Massena ‘Andy’ Gump; King of Portable Toilet Industry

Massena “Andy” Gump, whose name became the generic term for portable privies after he emblazoned it on the thousands of plastic outhouses he built and delivered throughout Southern California, has died, his family said Wednesday. He was 88.

Gump, of Mission Hills, succumbed to heart failure Monday, after battling a variety of ailments for the past two months, said Barry M. Gump, his son and chief executive officer of Andy Gump Inc., the family-run company based in Canyon Country.

“We feel blessed to have had him here for 88 and a half years,” Barry Gump said Wednesday. “We had a wonderful time together.”

Massena Gump, the eldest of two children, was born in Claremore, Okla., in 1910, but spent most of his early life in Colorado after his parents moved there to open a gas station and cafe. It was there that Gump met and married his high school sweetheart, Irma Dunlap.

In 1936, Dust Bowl poverty drove the couple west. They settled in Pacoima, where the onetime teacher worked as a mechanic and truck driver.

One fall, Gump used his truck to haul Christmas trees from Oregon and rented a sales lot from a man who owned a septic tank business. That owner took a shine to Gump and taught him everything he knew.

It was a 1950s Los Angeles city ordinance requiring portable sanitation for construction sites, however, that spawned Gump’s now multimillion-dollar business.

Gump built his first five portable toilets in the garage of the yellow, 1,500-square-foot Mission Hills home where he lived until he died.

At first, he called his company Mission Sanitation, and asked a sign painter to mark it on his products. But the Pacoima painter suggested Gump use his own nickname, adopted from a newspaper comic strip popular in the 1930s.

Emblazoned on the side of every toilet, with the word “Another” just above, the name became synonymous with the product, which was supplied to building sites throughout the growing San Fernando, Conejo and Antelope valleys.

After the 1984 Olympics, for which Gump supplied about a third of the temporary outhouses, the company began supplying them to special event and film sites, adding portable electrical power generation and fencing to its list of services.

“I don’t think he ever dreamed that this business would grow to the size it is,” Barry Gump said. “You could always call and talk to Andy.”

Andy Gump Inc. now has annual revenues of $7 million, Barry Gump said.

Gump is survived by Irma, his wife of 65 years; his son, Barry; a daughter, Cherilyn Gump Duncan; six grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

A memorial service for Gump will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday at Northridge Congregational Church. A private burial is scheduled for Tuesday.

The family asked that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to Gump’s favorite charity, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.