The chief justice-to-be who lived at 707 Niles St.

By ROBERT PRICE
Originally published May 16, 2004 (excerpt)

It's in better shape than one might expect of a century-old, wood-frame house in a section of the city long past its prime.

But the boyhood home of Earl Warren, the 14th and most influential chief justice of the United States, hardly inspires reverence. Could the man behind the court decision rightly considered an overdue extension of the Emancipation Proclamation, the man who gave us the phrases "read him his rights" and "one-man-one-vote," really have lived in a house so ... pastel?

More to the point, could Bakersfield's greatest son really have come to manhood in a house that today seems so unremarkable?

Warren left east Bakersfield for UC Berkeley in 1908, and except for summer breaks from college, he usually returned only as a visiting dignitary. But when he thought of "home" ever afterward, he thought of 707 Niles St.

Warren was California's only three-consecutive-term governor; he was Thomas Dewey's 1948 vice-presidential running mate; and if not for that postwar deity, Dwight Eisenhower, Warren would probably have been the 1952 Republican nominee for president as well.

For 16 years starting in 1953, he oversaw the most activist Supreme Court the nation has seen before or since. His political savvy, developed over three decades in elective office, helped convince his colleagues on the court to make Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark desegregation decision whose 50th anniversary we observed in May 2004, unanimous.

In some towns, a public-service resume like that would have already inspired action at the old homestead, in the town plaza -- somewhere.

That's what has happened in the home towns of the three chief justices who preceded Warren: There's a monument or public building named in honor of Charles Hughes, Harlan Stone and Fred Vinson. That's what has happened in St. Paul, Minn., hometown of Warren Burger, the man who succeeded Earl Warren in 1969. The city's federal courts building has his name on it.

The people who live at 707 Niles St. today hope something can be done here too -- above and beyond Warren Hall, a building on the campus of Warren's alma mater, Bakersfield High School (then known as Kern County High School); and the 14-year-old junior high school named for Warren in the southwest corner of the city.

"It's a shame we don't do more" to celebrate Bakersfield's Earl Warren connection, says Jimmy Mize, whose parents purchased the old Warren house in the 1950s (and eventually painted it that distinctive pastel blue). He and his wife and brother have lived there for the past several years.

"We really ought to have something that honors him, something that's out there for people to see when they come to town," says Mize's wife, Sharon. "A statue of him at Centennial Garden (now Rabobank Arena). Something."

In a city that for too long has allowed others to define it, that makes sense. Poll the continent: Perceptions of Bakersfield seem more likely to have been formed with the help of Jay Leno and Johnny Carson, et al., than by the local chamber of commerce. Bakersfield's small but noteworthy connection to the evolution of civil liberties in the world's freest nation is doubtlessly lost on most people.

And yet, Sharon Mize says, "it's part of who we are."

Warren is not exactly a forgotten man, of course. One of UC San Diego's undergraduate colleges is named after him; appropriately, UCSD's Warren College has an ethics-class requirement for all students. At least somebody is teaching that these days.

Alameda County's Highway 13 is the Earl Warren Freeway; the annual Santa Barbara Fair & Expo is held at the Earl Warren Showgrounds; and there are Earl Warren high schools in San Antonio and Downey.

You'd think Warren's hometown would do as much.

It may yet happen. The Mizes put a "for sale by owner" sign in the yard a few months back. Lo and behold, they got a buyer with a track record on historical homes: Mark Abernathy, the political consultant, closes escrow on the place in late August 2003.

Abernathy wants to turn the house into something honoring the chief justice, but he's also aware of the house's other story lines.

It was at 707 Niles St., on the night of May 14, 1938, that Warren's 72-year-old father, Methias H. Warren, was bludgeoned to death. Warren, then the district attorney of Alameda County and soon to become attorney general, flew back to Bakersfield to participate in the investigation. The crime, never solved, is still Bakersfield's most infamous murder.

By the 2000's, 707 Niles St. was the home of Jimmy's brother Billy Mize, a singer who was named the Academy of Country Music's top TV personality three years running in the mid-1960s. He's building a new house to make way for Abernathy and a potential restoration of the Warren legacy.

One house, three histories.

What lies ahead for the Warren house? Here's one idea: Lose the pastel. Otherwise, anything that celebrates the career of Earl Warren is an improvement on the status quo. It would be long overdue.