The Passing of a Titan, The Passing of the Torch

Arthur Anthony Almeida had been San Pedro’s sage and its conscience for much of his adult life. He was an intellectual titan known for his encyclopedic mind when it came to history and was a leader amongst leaders. He was as forthright about protecting the environment as he was about protecting labor rights. 

Art was an avid athlete at San Pedro High School, playing basketball, and football, and set records in track and field (records apparently broken only a few years after he graduated). As a varsity member in his senior year, he averaged 16 points in all games he started in basketball and was noteworthy in football and track and field. He was a member of the 1946 SPHS track team that won top honors. To the average reader of the News Pilot in the 1940s, he was a young man to watch. 

After graduating from high school, he served as an instructor for the U.S. Army Signal Corps. He had joined the International Longshore and Warehouse Union by 1950. He married his childhood sweetheart, Irene Horta, in April 1952 after a two-year engagement period. They would have been married 71 years on April 27. 

Almeida had an overarching concern for youth, moving him to be involved in their development, whether as chairman of the Boy Scout Troop 794 in the 1960s, to his work as part of the Barton Hill Elementary Advisory Council, and the Toberman Neighborhood Center’s board of directors. 

He was a member of the Mexican American Education Commission (LAUSD) for the Harbor Area. In this capacity as well as being a widely read union member, given to research anything that tickled his fancy, he committed his mental faculties to clarify truth and reality when it came to race and human relations. In 1971, he noted that Black and Latinos weren’t the only ones performing poorly, but that all students were performing poorly and that everyone should be concerned about the performance of students and local schools.

He has a long list of accomplishments: Local 13 Business Agent, director of the speaker’s bureau of the 1969 strike to inform the public and was a highly sought-after speaker on labor and Mexican American issues.

He was also a member of the San Pedro Community Advisory Committee which called out the CRA Beacon Street Redevelopment committee for choosing to hire low-wage labor from outside the community. 

He ran for the 15th District City Council seat in an attempt to unseat the longtime councilman John S. Gibson in 1972.

In 1973, he was the chair of the Teacher Corps at Cal State Dominguez Hills, later becoming the coordinator for the school’s experiential education department.

He spoke on issues facing Latinos in San Pedro during the Redevelopment of Beacon Street and as a member of the San Pedro Environmental Action Committee, Almeida supported the building of the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium.

During the early years of the Beacon Street redevelopment, he called for recreational space between 6th and 22nd Street below Pacific. Calls for more open space eventually resulted in the building of the 22nd Street Park.

In 1975, Almeida became one of the founding members of the San Pedro Bay Historical Society and chaired its Labor History Committee. He would go on to lead the organization as president for 10 years. 

In 1976, he was elected president of Local 13 of the ILWU.

He was one of the first to conceptualize the Liberty Hill Monument on 5th  Street near Harbor Boulevard with his long-time friend James Preston Allen, publisher of Random Lengths News, which Almeida helped name in 1979. These two also conceived of the Joe Hill monument at the same location.

Almeida was preceded in death by his son, Arthur A.J. Almeida. He is survived by his wife Irene, his daughters Majella Almeida Maas (Bill), Lourette Almeida Manghera (Peter), grandchildren Kristopher Manghera (Monica), Lixandrina Corrales, Brenna Maas Liana (Chris), Shannen Maas Clarke (Robert), and 12 great-grandchildren.

Visitation will be on May 1 from 6 to 8 p.m., with Rosary at 7 p.m. at McNerney’s Mortuary. Funeral Mass will be on May 2, at 11 a.m. at St. Peter Catholic Church.