Normally my Navy training kicks in and I’d do anything to avoid going to a meeting. Instead I’ve got two meetings that all y’all need to be at today.

Our congressman, Howard “Buck” McKeon, has authored a bill to establish the St. Francis Dam Memorial and National Monument. He is also going to be holding another meeting after the press conference.

The first meeting is a press conference for the St. Francis Dam proposal, scheduled for 9 a.m. at the Tesoro Adobe Historic Park in Saugus. This is very important, since after 86 years, we are finally going to honor those who lost their lives in 1928 when the St. Francis Dam failed and killed an estimated 431 people.

The next meeting is a fact-finding conference to determine the pros and cons of establishing the Castaic Wilderness area. The meeting is planned for Santa Clarita City Hall in the Century Room at 10:30 a.m.

Both projects need the support of all of us in the SCV. It will be a fitting legacy for our soon-to-retire congressman.

I find it just a little humorous that part of what is planned for the dam memorial includes identification of sites along the flow of the water from San Francisquito Canyon all the way to the ocean. People following that route may also get the special treat of passing by what might become the largest dump in California at Chiquita Canyon. Isn’t that special.

The St. Francis Dam in better days. It was up San Francisquito Canyon Road, 7 miles north of today’s Copper Hill Drive.

Maybe some folks from northern California will take the high-speed train someday to come see the memorial or the wilderness area. With any luck, they won’t even see the SCV until they get off the train at Burbank and drive back to it. They might get a special treat of a dark ride in a long tunnel between Palmdale and Burbank.

Better yet, maybe they’ll have to drive a car or take a plane or Amtrak because the Formerly Great State of California will realize – no, that isn’t going to happen.

I’ve often wondered why the folks who died in the St. Francis Dam disaster didn’t get a memorial sooner. Of course, the City of Los Angeles didn’t want it. They owned the dam and had too much bad press already.

I like to think any effort to create a memorial was lost with the 1929 crash of the stock market and the years of the Great Depression. With World War II and the building of the replacement reservoir in Bouquet Canyon, the event was forgotten and somehow the collective memory of the few folks in the SCV wasn’t enough to think of that. We had a war to win, and only years of prosperity were ahead. Few folks knew of the dam and even fewer thought it could be a memorial.

Over the years, I’ve hiked the area around the dam site and was even known to park along the road on a moonlit night with a special girl at my side. I knew about the dam bursting, but in those days I didn’t care much about things like memorials and monuments.

Now we are setting forth on an adventure of seeing a National Memorial and Monument established right here in our valley. We can be on the map for more than sites to film. We can make the national news without a filming tie to an event in Libya, or four California Highway Patrolmen being shot, or the last place James Dean had lunch, or a kid who posts stupid stuff on Instagram.

It is entirely fitting and proper that we are going to memorialize those who died and also those folks who saved so many lives between the dam and the sea. We can see our community and our valley respond to a great disaster and feel pride of at least being a part of the type of folks who always help when the need arises.

With the memorial, we can show folks we always care about our valley and the history that surrounds us. Now we can show the whole country.

So come out and show your support this morning. I’ll be there to see it all. You should, too.

Darryl Manzer grew up in the Pico Canyon oil town of Mentryville in the 1960s and attended Hart High School. After a career in the U.S. Navy he returned to live in the Santa Clarita Valley. He can be reached at dmanzer@scvhistory.com and his commentaries are archived at DManzer.com. Watch his walking tour of Mentryville [here].