Triumph and Trials at a Hillside Monument (part 2)

Son of Mausoleum’s founder heads its expansion, suffers financial woes

This is the second of a two-part history of the first 50-plus years of Sunset (now Golden Gate) Mausoleum, in the Kensington hills above El Cerrito. Part one focused on the era of founder Arthur F. Edwards Sr. 

The mausoleum as illustrated in the November 1927 issue of The Architect and the Engineer.

During the 1930s and 1940s, as Sunset Mausoleum grew and faced economic challenges associated with the Great Depression and World War II, the mausoleum’s future owner, Arthur Edwards Jr. was distinguishing himself in military school, on stage, and in the law.

Edwards, 17, a “brilliant young junior cadet at the San Diego Army and Navy Academy,” was one of four cadets chosen to represent the school in “a drama tournament put on by Pasadena Community Playhouse,” the Chronicle reported in 1934 – a year after he’d won a medal at the school for “best scholarship.”

At age 20, Edwards graduated from the Junior College Division of the Army and Navy Academy, which the Chronicle called “the West Point of the West,” adding that his company won first place in competitive drill.

Edwards attended Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, passed the bar in 1938, served in the military during the Second World War, and was soon enjoying a legal career in the city and as a performer, both onstage and in real life.

By November 10, 1949, Edwards Jr. was appearing in Herb Caen’s now-legendary Chronicle column representing the husband in a divorce case complicated by a battle between man and ex-wife over “an elephant’s head, six feet high and seven feet wide, complete with trunk, bristly hair and bullet hole in forehead.”

Edwards (1914-1994) managed to win the head for his client – who then said he didn’t want it. A subsequent column continued the tale: “Anybody who wants an almost new, elephant-type stuffed head (Female) contact Arthur F. Edwards.”

Less than a month later Caen told readers a happier tale about a marriage, this time involving Edwards, described as “a widely known S.F. atty.,” and his wife Helen. “Before a roomful of guests, his prize Siamese cats, Pong (a male) and Muey (a female) were united in a wedding ceremony….Pong was attired in a bow tie, and Muey wore a white veil.” A deputy D.A. performed the ceremony.

Throughout the 1950s and into the early 1960s, the doings of Arthur and Helen Edwards made news on the society pages. Edwards cut a loud figure, with news columnists several times noting his sartorial splendor. In 1956 the Chronicle spotted Edwards on a night in town wearing “a violently plaid dinner jacket.”

It’s notable that Arthur and Helen were active in society both in the city and Marin County, but not, apparently, in the El Cerrito-Kensington area.

Most of the couple’s theatrical ventures took place at community theaters or society events. In 1953 the Children’s Theater Association performed ‘Candy,’ a play about a carnival zebra, at the Marines’ Memorial Theater in the city. The Chronicle credited Helen as author, based on a book by the couple. Arthur designed the sets.

A 1955 Junior League revue at the Veterans Memorial building was standing room only, the Chronicle reported. A highlight was set at Sutro Baths, “where Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Edwards led a line of Gay Nineties bathing beauties and their beaux.”

Two years later the Chronicle’s Talk Around Town columnist David Hulburd caught ‘Private Lives’ at Sausalito’s Little Theater featuring “socialite doll ... Ann Folger (coffee) Hanger,” and “Arthur Edwards, owner of the Sunset Mausoleum-Columbarium in Berkeley, as her leading man.”

Arthur also wrote plays for himself and his friends to perform at Bohemian Grove retreats.

“The Edwards household is a happy state of affairs,” ran the headline over a short feature by Yvonne Mero in January 1955, reporting that Arthur and Helen shared a large Tudor home on seven hillside acres in San Anselmo with four dogs, four cats, and a seven-year-old son.

Mero reported that Arthur and Helen not only performed together, but built objects for their garden, silkscreened their own Christmas cards, and made chairs for their patio. “Now they are in the process of molding animals as light fixtures for their driveway,” she wrote.

“Attractive Mrs. Edwards, who is active in Marin Unit of the San Francisco Junior League, is also raising funds for the Junior Museum of Marin.”

Besides working as a lawyer in the city, Edwards oversaw Sunset Mausoleum as manager, starting in 1952. His father had never served as manager, leaving that role first to Fred Purner, from 1926 to 1931, then John M. Brenneis, from 1931 to 1952. Edwards left his law practice around this time to devote his energies to the mausoleum.

The lower terraces were designated as a fallout shelter during the early 1950s and equipped with food and other emergency goods.

In June 1953 – the mausoleum’s 25th anniversary – Edwards Jr. announced plans for expansion. He told the Chronicle he would tour Europe to find marble for an expansive addition, adding a large chapel and two terraces behind the original building.

“We will build an outdoor garden, reproducing Stephen Foster’s memorial chapel,” Curtis E. Clark, the mausoleum association’s vice president, said. “We have designed a Childrens’ Sanctuary with a replica of Gainsborough’s Blue Boy in stained glass.”

On March 9, 1954. Sunset Mausoleum and Columbarium opened after the remodel – but apparently without the Blue Boy. The mausoleum prospered during the 1950s and 1960s, attracting many families. As civil rights laws were enacted, the mausoleum opened to people of all races.

By 1969, drama came to this temple of entombment, and it came from within. Records from Alameda County Superior Court tell the tale.

In over his financial head on a scheme to construct a commercial building in Berkeley, Arthur Edwards Jr. used the family home as collateral for loans, embezzled funds from the mausoleum’s endowment care fund, and used stolen funds as collateral to get a bank loan, draining the mausoleum association’s funds to the degree that bankruptcy loomed.

The early 1950s Sunset Mausoleum brochure makes clear that the endowment fund should have been untouchable.

Defining Sunset Mausoleum as an “endowment care property,” the brochure explained:

“From each completed sale (of a niche, crypt, or memorial chapel), a sum is deposited in a trust fund which is audited yearly by certified public accountants, and the trustees of which are constantly advised by a nationally known brokerage house. Under the law of the State of California, only the income of this trust may be used for the upkeep and embellishment of the Mausoleum. The principle must always be kept intact, thus ensuring permanence of upkeep.”

By 1970, Edwards had lost control of the mausoleum and mausoleum association, selling his ownership stake for $1.62 million to a man who was known both locally and nationally as a television evangelist, W. Eugene Scott. It’s not clear how Scott came to own Sunset Mausoleum. Likely he was seen either by Edwards or by members of the association board as a potential financial savior.

In 1970, televangelist W. Eugene Scott bought the mausoleum for $1.62 million. Wikimedia photo.

Arthur and Helen’s marriage had ended and Arthur was living in an apartment in Oakland’s Adams Point.

Edwards was indicted on April 6, 1972, charged with grand theft. He pleaded guilty.

Charles Herbert, the deputy DA. handling the case, sought prison time. “This money is money that the defendant in effect stole; that he embezzled from trust funds over which he had absolute control,” Herbert told Judge Harold B. Hove.

“The defendant expanded a first deed of trust on the Sunset Mausoleum Association,” Herbert said, taking in $190,000, “and the defendant used that money for his own purposes. This was embezzlement.

“The defendant put a second mortgage, or a second deed of trust, on the property by securing a pledge of some $420,000 from a family by the name of Ahern.” This generated a letter of credit from another bank, “to provide some other funding for the defendant’s own use.”

“On top of that the defendant has taken some $60,000 of rent money that was due Amalgamated Properties Limited,” Herbert said. As recently as early 1972, Herbert told the judge. Edwards was trying to raise money fraudulently. “He attempted to get a $1,000,000 loan from a New York organization, using the Mausoleum property as collateral.”

“I think what the picture that’s presented here is of a man that is overly ambitious, who began a large project that was grossly under-capitalized, and he began regularly and systematically embezzling property over which he had control to bring that to fruition, and the manner in which he did it was clearly criminal,” the prosecutor said.

Judge Hove had the last words.

“When a lawyer, a man who is schooled and especially trained along particular lines, embezzles funds that are entrusted to him, why, he has to face up to the situation.

“The public has been hurt.”

“If I take these statements correctly in here,” Hove said, referring to sentencing reports, “his wife’s funds have been depleted, too, to the extent of some $700,000, So, I mean, everything he has touched lately has gone 100 percent wrong.”

Edward’s lawyer, Jerrold M. Ladar, asked the judge to allow his client to remain out of prison so he could pursue his claim of ownership of the mausoleum in a civil suit with Gene Scott and Faith Temple. Ladar described Edwards as suing Sunset Mausoleum “to reclaim” it.

“If Mr. Edwards is allowed to remain at liberty on probation, he will be available for that suit,” Ladar argued, to no avail.

 “Probation will be denied,” Hove said. Edwards was sentenced on December 27 to one year, one month and four days in prison at the California Medical Facility, Vacaville. He served the time. Edwards resigned from the state bar as the association moved to disbar him.

Edwards legal fight continued on the civil front, however. Edwards and Scott had begun suing each other over ownership of the mausoleum shortly after Scott became chief executive in 1970.  Edwards was also involved with civil litigation with the association, court records from his criminal case show.

Scott (1929-2005), with a Ph.D. in philosophy from Stanford, made a name for himself in the mid-1970s as pastor of the Faith Center in Glendale, later known as Wescott Christian Center. The church ran a 24-hour cable TV broadcast on stations in many markets, including the Bay Area.

 Secular hipsters tuned in, as did people who were deeply devoted to Scott’s sometimes hours’ long perorations – or occasional silences, as he stared at his audience, bearded, intense, often beneath a sombrero and puffing on a cigar.

On his death the Los Angeles Times called Scott, a “flamboyant and plain-speaking pastor and television preacher who was as adept at staring down a live television audience to raise money as he was at holding forth with an erudite teaching on the Bible.”

Among his dedicated parishioners was none other than country musician Merle Haggard, who told the Times, “He was the mind that all other brilliant minds looked to for guidance on problems that were insoluble.”

Edwards and Scott reached a resolution of some of their differences in 1975, with Scott’s Sunset Mausoleum instructed to share some of its income with Edwards. But in 1980 Edwards again sued Gene Scott in Contra Costa Superior Court, according to the Oakland Tribune, saying that Scott “reneged on an agreement to pay $1.62 million” for the mausoleum.

Scott countersued within weeks, calling Edward’s suit “malicious” and claiming that Edwards owed Scott money for having misappropriated funds from the mausoleum after selling it to Faith Center.

Edwards never did regain control of the mausoleum. Under Scott, the mausoleum association righted its finances.

In 1985 Governor George Deukmejian, following the recommendation of the superior court which certified Edward’s rehabilitation, granted Edwards a full pardon, saying he had paid his debt to society.

The interior of the mausoleum as it appears today. Photos by Jon Bashor.

Wescott retained ownership of the mausoleum after Scott’s death in 2005, selling the institution in February 2022 to ATL USA Inc., a subsidiary of the ATL Group Limited, which says it is “one of China’s largest managed service companies in the international afterlife care industry.”

Interestingly, although Wescott owned the mausoleum for about the same length of time it had been owned by the Edwards, neither Scott nor his successors expanded or made major physical changes to the place. They did provide superb stewardship of the building and the institution. The mausoleum remains well run, attractive, monumental and, appropriately, quiet.

Today, 12,000 people are entombed at Sunset Mausoleum, including Arthur Edwards Jr. and Sr. and Gene Scott. It’s a fascinating spot for the historically, artistically and community minded to visit. The mausoleum is open to the public during the day, every day except for federal holidays.

In 2023, the historical society hosted a tour of the mausoleum. Photo by Dianne P. Brenner.

Among prominent people entombed within its terraces and chapels are such illustrious names from East Bay society as the Hinks, the Woolseys, the Spengers, and the late El Cerrito mayor Ernie Del Simone. The mausoleum is also the final resting place of Tony Lazzeri, a top New York Yankee hitter and part of the feared “Murderer’s Row” lineup along with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

The goal of Edwards Sr. to create a place of peace and repose was clearly achieved.

In mid-2022, change seemed imminent when ATL announced plans to upgrade and expand the mausoleum and give it a higher profile, while retaining its historic character.

It is not clear whether those or similar plans will proceed.

By Dave Weinstein. This article appeared in the April 2024 issue of The Forge.