The following is from a work-in-progress about the history of Fullerton. You can support my ongoing research and writing on Patreon.
In 1999, Albert “Pete” Hetebrink was interviewed for the CSUF Center for Oral and Public History. Here’s what I learned from the interview, and a few other sources. Some of this was previously published in an article I wrote for Fullerton College’s Centennial exhibit in 2013.
Albert was born in 1900 in Fullerton, California, the third of seven children. His father, John, was a successful tomato and citrus rancher. In 1914, John Hetebrink built the large mission-style house that still stands on the Fullerton College campus, on the corner of Chapman and Berkeley. At the time, the area was tomato fields. The Hetebrinks owned two 40 acre ranches in the area.
Before the Hetebrinks moved into the large house on Chapman Ave, they lived in a smaller house near the railroad tracks. He recalls, “The hoboes followed the railroad tracks in those days, and they always stopped in for a meal…[my mother] always had chickens and eggs out there, and she always could mix up a meal for them any time of the day. And she did, as a rule.” Interestingly, the hoboes were one of reasons the family moved. Albert recalls, “We moved over here [on Chapman] because they put a railroad track to Placentia. And the hoboes all followed the railroad track, and they were always begging a meal. So that’s why we moved over here, mainly. It was one of the main reasons, and to get closer to town.”
Albert went by the nickname “Pete.” When asked why, he said, “I had an uncle Albert Hetebrink. He and a Placentia friend of his were out hunting, one behind the other one. His friend was the one in back, and his gun went off and killed Albert…My uncle Dee Dee (Dietrich] couldn’t call me Albert because he knew Albert, and so he called me Pete. That’s how I got my nickname.”
In its early years, Fullerton was a “dry town,” meaning it was hard to get a drink of alcohol anywhere, mainly because those in power (like mayor Charles Chapman) were very religious protestants who were against drinking. Albert recalls, “The people that drank, they liked to go to Anaheim because they were a wet town. Fullerton was more connected to the church, so it was just more natural to be dry.”
Pete spent his early days helping his father on the ranch, hunting, and fishing. He attended Fullerton Union High School and Fullerton Junior College, when the two schools shared a campus. He was a football player, photographer for the annual Torch yearbook, and was elected Student Body President in 1923.
After graduating, Pete began managing his father’s ranch, and changed it from a tomato to a citrus ranch, when oranges became the profitable local crop. On Sundays, the Hetebrink family would often drive their Jackson car to the beach, a full day outing. The Hetebrink House was a popular gathering place for holidays and celebrations.
In 1924, it seems that Pete (along with numerous local leaders like Louis Plummer) was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, which had a fairly large membership in Fullerton. Journalist Gustavo Arellano did a piece on him for his “Profiles in OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members” for OC Weekly back in 2011.
When asked if they had help on their ranch, people who worked for them, Albert said simply, “Oh yeah, Mexican labor,” but he did not elaborate much on the subject. The interviewer asked a couple times about a man named Juan Castro, a man who had worked on their ranch and lived in a house on the orange grove. Albert had little to say on this subject except, “Oh, he worked. Yeah, he worked on the ranch.” I can’t tell if Albert’s reluctance to discuss his laborers was due to embarrassment or simply a lack of interest, or both. A bit later in the interview, Albert said, “I had Mexicans that lived on the ranch.”
As the citrus industry declined and the Southern California real estate boom began following World War II, Albert eventually sold his ranch to Fullerton College. The Hetebrink House is currently on the National Register of Historic Places.
When asked about the decline of the agriculture industry and the rise of residential, commercial, and industrial development in Fullerton, Albert speculated that it has affected the weather: “To have more houses where it used to be vacant ground, there’s more houses and more heat…we never really had any bad cold weather after that…I think it’s rained less.” Instead of global warming, Albert witnessed local warming.
In response to this, the interviewer observed a trend toward more localized agriculture: “I think people are starting to turn towards raising their own food a little bit more. But you’re an old hand at that, and we have to learn how to do it again.”
Albert died in 2001, at the age of 101.
Fullerton History 
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