Song Meant for City Still Stirs Note of Sadness

By SCOTT STEEPLETON

Feb. 27, 2000 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

VENTURA —

Boyd Bunch made quite a name for himself in the golden days of big band music. He toured for 13 years with the Victor Lopez Orchestra, and for a dozen years was an arranger and manager for Guy Lombardo.

During his career, Bunch arranged more than 3,000 songs. He also wrote dozens of tunes, even penning new lyrics to the popular “Frankie and Johnny.” He spent the final years of his life in El Rio.

It was there, in 1966, that Bunch, at the age of 77, penned the music and lyrics to a song he hoped would be adopted by the city of Ventura for its centennial. That did not happen.

Instead, “The Bells of San Buenaventura,” an homage to San Buenaventura Mission, was played around town during that year’s centennial celebration--and then faded into obscurity.

Bunch died 31 years ago today. Friends still revel in the beauty of the song’s melody and lyrics, and get angry over the city’s failure to recognize what they say is a lasting and appropriate tribute to the Poinsettia City.

Others say while “Bells” may be beautiful, it lacked the sensibilities of a multicultural city to be Ventura’s official song.

By the time Bunch had arrived in Ventura in the early 1970s, Helen Yunker was already on the way to establishing herself as one of the city’s most successful real estate agents. She also had a love of music and sang with a women’s group. Among their standards were tunes that carried Bunch’s stamp. It was an association with the Ventura Junior College chorale that led to a meeting with Bunch. What followed was a bond that to this day Yunker recalls with fondness.

“We’d go over to his place, take food over to him and we’d sing his songs,” she said. “He was always very upbeat in his lyrics.”

When Bunch showed Yunker “Bells,” the singers adopted it as their theme song. “That’s when we started calling ourselves the Belles of San Buenaventura,” she said.

Dressed in their flowing white gowns, the group performed for shut-ins and at various events around town. What made Bunch’s song so special, Yunker said, was its reverential tone.

“It was meaningful. It sounds like the type of song you’d hear in church,” she said. “It’s nostalgic, it’s historic, it’s beautiful.”

Apparently, that was not the criteria the City Council was using to choose an official song during the centennial.

“I took my singing group, there were eight of us, down to City Hall and we sang [Bunch’s] song before the council members and it was so beautiful,” Yunker said. But in the end, the council “picked some kind of a bebop tune that no one had ever heard.”

“The song that the council picked had crazy words, no one could really sing it,” Yunker said. “I can’t think of anyone up there on the council then that had any sense of musicianship.”

Bunch’s song, Yunker said, should have been the winner. “This was a historic song.”

Historic, perhaps, but some wonder whether it is a history that lacked depth.

“It’s kind of politically incorrect for the era, so in that regard it’s a bit naive,” city historian Richard Senate said. “It doesn’t really talk about the city of Ventura or the multicultural values that we have.”

The song’s emphasis on the mission, and its call to prayer, was most likely the result of where Bunch saw himself as a composer. A sample of the lyrics:

The Bells of San Buenaventura

Pealed out in the sea-softened air,

Like the kind loving words of the padre

“Won’t you come to the Mission for Prayer”?

In his retirement years, Bunch devoted his time to composing sacred music, including a piece called “The Creation,” which Yunker described as the Bible set to music.

Bunch focused on the contributions of Father Junipero Serra, who established the San Buenaventura Mission in 1782, but Bunch’s song didn’t really refer to 1866, the year the city was incorporated, Senate said.

“The Bells of San Buenaventura” gained enough respect that a copy of it was placed in the time capsule buried in front of City Hall, which will be opened during Ventura’s bicentennial celebration in 2066, But beyond that, the work has been lost to history. Even Frank Salazar, longtime county symphony conductor, doesn’t recall Bunch’s piece “ever crossing my desk.”

Although he questions its use as the city’s official song, Senate said “The Bells of San Buenaventura” deserves to be played because of its historical connection to Ventura.

“The city needed a song, and Boyd Bunch contributed it, which was kind of nice, I think,” he said. “Since it was written I’d like to have it performed.”

As for the official song, Senate said the time might be right to hold another contest.

“Maybe we should have would-be songwriters come forward and write songs for our city.”

That’s not necessary, said Yunker, who considers “ ‘Bells’ as official as official gets.” Besides, if the choice made by council members in 1966 is any indication, perhaps politicians aren’t of the right mind to make such decisions.

“It was absolutely a shame,” Yunker said, recalling how the council snubbed her efforts in the year of the centennial. “We went away aghast.”

And what about the song that won the contest?

“We never heard it again.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Bells of San Buenaventura

Long before Cornwallis surrendered to Washington

When America stood naked but free,

Long before Sherman marched to the sea,

Before Grant and Lee and Abraham Lincoln

Were writing our history.

On the shores of San Buenaventura

Rose a mission in that sunny clime,