Francis Bunnett; Ex-South Gate Mayor

Francis W. “Jack” Bunnett, former mayor and city councilman in South Gate and the first judge of South Gate Municipal Court, has died. He was 97.

Bunnett, who retired from the bench in 1967, died Sept. 28 in Whittier.

As mayor, Bunnett was intrigued with the history of the city and once bet City Clerk Herbert C. Peiffer an ice cream soda that the results of a Works Progress Administration research project about the area’s early years could never be found.

When Peiffer did locate the manuscript at a UCLA library 10 years later, Bunnett gladly paid off. Although South Gate was founded in 1923, the federal research project traced its history to the days of the dons when the area was a part of Rancho San Antonio.

Bunnett, a conservative, no-nonsense judge, was one of the first to sentence 18- to 21-year-old youths as adults before California lowered the age from 21 to 18.

Born and reared in Atlantic, Iowa, Bunnett grew up with small jobs such as sweeping out a barber shop and ushering at the opera house.

He was trained as an Army pilot during World War I but spent most of the war as an experimental subject for the diphtheria vaccine.

Studying law while working in a Los Angeles service station, Bunnett passed the bar in 1930 after a single semester in law school. He was in private practice briefly, then worked for several years for U.S. Fidelity & Guaranty.

Bunnett was on the South Gate council from 1940 to 1950 and was mayor from 1942 to 1946. After two years as justice of the peace, he was elected in 1952 as the first judge of the newly created South Gate Municipal Court.

He is survived by three sons, retired Municipal Judge John W. Bunnett, attorney Robert P. Bunnett and businessman William Bunnett; 10 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.