After Battling Polio at a young age a farmer turns the loss of his beloved son into the icon that is known world wide as Hollywood.
BABY HARRY'S HOLLYWOOD is the story of a Michigan farm boy who overcomes incredible handicaps to accomplish more than most people would consider humanly impossible. HARVEY HENDERSON WILCOX, in Antebellum America who, in 1845 at the age of 15, is stricken with polio that puts him into a wheelchair for the rest of his life. His indomitable spirit comes to the fore almost immediately. We all meet roadblocks during our lives and how we address and overcome them is what makes each of us unique. He moves west and becomes the Topeka, Kansas, City Council president, hunts buffalo with the likes of Bat Masterson and buys a ranch and large herd of cattle as he participates in several cattle drives from his wheelchair mounted in the back of a Studebaker farm wagon. After losing his wife to Consumption, he re-marries and moves to Los Angeles where he develops The University Tract of fine homes surrounding the new University of Southern California, and eventually platting and naming an American icon: Hollywood as a memorial to his dead son, Harry Wilcox.—richard-welch-167-35670
BABY HARRY'S HOLLYWOODbased on an untold true storyGENRE: HISTORICAL DRAMAThe most inspiring story of the 21st century.SYNOPSISBaby Harry's Hollywood is a true story of a typical Michigan farm boy in Antebellum America who overcomes incredible handicaps to accomplish more than most people would consider humanly impossible. HARVEY HENDERSON WILCOX at the age of 13 is stricken with polio that puts him into a wheelchair for the rest of his life. His indomitable spirit comes to the fore almost immediately.Rejected by his father and since he cannot work on the family farm, he is sent to serve as an apprentice shoemaker. He is not satisfied with being a shoemaker all his life, however, so he challenges his handicap and takes on the world.Harvey enters local politics and wins several elections during the 1860s, eventually becoming a real estate agent with a partner as he wheels himself around with his clients to sell homes, stores, and small manufacturing plants.Harvey and his wife, ELLEN (YOUNG), respond to the call of "Go West, . . and grow up with the country". They settle in Topeka, Kansas after the War where he opens a real estate office, sells new homes like hotcakes, and becomes wealthier by the day.Harvey enjoys politics so much that he enters politics again, serving as president of the Topeka City Council, then joins several other men to found the town of Rossville, Kansas; serves as Topeka City Clerk; hunts buffalo with the likes of Bat Masterson and buys a ranch and large herd of cattle as he participates in several cattle drives from his wheelchair mounted in the back of a Studebaker farm wagon. He hunts bison,publishes a newspaper, and meets interesting travelers in a boarding house that he purchases for his wife.Tragedy strikes the family in 1880 when Ellen contracts tuberculosis and spends the winter of 1881-1882 in California, staying with her sister in Santa Barbara while "chasing the cure". Ellen returns to Topeka, uncured. She is kept alive on the train with "powerful stimulants" including heroin and opium, and dies at the age of 37 soon after her arrival home.Harvey, still in a wheelchair and with the typical Wilcox familybullheadedness, forges ahead to satisfy his dreams. Roadblocks to achieving his goals only make him more determined to succeed.He meets and attracts a girl more than thirty years his junior, DAEIDA "IDA" HARTELL, who he courts and marries in Topeka. Ida is a woman with a strong desire to rise in Topeka society, but she considers the city "too primitive" and is soon pushing Harvey to move to the new paradise on the West Coast where he could make even more money in real estate development and she can become a leader in Los Angeles society.Harvey and Ida move by train from Topeka to Los Angeles in early 1884 with Harvey riding in the baggage car with two of his prized white Arabian horses, Duke and Royal.Harvey forms the real estate company of Wilcox and Shaw and shortly after Harvey and Ida have one child, a son and the light of their lives who they name Harry. Harry dies in 1886 at the age of 19 months and his death nearly destroys Harvey and Ida. To console themselves over the death of their baby, Harvey and Ida take weekly carriage rides to the beautiful canyons west of Los Angeles. Harvey purchases one hundred sixty acres in Cahuenga Canyon for $150 per acre in an agricultural area of fig and apricot orchards.Harvey tries his hand at raising fruit, which is difficult to do from a wheelchair. He fails and decides to subdivide the land, selling lots for $1,000 each with a covenant that alcoholic beverages could never be bought, sold or consumed within his town. His wife approaches Harvey with the statement "Let's callit Hollywood" in recognition of the wild holly bushes that grow there and which Baby Harry loved. On February 1, 1887 Harvey files a plat of the subdivision of Hollywood with the Los Angeles County Recorder's office. He develops it along with his new subdivision called the "University Tract" adjacent to the new University of Southern California, but his health is failing.Harvey is about fifty-nine years old in 1891 when he dies at his sister-in-law Sylvia Connell's home where he had come two weeks earlier so he can be closer to medical care in Los Angeles. He leaves a twenty-eight year old widow and a fortune of $2.37 million in today's money. Ida sells Hollywood and the University Tracts and it is left to others to resurrect and complete Harvey's dreams.Richard Welch131 E. La EspinaGreen Valley, Arizona 85614(520) [email protected]
Copyright Richard Warren Welch 2013
