Below – Drufner CF about me in a letter dated April 1, 1983
Late in the evening of Wednesday, February 10, 1982, I arrived in San Diego. After a long drive from Phoenix, AZ to Yuma, to the town of El Centro, where things got complicated. Nadine, a young Swiss girl, and I went to eat, and when we returned, our bus had already left. With our luggage. After a little panic and a few phone calls, we continued our journey with the next bus. And in San Diego, our luggage was waiting for us at the bus station.
I found a room at the Hotel San Diego. Room 585 with a view of the Pacific.
Hotel San Diego was built by architect Harrison Albright in 1914 in time for the Panama-California Exposition of 1915, it closed in 2001 and was demolished on this day 15 April, 2006 despite its listing in 1983 as San Diego Historical Site Number 175. Like many old hotels in San Diego, in its latter years it provided low-income housing. The seven-story hotel lived on 339 W. Broadway in downtown San Diego, California.
And the residents?
In later years Hotel San Diego became a residential hotel, which was poorly maintained, and rented mainly by elderly and low-income residents on a weekly or monthly basis.
The next morning I was on my way to Los Angeles. On the street in front of the hotel, I suddenly noticed an elderly man in a wheelchair. The moment he disappeared around the corner, I thought I knew him.
And indeed, later it turned out that this was a man who used to go to Ljubljana in the summer in those years. He lived in Hotel Slon. On good days he sat on the corner in front of the post office, on rainy days he found a place in the department store opposite the hotel. He was a remarkable man, tall, thin, in boots and with a Stetson on his head.
When he came again that summer, I approached him and asked him if that was him, the man from San Diego. Of course he was. Somehow we became friends for the next few years. They told me at the hotel that I am one of the few people he hangs out with. He was more of a loner.
He used to invite me to lunch and once he showed me his marshal badge. He said he was accused of shooting a man, but he claimed he never shot at anyone. Later he stopped coming due to old age. He died in August 1988.
He is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery, San Diego, California.
In memory of Cyril Fredrick Drufner July 9, 1894 – August 18, 1988