Lindon Hollinger; L.A. County’s Former Chief Administrative Officer

Lindon S. Hollinger, who began as a $90-a-month messenger and rose to draft Los Angeles County’s burgeoning multibillion-dollar budget and marshal its tens of thousands of employees for 13 years, has died. He was 91.

Hollinger, who supervised creation of the Civic Center Mall, died Monday in Lake Forest, Calif., said his daughter, Jo Apel of Santa Clara.

He held the position of Los Angeles County chief administrative officer, currently occupied by David Janssen, which has been described as “the supervisors’ errand boy, whipping boy, hatchet man and all-around repairman.”

Hollinger was in the CAO hot seat from 1958 through 1970, between the legendary Arthur J. Will and his son Arthur G. Will, and in 13 years became a legend himself.

The major monument he developed and oversaw is Los Angeles’ Civic Center Mall, stretching from the Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County east to City Hall and including vast below-ground parking garages. His name is engraved on cornerstones of several Civic Center buildings constructed under his guidance, including the Criminal Courts Building and the Hall of Records.

Hollinger retired at 61; he had tried to leave two years earlier, but decided to stay on after his first wife unexpectedly died of the flu, and after there were public expressions of concern over the thought of losing him.

The Times editorialized in 1968: “The country will have lost one of a rare breed--an outspoken executive with the ability to say no . . . not only to his bosses, the Board of Supervisors, but to pressure groups, employee organizations and unions, empire-building bureaucrats and John Q. Public.”

The editorial praised Hollinger as “a legend of executive efficiency” and added, perhaps with surprise given the tangled bureaucracy in local government: “No major scandal tainted Hollinger or his office in the 43 years he served the county.”

Hollinger did irk one very well-known county employee. That was the controversial and colorful “coroner to the stars,” Dr. Thomas T. Noguchi, whom he fired after accusing him of dancing with glee at the prospect of conducting an autopsy on Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, shot at the Ambassador Hotel on the night of the 1968 primary election. Noguchi went to court and won reinstatement, only to face demotion later.

When Hollinger took over as CAO, he supervised 35,000 employees. When he retired, there were 73,000.

“Hollinger has weathered most Board of Supervisors’ storms and caustic queries,” a Times reporter wrote at the end of Hollinger’s county career, “through his ability to recall specific names, dates and dollar figures for rebuttal statements.”

Asked his opinion of why he was hired in 1958, Hollinger told The Times: “When I don’t know, I ask. I listened to [my boss]. I seem to have a knack with figures. And I usually manage to get along with people.”

Born in North Manchester, Ind., and reared in Canada, Washington state and Southern California, Hollinger was so bright that he skipped two grades and graduated from Inglewood Union High School at 15. He skipped college and went to work as a messenger for the county auditor’s office, where his duties included returning his boss’ wife’s corset to the May Co.

But Hollinger did listen, and when his boss advised him to take night courses in accounting and public budgeting, he did.

And he worked his way up through clerk, accountant, researcher, analyst, budget officer, assistant to CAO Will and then into the CAO chair itself.

An avid music lover, he numbered and cross-referenced his hundreds of record albums on index cards. He played golf and revered the Dodgers, played bridge, cribbage and gin rummy, and meticulously worked jigsaw and crossword puzzles.

He loved hanging out in the neighborhood hardware store and enjoyed doing plumbing and electrical work, painting and gardening at his home. He even made the draperies for the Alhambra house where his children grew up.

Hollinger was married to Alyce Kalthoff from 1932 until her death in 1969. He then married his secretary, Cora Carlson, who died in 1986. For the last 13 years of his life, he was married to Ethel Wathey.

He is also survived by his three children, twins Jo Apel of Santa Clara and Norm Hollinger of Huntington Beach, and Jeanie Chapman of Anaheim; two stepdaughters, Carolynn Moore of Northridge and Pat Eilts of Woodland Hills; his sister, Mary Hunter of La Verne; seven grandchildren; 14 great-grandchildren; three stepgrandchildren; and three stepgreat-grandchildren.

Services are scheduled for noon Oct. 14 at Arcadia Presbyterian Church, 121 Alice St., Arcadia.