Some Memories of My Dad

 Joseph (Joe) P. Flanagan

 

 

1.                  Joe Flanagan started J.P. Flanagan & Company about in 1948, right after WWII and as the Korean War was to start.  He had been stationed in the Navy at Treasure Island and when he was discharged decided to stay in the Bay Area.  He started to work with Fortune Fisheries and brought with him the tuna contracts for the armed services during the Korean War which were very lucrative.  Soon after, he quit Fortune and started J.P. Flanagan & Co. as a fish broker at 444 Market Street, the Tilden Building, where the Shacklee Building is today.  The tuna contracts were very profitable, and, with no money, he handled hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuna contracts in exchange for hundreds of dollars in commissions.

2.                  He soon broadened his product line with the addition of Olympia Oyster Company in Shelton, Washington, selling farm-raised oysters, and the addition of the Halibut Producer’s Co-op of Vancouver Canada, one of the longest lasting fishermen’s coops on the West Coast.  He then added Pt. Chehalis Packers of Cordova Alaska, and became one of the first to bring King Crab and Snow Crab into the continental U.S.

3.                  During those years, business was so profitable that he entered into a partnership with Bill Munro and George Skaff to open St. Julien’s Restaurant in the financial district.  He sold all the seafood to the restaurant and played dice at the bar with San Francisco notables.  He always won.  St. Julien’s was one of the first and largest French cuisine restaurants in San Francisco at that time.  It was three stories; basement for storage, 1^st floor for dining and bar, 2^nd floor for private small rooms which could be locked from the inside and which looked down on the 1^st floor.  They were rooms for absolute privacy for those men and their courtesans who could pay the price.

4.                  His customers were all the fish companies in California  but mostly in the Bay Area.  Paladini, the International, California Shellfish, Alioto-Lazio; Western California Fish Co., Van Camp’s, Del Monte, L. Friscia Fish Company, LaRocca Seafoods, just to name a few.  He also sold the big fish restaurants but at a higher price, i.e. Alioto’s, Fisherman’s Grotto, Franciscan, etc.  He generally had a monopoly on selling halibut, oysters, and crab products in the early days of the 50’s.

5.                  Then, I think in the early 50’s, a number of fish companies owned by Italians went through a major change in structure.  Times were changing, the economy tough, and companies started to go bankrupt.  As he often was the largest supplier and creditor, Joe decided that it was better to take the companies over rather than write-off bad debts.

6.                  The first company he acquired was General Fish Company in Monterey and Santa Cruz, with the major shareholder Joe Alioto, father of the Mayor.  Joe Alioto thought that he could threaten the other shareholders with bankruptcy, get their stock, and then start a new company by promising the stockholders a new job with the new company.  It was a large cash business.  Joe Alioto would be the sole stockholder at the expense of all the other stockholders.  And it would be reborn with the money never to be paid to Joe Flanagan.  However, Joe Flanagan secretly met with all the other stockholders, got their stock and beat Joe Alioto at his own game.  Joe had to bring in his son, an attorney then, to finally write up the final agreement and sign over all the stock to Joe Flanagan.  He kept all the employees and they ran the company overtly so that  it looked like there was no conflict of interest with the brokerage business.  In appearance, General Fish was still an Italian run company; not Irish.  It was the end of Joe Alioto’s long career in the wholesale fish business.

7.                  One interesting fact of General Fish was that during the major flash flood of Santa Cruz (I think in 1954 or 1956), martial law was declared in Santa Cruz,  they provided food supplies to the city thanks to their large freezers when food was scarce.  Soon after, Santa Cruz condemned the building and forced Joe Flanagan to relocate the plant to Moss Landing.  He was one of the first fishing companies to return to Moss Landing and reclaim the then vacant sardine canneries and begin revitalizing the then island which was almost a ghost town after the sardines disappeared.

8.                  The second acquisition was Standard Fisheries Corp. which was owned by Tano Guaragnella.  He also owed J.P. Flanagan a lot of money and was going bankrupt.  My father then made a deal with Tano that was secret as he was afraid of hurting his brokerage business to the Italian companies still left in this industry wide shake-out.  One of Joe’s good friends, Sam DeLucca of San Pedro, and Jennie Puchinelli of Pan Pacific Tuna advised my father that if the San Franciscan Italians knew he had taken over Standard Fisheries, he would not be long for this life and that they would boycott J.P. Flanagan & Co.   There was no room on the Wharf for an Irishman.  As a result, he hired Frank Alioto, not a relation to the Alioto’s except maybe very distantly, as the front man.  As far as everyone was concerned, Frank from the mid-West came in and now owned the company.  This secret was kept from the early 50’s until 1967, one of the best secrets ever kept in the industry.   Tano had been a life-long friend of Jack London who often went upstairs to smoke his cigars and perhaps work on his writings.  Tano had every Jack London book personally autographed.  I think they went to school together.  Through all the subsequent years, Joe Flanagan mailed a $100.00 check to Tano and his wife until they both died.  He didn’t have to, but he did and often personally delivered it to them.

9.                  The final and third acquisition was 25% ownership in Central Fish Company of Oakland.  Guido DiPiano owned 50%, the accountant owned 25%, a Mr. Foster, and the final 25% was owned by an Italian fishing family from Carquinez Straits.  I’m not sure, but their name started with a B, maybe Balestrieri, but I don’t think so.  Another name with a B.  Guido had gone bankrupt twice in San Francisco before his third try with Central became a big money-maker.  He didn’t get along with the family from Carquinez, they didn’t like Guido, and so they sold their stock to Joe Flanagan.  Guido liked that as my father was again a silent partner and another secret was born.  Soon after, Flanagan bought out Mr. Foster, and then when Guido died, bought the final 50%.  This was about 1967 when everything unraveled and all the secrets became known of Joe Flanagan’s ownership.  As predicted, this began the downfall of J.P. Flanagan Company once it was known that he owned General Fish, Standard Fish and Central Fish.  Throughout, he never told Guido what to do, and their friendship thrived over the years.  Guido liked to go to the races with the Bonano family of the Mafia (Dairy business) and had all the Safeway stores, Lucky stores and made tons of money for us all.  Payoffs in cash to these companies were unbelievable, all cash.  Going bankrupt, he obviously learned how to become profitable.  He was one of my main mentors as I got started in the fishing business after college.  He was tough, but like my own father and taught me how to sell fish.

10.             One interesting thing was that a lot of the old fishing companies were not at Fisherman’s Wharf in those early days but down by where the TransAmerica Building is today.  It was mixed in with the Produce district, and there was Paladini, the old International, Atlantic Dried Fish Company, and a few others, like Western California.  It was the center of the wholesale fish business.  They all started early at 5:00 a.m., so by lunch time they were pretty much finished.  Many of them came together to eat lunch together, they brought their extra left-over fish for the day, and had a guy cook it.  After lunch, they all played pinochle.  This was the start of Tadich’s Grill.  My father would always go down for lunch, play cards and then sell them more fish.  Often we would go there as well as Schroeder’s to make sales.  I was just a kid then about 10 years old.

11.             When the International broke up, again Joe Alioto with his tricks, many spun off into new companies, like Alioto Lazio, Puccini, and others.  They knew the area was doomed for redevelopment of the Embarcadero Center and many then moved to the Wharf.  Paladini was one of the last to survive until they leased to TransAmerica.

12.             After a short period of hard work, the site of the St. Julian’s Restaurant was sold out to build a high-rise for an insurance company.  I think this was in the early 50’s which gave Joe Flanagan some money to help in all three of the acquisitions.  George Skaff went to the Franciscan, Bill Munro started the Pam Pam and a fast food hamburger restaurant.  Skaff introduced my father to George Burger and gave Joe pretty much a monopoly on all their seafood purchases.  Burger didn’t get along with the Italians so this worked out well for everyone.  The Franciscan always got preferential treatment from the brokerage and everyone was making money.  Most was channeled through Standard Fisheries at preferential prices.  All three branches were making tons of money in those days as they were based on a monopoly that no one knew about except for a select few, Guido DiPiano, Frank Alioto, Joe DeLucca and the Cigliano’s from San Pedro.  They were involved because of the tuna connection from the very beginning.  There was so much cash and money flowing in those days, and Joe Flanagan did all the bookkeeping by hand with a few calculators having only gone to grammar school and a few night courses in short-hand and accounting.

13.             The roof caved in in 1967.  It was then that Joe Flanagan ran into major problems with his banks.  He was falling behind on his loan payments as the demands from Standard Fisheries became massive to pay their bills.  Everything was starting to collapse.  He couldn’t figure it out as to where all the cash was going, but things were worsening rapidly.  This was about when I graduated from college and started to work at Standard and begin modernization of all the bookkeeping systems.  Guido was helping Joe stay afloat by declaring dividends payable to the stockholders since he was still making tons of money.  I started to unravel an unbelievable embezzlement by Frank Alioto at Standard Fisheries.  Frank would issue Christmas bonus checks to all the employees, then forge their signatures and deposit them into his personal account.  Large sales of salmon for smoking were sold to the New York smokehouses, but the money was deposited again into Frank’s personal account.  These receivables were very large and used as collateral for the bank loans.  As I continued my investigation, the main bookkeeper Mr. Barnes of Fisherman’s Wharf Seafood resigned and opened up his own company.  People were starting to feel the heat.  Ignatio Balestrieri soon left also to go to work with the opening of Mr. Barnes new company.  I thought I had discovered the thief.  Yet the losses continued.  I then found the final proof that Frank Alioto was the primary culprit.  I went to my father with the evidence of forged checks and other items.  I will never forget that day, it was Thanksgiving and we were having dinner at my parent’s house.  Dad called Frank and told him he was immediately fired.  Dad was mad and felt really betrayed.  He had paid Frank all those years a lot of money.  Frank had a huge house he had built in Palo Alto and lived far better than my father ever had.  My father didn’t care as he thought Frank had earned it but it was just a big deck of cards waiting to collapse.  Frank had really been stealing from all the companies because they were all intertwined with complex transactions all being funneled thru J.P. Flanagan & Co.  My mother always complained that there was something wrong when an employee is living better than the employer.  Joe gave everyone the benefit of the doubt until he knew they were bad, then they were gone. 

14.             Things were worse than what we thought.  Standard was bankrupt with a negative net worth and was going to drag down all the other companies with it.  The banks were going to foreclose.  It was either go under, or try to reorganize and get the company back on an honest footing.  Joe Flanagan developed a plan for reorganization, went down one morning, fired everyone except for a man called John O’Donnell.  John was promoted to sales, Joe left the brokerage business to oversee the reorganization, and I was called in to drive truck, make deliveries and all of the accounting.  Just three of us left.  Thank God for the honest people at Central Fish and General Fish and what was left of J.P. Flanagan.  The secret was now out in the open.  We started to make a profit almost immediately.  Joe slowly paid off all of the banks, all of the creditors and Standard became profitable again.  John O’Donnell years later also stole about $250,000.00 before Joe fired him.  Joe Flanagan probably lost 4 times as much money as he ever made in the fish business, but he was a great poker player.

 

 

Some Highlights of Joe Flanagan:

 

1.                  Joe Flanagan was one of the first to hire minorities and treat them equally.  First black person was hired in the 1950’s.  First gays hired in the late 1960’s

2.                  Joe Flanagan built one of the first free standing freezers in Moss Landing, eliminating the need for structural supports using ammonia instead of Freon.  This freezer was one of the largest of any fish company in California.

3.                  Standard Fisheries was one of the first companies to introduce Snow Crab into local markets.  At that time, we called it Tanner Crab.

4.                  He realized the problem of seasonality in the wholesale fish business and utilized long term quality freezers to level out the seasons to bring a consistent profit.

5.                  He supported one of the first installations of computers into the industry.

6.                  He always paid off all of his bills, never went bankrupt, and always treated fishermen honestly.  Standard Fisheries, J.P. Flanagan, and General Fish were all closed and given a clean bill of health from the Secretary of State.

7.                  Joe Flanagan loaned money to many people in dire straits but always expected to get paid in full.  Many were street people who he gave jobs to so as to never give them charity.  I remember one, Tony, the newspaper man.  He always gave him a newspaper for $1.00 when it only cost 25 cents.  In return, Tony would scare the burglars away from the plant at night.  Joe grew up in the Depression and knew how hard life can be, but that one can always rise above it by working hard.  When he finally died, hundreds of people came to pay off their loans, some of which went back for many years.

8.                  When people stole from him, he took the responsibility for it and went on with his life.  He never prosecuted anyone for theft, figuring that they would do themselves in or else learn their errors.  If people needed help, he was always there for them.  He probably lost more money in his life than he ever made but he enjoyed working in the fish plant.

9.                  In his final days, he had had a stroke which paralyzed his left arm.  He was complaining in the morning about how hard it was to just work with one arm, until we took him home.  That night he had a massive stroke and never again returned to work.  He never spoke badly abut anyone in the industry.

10.             To give an idea as to how the company grew, it went from 2 people in the very beginning to finally 250 people working directly for all the companies.  One year, the companies produced 20% of the entire U.S. production of albacore tuna.  At its peak, the company was producing 5 million pounds of squid per year.  In 1988, the company continued to unload salmon from fishermen despite a coast-wide strike and temporarily cornered the wild salmon market.

11.             In his foresight, he eventually bought about 20% of Moss Landing which eventually was sold to Hewlett Packard for their aquarium research facility.

12.             He was one of the first in a small group of Fishermen’s Wharf businesses to understand the need for the new breakwater and never gave up on that dream.

13.             His friends and confidantes in the industry: Tom Lazio, Sam DeLucca, Anthony Cigliano, Guido DiPiano, Virgil and Joe Devencenzi, Peter Tachis who worked 20 years for Booth Fisheries, 20 years for Paladini and 20 years for J.P. Flanagan &  Co.  Peter was kept working right up to the time he died of cancer at 74.  Bill Munro and George Skaff.  John Cutino, Monk and Tiesto Loero, just to name a few.

14.             He was a good father, sent all his children to the college that he never had, taught them right from wrong, the importance of education, honesty and to keep one’s word.  While he worked hard, he was always there for his children as they grew up and had a great sense of humor.