza, a Visalia man who worked 16 years in the San Joaquin Valley orange groves before going to work for a short time as a plumber, commuting as much as 160 miles a day. He quit the plumbing job, intending to return to work in the groves, but the December, 1990, freeze hit and there were no jobs.

The governor visited Meza and his family on March 26 and spoke to him through an interpreter. A Times reporter was present.

“I wish we could do this over again and make it not be a story,” Livingstone said of the confusion. “We’re not perfect. We try hard but we’re not perfect.”

Times staff writer Carl Ingram contributed to this story.